276 - Best of 2025! How Government Backstopping Impacts the Entrepreneurial Landscape with Jon Matzner

0:00If you're not upsetting people, you need to have like pointier opinions. Who's more important? You with your Twitter growth group or tool number 87 to help you pre-schedule your Twitter posts using a GPT wrapper? I do courses. I do masterminds. I do live events. If I have a finite amount of resources, I would not pick a fight with the SBA. I would make the case that the free market is increasing economic mobility despite government interventions. If you look at a comparative analysis of other economies, other rising countries, and when we get away from free market principles, it hampers us. Why do you think healthcare costs have exploded?

0:33Why do I think that they've exploded? Yeah. Because of...

0:39All right, welcome to our Matzner mind. I am stoked to be with the Matzner mind himself, John Matzner. You are the inventor of that term. I would like to pretend that I made that term up, but I would say I popularized it, but you invented it. The reason I love interacting with you so much is because I feel like I can have an intellectual argument with you and you're not going to get offended and I'm not going to get offended. We can disagree with each other and think the other person's wrong. And I'm not going to walk away reading like that fricking douche. It ties, dude, it ties into what we were saying before, which I was like, you should record this.

1:08Cause this is good. It ties in. I mean, we're about to talk about something with SBA loans, which is good. But the first part was about influencers and stuff. And there's nothing that makes me unhappier than when somebody is in the comment section making fun. I wouldn't say making fun of like with animosity attacking Hormozy. And I'm like, okay, he wears a tank top and a nose strip. You don't need to make things up. He has a camera crew following him around with a varsity letter jacket on that says acquisitions.com. You don't need to make fake things up. Just tease him. There's enough material.

1:48There's so much, right? You don't need to be like the SEC, bro. This guy's worthless and has never helped a person in his life. And he's selling. I'm like, my brother in Jesus. You don't need to make things up. Just satirize and make fun of and keep your powder dry for the real criminals. Don't say Nick Huber is a criminal. He's not a criminal. I might try to say he's a bad businessman. He's not actually a bad businessman. but like i just mean don't say oh nick man fraud he's not a fraud he's not a fraud stop saying that it's like the last five years when everybody's a nazi correct like oh everybody's a nazi everything's violence everything's violence everything's violence it diminishes like my great-grandparents were killed in the holocaust yeah my my too oh really yeah like my let's see i would say my great uncles and aunts my great-grandpa made it out same thing like your family.

2:46Right. And it's like, no, those were Nazis. Those are the Nazis. A guy selling a worthless info product is not a Nazi. He's, he's worthy of our satire. Let's tease him. Let's make fun of him. Let's attack his business model, but let's not say he's Bernie Madoff. He's not Bernie Madoff. He sells a useless info product. All right. Let's all just let them, you know? And the thing I love about your brand is just how you go relentlessly. You are relentless. You don't, you're a dog with a bone, dude. And you'd never give it up. It's like Nick Huber posts something about his personal jet or his family or whatever.

3:25It's like, there's John. John's like up in the comments. Oh, this is interesting. Did you pay for that with the 35 % fee that you charge people? Oh, that's fascinating. I just got the cease and desist letter from a large competitor. I love how you like block out the names on it. And if anybody reads through it, it's so obviously fabricated. It's so good. People don't read it. It's like, it's like, that's the joke. That's the joke. I did one about responding to tariffs. Did you see that one? The terrible one was so good. I just cut and paste it. What it ties into too, as we talk about using social media, I said this to somebody, but my dad taught me this, which is Nick, think of a great ad.

4:03And you think of a great ad and you go, what was the company that ran the ad? You're like, I don't remember. You're like bad ad. Meaning if I'm just stirring the pot to stir the pot, I'm just chasing likes and followers and who cares. But if I'm stirring the pot, making an inside joke about cookie monster, why is John post about the cookie monster? Oh, because he eats influencer. Oh, that's on message. And it drives the right type of attention. So making it, it's not, oh, I'm going to say Nick Huber is a fraud because he's a fraud. It's like, no man, it's breaking his balls about having great margins and how I live in a, you know, I'm doing house hacking because my margins aren't that good.

