Latest / The Deep Wealth Podcast - Unlock Your Deep Wealth In Business and Life / Fractional CFO And Maverick Matt Putra Shares How To Grow Profits And Increase Enterprise Value (#252)

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Fractional CFO And Maverick Matt Putra Shares How To Grow Profits And Increase Enterprise Value (#252) · The Deep Wealth Podcast - Unlock Your Deep Wealth In Business and Life

• 0:04
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth.
• 0:12
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.
• 0:14
  Jeffrey Feldberg: This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience.
• 0:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life.
• 0:28
  Jeffrey Feldberg: But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail.
• 0:33
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted.
• 0:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Of the quote unquote"successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.
• 0:51
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I should know.
• 0:52
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I said"no" to a seven-figure offer.
• 0:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And"yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event.
• 0:59
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Two years later, I said"yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal.
• 1:05
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event?
• 1:08
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it.
• 1:15
  Jeffrey Feldberg: After all, how can you master something you've never done before?
• 1:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal.
• 1:28
  Jeffrey Feldberg: At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience.
• 1:35
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Matt Putra is a Chief Financial Officer experienced in scaling, transforming, and financing small and medium sized e-commerce businesses.
• 1:45
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Matt helps the owners of e-commerce brands and agencies in the US, Canada, Austria, and the UK scale their businesses with more cash and less stress.
• 1:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: As a fractional CFO and an active e-commerce investor, Matt knows what it takes to both minimize risk and optimize for growth.
• 2:03
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and for all you listeners and business owners, founders, entrepreneurs, you name it.
• 2:09
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I have a rhetorical question for you.
• 2:11
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Would you like to scale and grow your business?
• 2:13
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Would you like to have more cash, less stress, more success?
• 2:18
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And of course you said yes.
• 2:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Great news.
• 2:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: That's what today's episode is all about.
• 2:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We have a very special guest.
• 2:23
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Matt, Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast.
• 2:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And Matt, I'm curious because there's always a story behind the story.
• 2:29
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So Matt, what's your story?
• 2:30
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What got you to where you are today?
• 2:32
  Matt Putra: When I was early, as I finishing high school and everything, I wanted to be a doctor and I started off in sciences and I absolutely hated it.
• 2:40
  Matt Putra: And so from there, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
• 2:42
  Matt Putra: So I ended up going to this local manufacturer sweeping the floors.
• 2:46
  Matt Putra: And what I learned very quickly is I love business, I love management.
• 2:51
  Matt Putra: And so I just rose up through the ranks there.
• 2:53
  Matt Putra: And I ended up as an operations manager.
• 2:55
  Matt Putra: So nothing special, right?
• 2:56
  Matt Putra: And then at some point I was like, you know, I want to do finance.
• 2:59
  Matt Putra: And so I, switched my degree and my focus and I moved into finance and accounting.
• 3:03
  Matt Putra: And then I went to another local manufacturer in an accounting role.
• 3:07
  Matt Putra: And in that role I just, helped them make a lot more money have a lot more cash.
• 3:11
  Matt Putra: So when I was there, we increased our gross profit by 25% over the course of two years.
• 3:16
  Matt Putra: Increased net profit by about 20% over the course of two years.
• 3:20
  Matt Putra: And it was there that I realized the power for good that a good accountant can have.
• 3:25
  Matt Putra: And so from there I went to an accounting firm and got fully trained and all that, and then I became a C F O of a private equity group.
• 3:31
  Matt Putra: And, you know, managing cash flow, doing deals, helping investees, portfolio management, audit, tax, everything.
• 3:39
  Matt Putra: and I loved the job, loved it.
• 3:41
  Matt Putra: And I got you know, manage a bit through Covid when I was there.
• 3:44
  Matt Putra: And then when Covid happened I got my commute time back.
• 3:47
  Matt Putra: So I was commuting about three hours a day, back and forth to my home.
• 3:50
  Matt Putra: And when Covid started.
• 3:52
  Matt Putra: got those three hours back and I just started doing some consulting on the side.
• 3:56
  Matt Putra: And loved it, loved that I could have a really big impact for a small price tag for small businesses.
• 4:02
  Matt Putra: And so, about six months later, I told the group that I was gonna be leaving, Six months after that fully doing this.
• 4:08
  Matt Putra: And so I've been doing it ever since March, 2021.
• 4:10
  Matt Putra: And again, just helping business owners in the us, UK, and Canada just grow their businesses and not have the cashflow stress ideally.
• 4:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.
• 4:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Matt, what a journey.
• 4:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And there's always two sides to a coin.
• 4:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So firstly, with the pandemic, I'm gonna speak for both of us, I'm sure you're with me on this.
• 4:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Our heart sell to the people who lost loved ones or businesses from the pandemic.
• 4:30
  Jeffrey Feldberg: A terrible situation trying to find the silver lining.
• 4:33
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We don't really have much of a choice, so trying to find the silver lining.
• 4:36
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's incredible world class talent like yourself through the push and technology that we had, that you can now make yourself available in ways that couldn't be done before as a fractional cfo.
• 4:47
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Matt, I would be remiss if I didn't ask this question.
• 4:50
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We're gonna talk all about you being a cfo, but before we get there, you're on the other side of the table.
• 4:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: For most of our community, being in private equity, you're looking at the deals.
• 4:59
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You may have even looked at some of our communities businesses, are we gonna buy this company?
• 5:03
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Are we not gonna buy this company?
• 5:05
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And so, Matt, oftentimes you're never a prophet in your hometown.
• 5:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And I say these things and I'm sure the listeners nod and they smile.
• 5:10
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, yeah, Jeffrey, sounds good.
• 5:12
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Whatever.
• 5:12
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So for our listeners benefit, Matt, let's say two scenarios when you were looking at the numbers, the data, the financials, the narrative of a company, and you're looking to potentially buy that company.
• 5:24
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So let's take the glass as half empty and then we'll go to the glass half full.
• 5:28
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What would have you and your private equity group walk away from the table?
• 5:33
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So this is where you're going back to the team saying, you know what?
• 5:36
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We're better off taking a pass on this because of this.
• 5:39
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What is this?
• 5:41
  Matt Putra: There's a few things.
• 5:42
  Matt Putra: So one big one is gross margin, less than 50%, and it's just tough to scale, tough to acquire customers, tough to scale, tough to make an impact.
• 5:50
  Matt Putra: And it is possible when you have high volumes and massive scale.
• 5:53
  Matt Putra: But that's not where we played.
• 5:55
  Matt Putra: And so if it was less than 50%, typically we wouldn't continue the conversation.
• 5:59
  Matt Putra: Other thing we're looking for is lists.
• 6:01
  Matt Putra: So if the email and SMS list size is not very big, if it's quite small, that's something that we wouldn't really be looking at.
• 6:07
  Matt Putra: Cuz again, we want to have that owned list.
• 6:10
  Matt Putra: We want to have those customer touchpoints.
• 6:12
  Matt Putra: So that was one.
• 6:13
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And Matt, while you're thinking, may I ask, so were there particular industries that you were focusing on specifically?
• 6:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I mean with SMS list and email list to me that I'm gonna guess, but to me that sounds more in maybe SAS based businesses or high tech.
• 6:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What would be going on with that?
• 6:28
  Matt Putra: For the PE group and I'm still tangentially a part of it, we were looking at e-commerce businesses and specifically in the outdoor and apparel and gear space.
• 6:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Interesting.
• 6:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.
• 6:37
  Matt Putra: For this, model here.
• 6:38
  Matt Putra: So we wanna have lists, and they don't have to be massive, but we want to have some lists, right?
• 6:43
  Matt Putra: Because again we were doing this right around when Covid happened, and so then iOS happened and so then, the focus came back to building lists and it's changed a bit again now.