4:44Like, that's the joke. What's been great about your brand is, I think it was 90 % planned and probably 10 % luck, but I'm gonna say the vast majority of it was planned. You built up this brand of making fun of people who were taking themselves too seriously as gurus. And you said to me, this was probably a year and a half ago when you're like, I'm saving my capital, essentially your social media capital for when you have a business to actually promote. And so when you went all in on Sagan, not only had you built this brand of attacking influencers, Sagan was the perfect business to launch to attack influencers because influencers had launched these businesses.

5:18Do you know what I mean? So it's like it just tied beautifully into your brand and you can continue to market the business while at the same time taking full advantage of your personality, which people love. And so I think you've done that just the right way. And it's you, it's authentic. It's like, that's why I think you're seeing so much success with Sagan. And it's the Ikagi. I don't know how to say that. It's the thing. It's the best businesses are reflections of the founders themselves. And if anybody else could start it, keep going. And if you think about like, so what's your go-to-market?

5:48Oh, I just kind of like tease people who take themselves seriously. But it's about an operational efficiency business model that takes inspiration from Amazon Prime. time like nobody like like you're on an acid trip right now if you try to describe the actual business and the journey and because you you stay on message and you have the one thing that you're harping on it there's a lot of momentum the fly the flywheel builds up and it's anyways it's been cool dude i've been blown away by the inbound that i get who and again not i am not everybody's cup of tea. And like I said, you know, when you join the LDS temple, you say, be nice to everybody and play board games.

6:30So like, there's probably some LDS guy there who's like, I would go John, but he, he's a little bit too, you know, aggressive, but in equal number, I also have like hilariously affluent people who, John, I got to tell you, man, you kill me on Twitter. I log in just to see you make fun of these guys. And by the way, can you work in our port co? because we have like 400 locations of a DSO and we need call center. It's the, who's the guy, the health nut guy who says, if you're not upsetting people, you need to have like pointier opinions. And I don't know if I fully buy that, but Brian Johnson. Oh yeah.

7:09Yeah. Brian Johnson. Okay. Yeah. And it's, I don't a hundred percent agree with that because I agree with it. I agree with it. I'm pretty milquetoast. Right. And I've gotten to the point now where I'm like, yeah, if I wanted to grow a lot and have a huge audience, I would need to stake out harder positions. But is that is my question would be, is that you? Are there things where you'd feel comfortable? There might be though, like being an advocate for the SBA loan program. Yeah. That could be something. Or taking care of senior citizens in a respectful way and you pick an enemy and you name it.

7:42And yeah, like you probably, it's not the same version of my, you know, dyspeptic nature. It's your own version of it. You know? So it's not like you don't copy my playbook. You find your own. You're like, I hate people who don't have any kids because I have 78 or 79. 79. They're got it. No, 78 wives or 78. I always lose track. The thing that you have to understand when I make that comment, Nick, is that it is not based in reality. It's based in me giving you a hard time. So to be very specific, I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of it. Every time we talk, the number is going to go up. I'm going to start naming them.

8:19I'm going to. Please do. You know what I mean? I'm going to talk about sister wives. It's going to be a whole, it's going to be a whole, there might be a backstory at some point. So just so we're clear to tie the bow on this influencer thing. For me, it was about a year ago when I learned this stat 50 % of every dollar raised by venture capital is spent on Google and meta and it's spent acquiring customers because they need to get their message out. They need to, they need to get people to actually use their product. And so when I look at these influencers who have built distribution, and you can maybe not call it that, but that's what it is.

8:56These followers are distribution. I would call it attention, not distribution. Okay. They've built an attention machine. They have effectively hacked their way past needing to raise money from VC. They own now the distribution channel, and it's so freaking valuable. How valuable is it? People will give up 80 % of their company and spend 50 % of the money they raise in order to acquire customers so they can go get VC money in order to grow. Like that's how valuable distribution is. So I look at these influencers and I'm like, wow, they've done something really cool that I haven't done. And I don't think I could do the way that they've done it.

9:31You have. I mean, we're talking about on this. Why are we talking? Why are you and I talking? Yeah, on a micro scale. You don't need a macro scale. True, yes. You're not trying to build Mr. Beast candy bars. You're trying to get a couple off-market healthcare deals done in the next 10 years. That is exactly right. I think there's a different strata. There are people who want to grow an audience because that becomes their business. Gary Vaynerchuk is one of them. Alex Ramosi kind of becomes one of them. Cody Sanchez is, I know she's buying businesses, but media is her business. And then there are people who, John Wilson comes to mind or Brian Beers.

10:07Or me. Or you. They have an audience and it's like, yeah, yeah, but I'm just talking about my business and hey, I don't care if I have a niche audience. It's making me a million bucks a year. Cool, like I'm good with it. So I think there are different levels to it. I know this wasn't on the docket for today, but I wanna talk about this because I talk about this with Peter Lohman all the time because I have some new opinions about this. I've been talking to a lot of people lately. Well, next month, it'll be a year since I started this podcast. I've had over a hundred interviews. It's been a ton of fun, but I promised my wife at some point I would decide whether or not this was gonna be a business or we would just continue to pay for it out of our pocket.

10:39And I'm exploring monetization. to be honest with you. There's not a ton of costs, but I do want to figure out a way to cover the editing and the packaging and the promotion costs of putting this podcast together. So I am looking for sponsors. I don't know what that looks like. If you've enjoyed this podcast and you've ever found some value and you want to sponsor, reach out to me, nickatcofounders.com, and let's get back into it. My new pitch these days, and I'll give you a data point, and then I'm going to tell you what I think the implications are. The data point is, I know somebody who runs a small community in a niche business.

11:12A Matzner mind, if you will. A Matzner mind, if you will. Exactly. So good. And a couple hundred participants. The CEO of a publicly traded software company said, I would like to fly every one of your people out to our corporate headquarters, put them up at the nicest hotel in town, and give you all a tour of our facility. Wow. Why? Is he a member of the community? but he's trying to target the business owners in that community because they're all growing business. Right. So I believe when I look at the democratization of software development, when the, the cost to develop niche software tools evaporates, when I look at global talent, when I look at a lot of these different things, when I think, where is the value going to accumulate to me, it is in the high affluence community builders.

12:03It's not the attention, big million post followers. it's the guy who's like the 180 best CPAs in the country are all in my circle of influence. And I can point them at a software tool. I can point them at an event I can point them at. And so when I think about where I think a lot of this value is going to accumulate, where the acquisition targets are, dude, I have a little community of every healthcare operator who's under the age of 70, who has more than X number of beds. That is more valuable than saying, I have some poopy sass that serves the healthcare community because you not only have distribution, you also have influence and affluence to point.

12:45What's the hard part? Did you just coin that? What? Influence and affluence. Oh, I don't, dude, I don't know what I'm saying. John, John, that's very good. Like I may have to cut this out just so you can like trademark it. No, don't believe. No, that's I'm dead serious, man. I'm dead serious. Like if that's your framework, Hey, I'm building communities. I focus on two things, influence and affluence. Like that is a framework. That's a framework. What I mean is, you know that these people are growing. They've self-selected by participating in the community. You know they have dollars to spend. That is more valuable.

13:18Like who's more important? You with your Twitter growth group or tool number 87 to help you pre-schedule your Twitter posts using a GPT wrapper? Nick is way more valuable than schmucky, you know, bootstrapped SAS number 87 that helps you write AI. Because Nick can be like, guys, this is the tool that's the best. Nick can go buy one and push it into your group. Like you are in a position of leverage as the as the tastemaker. Like and that's where I that's where I think all this value is going to accumulate. It's not the developers anymore. It's not the technical co-founder. This is funny. This wasn't on the bucket at all.

13:57I mean, you know, Jamath from the All In Podcast. He has this fund that he started called, I think it's called 90, 10, 80, 20, 90, 10. I always get it wrong. Anyways, the thesis behind it is 90 % of the functionality with 10 % of the cost. So he's going after Salesforce, these large ERPs. And he's, yeah, it's the same thesis that you have, right? And he's like, our devs can build it. And not only can they build it, they can build it better for you because they can actually make it customizable. How's he distribute it? How's he distribute it though? That's my question. I don't know. He goes to these people.

14:25What do you mean these people? You know, the community influencers, the vertical. They're going to, he builds a tool that does some Twitter, you know, Grammarly, right? And he wants to start attacking Grammarly. What's he going to do? He's going to go to Nick and say, Nick, you've got 250 entrepreneurs who I know like to write. Nick is in the driver's seat, not Chamath. That was going to be what I was going to say is that I think that people are making a big deal about AI, which they should be making a big deal about AI. I think one of the only defensible modes will be an audience for distribution.