• 6:52
  Matt Putra: But yeah, no, that was a huge focus for us.
• 6:54
  Matt Putra: What we didn't wanna see is one big flash in the pan jump in annual revenues.
• 6:58
  Matt Putra: We wanted to see either like a steady progression or something steady, right?
• 7:02
  Matt Putra: So we just didn't wanna see the big covid bump.
• 7:04
  Matt Putra: And that was the only reason your someone's sales might have been quite high.
• 7:07
  Matt Putra: That's one thing we looked at.
• 7:08
  Matt Putra: And the other thing for us was more than 10%.
• 7:11
  Matt Putra: Not profit.
• 7:12
  Matt Putra: Now.
• 7:12
  Matt Putra: I know that's a nice ask, but again, that was just our model.
• 7:16
  Matt Putra: There are those acquirers that will look for people that are less or maybe even in a bit of trouble, and that's just something that we didn't want to do.
• 7:23
  Matt Putra: Those were the main things.
• 7:25
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.
• 7:25
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And I suppose we could take what you said and reverse that of what you were looking for.
• 7:30
  Jeffrey Feldberg: That said, though, when you're looking at a business to acquire, what would have you go back to the team and say, okay, you know what?
• 7:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: This particular deal has my blessings because of this.
• 7:41
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What would that be?
• 7:42
  Matt Putra: Yeah, so definitely the reverse things.
• 7:43
  Matt Putra: So more than 10% profit, better than 50% gross margin..
• 7:46
  Matt Putra: And other things I would say is a unique brand.
• 7:49
  Matt Putra: We didn't wanna buy a drop shipping companies, we wanted something where their customers had an affiliation with the brand, like the image, maybe not the logo per se, but the brand was doing something that the customers enjoyed and could communicate with them.
• 8:04
  Matt Putra: Other things were L t V.
• 8:06
  Matt Putra: So we'd want something, maybe two to three times more than a o v.
• 8:09
  Matt Putra: The better the gross margin, the more we're willing to pay, right?
• 8:12
  Matt Putra: So there's that 70% gross margin is great when you can get it, 60%.
• 8:16
  Matt Putra: The other thing is multichannel.
• 8:19
  Matt Putra: We were looking at things where they did e-commerce maybe, or Amazon or both, or wholesale or other marketplaces, like fair or target some of those.
• 8:27
  Matt Putra: So we ideally like to have something that had more than one channel.
• 8:31
  Matt Putra: Just cuz again, reli on one channel has a lot of risks sometimes.
• 8:34
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Sure.
• 8:34
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know what?
• 8:35
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Whether you're a retail business, online business, manufacturing business, Matt, the takeaway here is, hey, be resilient.
• 8:41
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Don't have your eggs all in one basket.
• 8:43
  Matt Putra: Exactly.
• 8:44
  Matt Putra: Yes.
• 8:45
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We can go down a whole other rabbit hole, what you're talking about in our nine step Deep Wealth roadmap.
• 8:50
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We talk about that in step two, X-Factors, and step four, the due diligence side of things.
• 8:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: But let's put that off to the side because that's another story for another time.
• 8:59
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Matt, this is all about you today and so let's fast forward to today.
• 9:03
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm wondering with your CFO background and your experience in the marketplace of what makes a company tick.
• 9:10
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So today you're helping businesses grow and scale and prosper, and you're focusing on the cash side of things.
• 9:15
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So what's your secret sauce?
• 9:17
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What's going on here as a business owner?
• 9:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I come to you, Matt, I heard you on the Deep Wealth podcast.
• 9:21
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Hey, let's give it a go.
• 9:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Can you help us?
• 9:23
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What does that mean exactly?
• 9:25
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What does that look like?
• 9:26
  Matt Putra: So the very first thing that we do, and this forms the linchpin of what we do for people is we make a financial model.
• 9:32
  Matt Putra: Now, maybe sounds boring, but it's a forecast three to five years out over time, income statement, cash flow, balance sheet.
• 9:38
  Matt Putra: But it's so, so, so important, and here's why.
• 9:41
  Matt Putra: People may have seen forecasts built by their accountants or other folks like that, but we build ours based on economic reality.
• 9:50
  Matt Putra: So we take the inputs you give us, and then we apply our own knowledge to it.
• 9:55
  Matt Putra: So for example, what you might do, sometimes people who are looking to sell or raise money, they'll go and they'll find someone to build a model and that person will just accept inputs and just do what the person asks them to do in terms of sales and margins and all these things.
• 10:07
  Matt Putra: What we do is if someone says we're gonna grow 50% year over year, I'm gonna say you might do that one or two years in a row, but you're not gonna keep doing that.
• 10:15
  Matt Putra: And They might say well, gross margins are gonna be 70% forever.
• 10:17
  Matt Putra: And I'm gonna say, maybe.
• 10:19
  Matt Putra: But as you add a wholesale channel or a target or marketplace, you're gonna see some compression.
• 10:24
  Matt Putra: And especially as the competitor pressures come in, you're gonna see some compression in your margins.
• 10:28
  Matt Putra: So I'm gonna take what you give me, and I'm gonna apply my own knowledge and our team's knowledge to this as well.
• 10:33
  Matt Putra: And so what you're going to have is something that's achievable and as close to realistic as you can get.
• 10:39
  Matt Putra: And the reason we do that is because we want to know where could the potential problems be.
• 10:44
  Matt Putra: I had one client join me.
• 10:45
  Matt Putra: They said, look, we're doing Amazon.
• 10:46
  Matt Putra: We have one product where it's gonna be awesome, then we're gonna add two more.
• 10:49
  Matt Putra: And when I built their model, I said, you're gonna go bankrupt.
• 10:53
  Matt Putra: And they said, why?
• 10:54
  Matt Putra: I was like well, this assumption I don't think is gonna hold true, and this assumption has some problems with it.
• 11:00
  Matt Putra: And if this keeps going this way, you're just gonna run outta money.
• 11:02
  Matt Putra: We've been working with them for probably about a year and a half, and we're starting now to break even month on month.
• 11:08
  Matt Putra: We've sourced a new manufacturer, and so they're headed toward the right side of profitability now.
• 11:13
  Matt Putra: But along the meantime, we've helped them find funding.
• 11:17
  Matt Putra: Financing.
• 11:18
  Matt Putra: We've helped them manage their supply chain.
• 11:20
  Matt Putra: We've helped them forecast how to purchase and when to purchase and when to pull back on Amazon and when to go f and when they say, Hey, I found the new agency that we help interview the agency.
• 11:29
  Matt Putra: We input into the forecast.
• 11:31
  Matt Putra: Here's how much the agency's gonna cost.
• 11:33
  Matt Putra: Here's how much agency should bring you in sales.
• 11:35
  Matt Putra: And then we do a downside.
• 11:36
  Matt Putra: If they don't do the sales, how much time do you have with them before you should stop using them?
• 11:40
  Matt Putra: Things like that.
• 11:40
  Matt Putra: We're using this model all the time.
• 11:43
  Matt Putra: The biggest reason why, number one, don't get into cashflow problems.
• 11:47
  Matt Putra: That's the first thing that I'm looking for.
• 11:48
  Matt Putra: Every client that I work with, I meet them every single month or sometimes more than once a month, and I'm taking what I hear from them, oh, hey, we're trying this thing.
• 11:56
  Matt Putra: Oh, we're gonna try this agency.
• 11:57
  Matt Putra: Oh, we have a new sales channel.
• 11:58
  Matt Putra: And as they're talking, I'm putting this information into the forecast and I'm trying to see what it tells me.
• 12:03
  Matt Putra: Is there gonna be a cash flow problem?
• 12:05
  Matt Putra: Is there gonna be a margin problem?
• 12:07
  Matt Putra: And once it shows me one, then I can help them figure out what we're gonna do about it, whether we do the thing or we don't do the thing or we modify the thing.