15:00But it's not what I think you have to go one level past that because there's been people who've been like, I'm just going to scoop up some YouTube channels and pointed at different monetization. It has to be aligned audience that you can drive buying decisions around that views you as an authority. It's not. An authority. That's it. It's not, I have a big listserv and the CPM is low because it's an underpriced channel. It's not that. Authority, influence, and affluence. We're building a list here. It's not, I have a big listserv and the CPM is low. but that's what people originally there was attention arb where the cpms on newsletters were lower than clicks on ppc or what but now i don't think that that works for the especially for b2b like for and i'll give you a specific example in my business we've done some stuff with people who have got huge audience whatever never works and then i go to somebody who like builds excel databases for business owners who like super wonky and niche and the only people would ever, it's called like how to set up your CRM correctly to scale to 10 service techs.

16:09And you sponsor that guy, that guy's going to get you more sales than 10 million than Mr. Beast. That's what we figured out. Cause nobody watches Mr. Beast. Oh, that's true. Your target audience isn't watching Mr. Beast. They're watching the guy about how to set up your service Titan to add more techs. Dude, when I started my podcast in June of this year, I was getting like, I don't know, a couple hundred downloads a month. I had one guest come on and his business has tripled, tripling from 250 to 750 a year. Yes. That's, that was a low basis, but you're talking about Hector. No, I'm not even talking about Hector.

16:45I'm talking about Buddy Rothmull who has a Google, my business profile business, great business. And I'm like, Holy crap. I want to make sure that you, cause you were talking about me talking to your group. Cause this is my message too, which is if you want a lot of followers, say you're going to give away a free iPhone and run ads in India, and you'll have a million followers in 30 days, and you're not going to be able to sell one t-shirt. But if you're talking about weird niche that applies to your ICP, you're going to have a level and a relationship to drive purchasing decisions that is just head and shoulders different than the guy who writes the same Filipino rage bait tweet, hoping to get more views for their...

17:25This is why, how long have you been on Twitter? Two years, three years. I started really having into Twitter about a year ago. And honestly, it took me about a year to like figure out what I'm doing. This is why, as we were texting the other day, I'm going back into healthcare because I'm like, why did I ever position away from that? That's one of my core areas of expertise. I can niche down on that probably better than anybody that I know currently on Twitter. Why would I go away from that? I tried to be like a broad, Hey, I buy and sell small businesses, which is true. I do. But healthcare really was where my bread and butter was.

17:56And I came to the realization, it's like, I would much rather be known well than well known. I'm not concerned with being known by a million people. If 50 ,000 people know me, which is still a freaking ton of people, but they're the right people, that's way more valuable to me than a million people who hit like every once in a while. Who joined to learn how to go from zero to$10 ,000 in three days, right? Those people aren't the people you want to get to know. Easily gained, easily lost is the way that I like to think about it. And that's in closing before we move on. That's why to me, the pod format has, I really like because I'm not looking to huge top of funnel, whatever.

18:40I'm looking to get the guy who's going to buy us at 15 turns of earnings to listen to 10 episodes and be like, this is exactly the company we want to buy. One listener. Sure. We'll probably lose people who are like, okay, cool. You guys are patting yourselves on the back. That's all I do. Do they, have they ever heard me talk before? That's why I have carpal tunnel. Are you kidding me? Podcast is such an intimate way to get to know somebody they're in your ears. You're looking at them other than meeting you face to face and spending time with you. This is the best medium. So one podcast is like 400 Twitter posts.

19:14Do you know what I mean? And that's why I love it so much. Cause they can hear me. They know, like they can hear the nuance, the way it's delivered within five seconds. They're like, Oh, this guy's trustworthy. Oh, this guy's full of crap. That's why I love it so much. This guy's obviously looking for his next wife. That was, that would have been my thought. When I hear you talk, I'm like number 67. Look, if you're not looking for your next wife, what are you doing? Do they kick you out? By the way, I'll tell you a funny story and then we'll go to our final topic. A guy DM me and goes, Hey man, just joined Sagan.