• 12:13
  Matt Putra: So that's the biggest piece that we do.
• 12:15
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners, what's so nice about this, and it's a beautiful blending.
• 12:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And I'll put this out there, Matt, tell me if you think I'm off base.
• 12:24
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Private equity companies love them or hate them.
• 12:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: They're some of the most successful, the most valuable and profitable companies on the planet.
• 12:32
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Bar none.
• 12:33
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And if you're saying, you know Jeffrey well, not really.
• 12:35
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You know, Because Amazon and Google well, who's behind Amazon and Google, it's private equity.
• 12:40
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So the discipline that private equity brings to the table.
• 12:44
  Jeffrey Feldberg: He is world class.
• 12:45
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's like none other.
• 12:46
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And so for our listeners, when you have a fractional CFO like Matt, who's been on the other side of the table, he's now applying that discipline to your business.
• 12:54
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.
• 12:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And for our listeners who, Matt, they're listening to you talk and they're saying, Matt, you lost me at that first financial word.
• 13:00
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I can't even remember it.
• 13:01
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I don't know even what it starts with.
• 13:02
  Jeffrey Feldberg: They're saying well, you don't have to know everything as a business owner.
• 13:05
  Jeffrey Feldberg: That's why you want to hire people smarter than you in specific areas so that you can work on the business and have Matt and team work in the business just taking it to the next level.
• 13:15
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So, Matt, let me ask you this.
• 13:16
  Jeffrey Feldberg: When you begin to work with clients, what are you seeing as their.
• 13:21
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm gonna say 80% of the problems are probably coming from 20% of the same root cause from one business to the other.
• 13:27
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So as business owners, don't shoot the messenger here.
• 13:29
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Where are we dropping the ball?
• 13:31
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Where are we just not getting it right?
• 13:32
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What are you seeing?
• 13:34
  Matt Putra: Yeah I would say one of the biggest mistakes that I see is adding too many fixed costs too soon, and that's in the form of hires, software, rent.
• 13:44
  Matt Putra: Tools, agencies, all those things.
• 13:47
  Matt Putra: I mean, You need a bunch of that stuff to get going.
• 13:49
  Matt Putra: But what I see happening is people have a few good months and then add some fixed costs, and then the few good months might be a season, but now they're stuck with the fixed costs, or at least they hold onto them too long.
• 13:59
  Matt Putra: A rule of thumb is that every dollar fixed cost requires four to$5 of revenue to cover it
• 14:04
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.
• 14:04
  Jeffrey Feldberg: That's huge.
• 14:06
  Matt Putra: Yeah.
• 14:06
  Matt Putra: And so when you add a dollar, just know you gotta work that much harder to cover it.
• 14:11
  Matt Putra: And so just be careful adding dollars.
• 14:13
  Matt Putra: And the people that I see that are the most stressed are typically the ones with the highest fixed costs, to be very honest.
• 14:19
  Matt Putra: And there's a lot of ways we can work on that.
• 14:21
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And so on paper it sounds Oh, so easy, Matt.
• 14:24
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Just don't put it fixed cost.
• 14:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: In reality, obviously, from what you're saying, in reality, that's not quite the case.
• 14:29
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So with that in mind, What kind of tips can you give our community of, okay, when it comes to fixed costs?
• 14:36
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I know you're tempted, but hey, here's a few ways to avoid that.
• 14:39
  Matt Putra: The first thing and the hardest thing is just to be prepared to work really hard for a while I, I eat my own, Porridge, so to speak.
• 14:47
  Matt Putra: With my business, I've been very late in adding other staff and it's meant that I've worked a lot of evenings, a lot of weekends, get up early, work late but it's just because I don't want that stress.
• 14:58
  Matt Putra: I'd rather have the stress of working really hard than stress of managing my own cashflow.
• 15:01
  Matt Putra: So just work really hard.
• 15:02
  Matt Putra: Be prepared for that.