19:42Going great. You guys hired us a couple of people. you should promote your podcast more on twitter because reading your twitter you you come off like an arrogant but you're actually like pretty interesting when i was like thanks but it's like dude i this is a quick aside i hired some vas to help cross post to all the other platforms and so they took my posts and they started posting to threads and what they did was is they just looked at the the highest ranking posts that i ever had like most views and like Five out of seven of them were troll posts. Like mine today. I got one that's doing 4 million right now.

20:18But for you to do a troll post on Twitter, most people know you in some capacity and they're going to be like, oh yeah, I know how he meant this. You go to threads and do that. People are like this freaking douchebag. Are you freaking kidding? People hated me, dude. Really? People. Yeah. I had to like, I got rid of the VAs and I was like, all right, no, no, no, no. We got to like start over. It's taken me like two months to basically get rid of all that crap. But because to your point, people don't know how to take it. They just read one thing. And if they haven't built trust with you, they're automatically going to assume the worst.

20:50And I'm also a little bit, I, by my own definition, I am oftentimes a, you know, I mean, I pick on people who are nice guys who I compete with, and that is not a nice thing to do. And I'm sorry. And, you know, and then somebody hears me talk about it and I'm like, oh, he's doing it on purpose. He doesn't actually hate these people. he's just stirring the pot because it creates a conversation okay cool well it's the same thing i saw some sba posts recently for whatever reason i don't know why people are freaking out maybe i should be freaking out more i'm not they think they're not gonna they're not gonna touch it like no okay elon musk tweeted about how like how much fraud there was in the sba he's talking about ppp loans yeah like that's where 95 of this fraud is coming from whatever anyways i've been seeing some posts i saw one of your posts last night that was like We don't need the SBA.

21:40I want to make sure that because it ties into the beginning of our conversation that you understand what I wrote. Part of what I wrote is also going after the influencers who will remain unnamed, which was what if the greatest wealth transfer in history is from taxpayer backed SBA loans to aging boomers on subscale, not transferable businesses. That was what I originally wrote. And part of it was me making fun of the 1 ,874 ,000th post called, have you heard about the thing called the gray wave from a M &A guy or a broker or an influencer who's trying to sell you a course? So to be clear, I was not nihilistic.

22:22I was merely flicking boogers at the greatest wealth trade. Just, I don't even know if that's true. It just bothers me at this point. I saw you get into it with Heather. Yeah. Who's great, by the way, who I think is great. And recent. Yeah, no, she's fantastic. I assumed I was like, oh, he just like, I know you like to argue. I like to argue as well. And when she comes back and is like, this isn't true at all. I knew you were going to hit back twice. So did she. She said that. She's like, I knew you had something ready to go. It was so good. It was so good. But I will say, I want to frame it a little bit, though.

22:57I will say that it's important to understand. First and foremost, I need to give my disclaimers. I would take an SBA loan. I think Heather's a good person. I think you're not a bad person if you take an SBA loan. I think the thing I was surprised at, and this wasn't your post, I can't remember his name, but he was like, the SBA is a subsidy for boomers. And that was the post where I was like, no. May I make that argument? We can. I'm going to give you my side of the, my side of the response. Wait, wait, wait. Before you make your side, what is the topic we're discussing here? Because we got to do like a good old fashioned debate thing.

23:30What is the proposition that we're discussing? It's not, do they ever do good? It's not, are they always bad? I think this is the proposition. Is the SBA subsidizing? You want to say, is it a force for good in the US? Partially, yeah. But also, is it subsidizing boomers? I think that's an easier point for me to argue. So thank you. That's fine. Great. Okay. I saw that post. And frankly, I like the fact that so many people right now, there's been this massive swing. I like what Doge is doing. I get that people are going to be irritated by what they're putting out there. And they're probably going to put out a bunch of stupid stuff.

24:03But I also think they're kind of blowing it up and people want to see stuff get blown up and they want to see where the waste has been. Right. And so understandably the eye of Sauron turns to the SBA. I guess it's going to be on every one of these departments at some point or another. And I think it's good. I think it's good to scrutinize. However, that being said, I don't think it's fair to characterize it as just a subsidy for boomers? Not just a subsidy. The premise was, is it a subsidy for boomers? Not just a subsidy. We must be precise here, Mr. Nick. It's not just a subsidy. It's a subsidy for boomers.