• 15:03
  Matt Putra: Few other really core ways virtual assistance where you have an agency where you can buy buckets of hours per month.
• 15:09
  Matt Putra: That's a fantastic way to do customer service.
• 15:12
  Matt Putra: Some video editing, social media editing, those kind of things are really great ways to do that.
• 15:17
  Matt Putra: The next thing after that is offshore staff members.
• 15:20
  Matt Putra: I think a lot of people still are worried about quality of offshore staff, but I tell you, it's the one of the best things that I've ever done.
• 15:27
  Matt Putra: Most of my team is either in Argentina or in the Philippines.
• 15:30
  Matt Putra: They're brilliant in some ways.
• 15:32
  Matt Putra: They're smarter than I am.
• 15:33
  Matt Putra: They have world class experience.
• 15:35
  Matt Putra: They're motivated, they're brilliant.
• 15:37
  Matt Putra: And I suggest to everybody that there are a bunch of key areas in your business that you can have offshore help.
• 15:43
  Matt Putra: One is the accounting team.
• 15:45
  Matt Putra: So if you ever need to hire an accountant, hire somebody from the Philippines, they're wonderful accountants.
• 15:50
  Matt Putra: They're brilliant, motivated, and they work on your time zone.
• 15:52
  Matt Putra: You can do digital teams, you can build them.
• 15:55
  Matt Putra: So that's video editing, social media, editing, all these things, customer service teams.
• 16:00
  Matt Putra: I just did a deep dive on a competitor of a client of mine, so I won't say the name, they are likely multi nine figure company, and I've done a whole org chart analysis of them, and they have more than half their team are offshore.
• 16:12
  Matt Putra: There's another very known luggage brand where a lot of their team is offshore as well.
• 16:17
  Matt Putra: So the whole CX team could be offshore customer experience team digital, your web dev team.
• 16:23
  Matt Putra: Can be in India, there have a lot of good web developers there.
• 16:26
  Matt Putra: You can also have performance marketing folks again offshore.
• 16:30
  Matt Putra: So that's a huge one from there.
• 16:32
  Matt Putra: You go up to fractional people.
• 16:34
  Matt Putra: So like myself, like a CMO a strategic growth marketer, you can find me a cfo.
• 16:39
  Matt Putra: There's other CFOs too that do this.
• 16:41
  Matt Putra: Fractionally.
• 16:42
  Matt Putra: You could look at marektinghire.com for a fractional marketing executive.
• 16:46
  Matt Putra: And then from there, really it's just delay fixed costs.
• 16:49
  Matt Putra: There are some strategic things you can do, but otherwise just delay your fixed costs, spend the money on growth for sure.
• 16:55
  Matt Putra: Wait until the growth appears, it stabilizes, and then at a fixed cost to manage it.
• 17:00
  Matt Putra: And until then, do it with virtually or fractionally or just work really hard for a few months until you stabilize the growth,
• 17:06
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So, wow, what a game changer from what you're sharing here.
• 17:09
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So what I'm hearing you say, Matt, is.
• 17:11
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Hey, when it comes to fixed costs, more around the people side, I guess the first thing that you're saying is, do you really need a full-time person for starters?
• 17:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And if the answer is no, okay you don't have to have someone physically in the office anymore.
• 17:24
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We know that post covid, maybe it makes you feel better.
• 17:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It doesn't mean that they're doing any better of a job in a full-time position when it could be a part-time position.
• 17:32
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And then what I'm hearing you say is perhaps you can find your talent offshore.
• 17:36
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Where I, suspect we have the currency exchange is what's really making a difference on top of a lower cost of living in some of these other countries.
• 17:42
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You're getting tremendous talent.
• 17:44
  Matt Putra: In some cases you will pay a third what you'd pay for North American or European talent.
• 17:50
  Matt Putra: If you look on Latin America would be maybe half.
• 17:53
  Matt Putra: Sometimes Philippines in some cases a third, and you're getting like as good or better talent, I would say.
• 18:00
  Matt Putra: You do have to figure out how to manage the training and cultural differences, but from my point of view, it's a really fantastic way to do things.
• 18:08
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And just before we move on from this, has there been any downsides or adjustments, I'll call them as you go, with the strategy of having talent all around the world, anything that you can care to share?
• 18:18
  Matt Putra: Yeah, of course.
• 18:19
  Matt Putra: I mean, One tough thing is time zones, right?
• 18:22
  Matt Putra: So if you want the best of the best talent from offshore, you do need to let them work on their own proper time zone.
• 18:27
  Matt Putra: You can imagine that a successful person in another country would want to work like regular daytime hours in their time.
• 18:33
  Matt Putra: So if you want the best of the best, you have to do that.
• 18:35
  Matt Putra: If you're willing to have still a level talent maybe not a plus, but whatever.
• 18:40
  Matt Putra: Then you can ask them to work on your time zone.
• 18:42
  Matt Putra: And a lot of people in the Philippines are, are used to that.
• 18:44
  Matt Putra: The other downside is, if you're in a country or a state where the time zone changes fallback spring forward, that gets very tricky for me in Vancouver, Canada, fallback.
• 18:53
  Matt Putra: Spring forward are both times where I miss meetings a bunch of times our team meeting has to get shifted around.
• 18:58
  Matt Putra: So that's been a bit of a paint.
• 19:00
  Matt Putra: The other thing, and this kind of depends on someone's sort of emotional intelligence, is the cultural differences in communication.
• 19:08
  Matt Putra: It's a really important to know that they're there and really important to understand them.
• 19:12
  Matt Putra: Just because again, you might find yourself, if you're very direct, you might hurt someone's feelings or vice versa.
• 19:18
  Matt Putra: So that's something that's important to know about.
• 19:20
  Matt Putra: I haven't had much in the way of translation issues.
• 19:24
  Matt Putra: Again, my team is fantastic.
• 19:26
  Matt Putra: We don't have the minor word here and there we're not, we have to clarify what we mean by the word, but typically it's been fine.
• 19:32
  Matt Putra: And I have team members that interface with my clients sometimes without me for long periods of time.
• 19:37
  Matt Putra: So I think I'm not worried about that one.
• 19:39
  Matt Putra: The other one is payment systems is something to figure out typically.
• 19:43
  Matt Putra: We use wise.com.
• 19:44
  Matt Putra: To pay our staff using deal.com, like that global staffing infrastructure thing.
• 19:50
  Matt Putra: What I found with that was that from paycheck to one of my staff members receiving their payment was like five to seven days.
• 19:57
  Matt Putra: And so just really not optimal for them.
• 19:59
  Matt Putra: So we stopped using the platform for that reason.
• 20:01
  Matt Putra: And then finding the talent, of course, can be tough, right?
• 20:03
  Matt Putra: If you don't know how to recruit, you have to figure that out.
• 20:07
  Matt Putra: We're starting to do some of that for people now.
• 20:09
  Matt Putra: But there are recruiters in some countries you can use.
• 20:12
  Matt Putra: You can also do LinkedIn ads, but there's some things you need to do to make sure you get the right people.
• 20:16
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.
• 20:17
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What a Wealth of information that's there.
• 20:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Thank you so much for sharing that.
• 20:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Matt, we covered some fixed expenses, some strategies of what not to do.
• 20:24
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Hey, you don't necessarily need full-time, and if you're looking, why not expand your selection of talent and go offshore and just get some world-class talent with that.
• 20:33
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So let's flip it now.
• 20:35
  Jeffrey Feldberg: When a company comes to you, they're doing all the right things.
• 20:38
  Jeffrey Feldberg: All the cylinders are firing, they're growing, they have scale going.
• 20:42
  Jeffrey Feldberg: The cash is flowing in.
• 20:44
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What have you done and what are they doing from working with you to make it work?
• 20:49
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So this is some of your secret sauce here now that we're talking about.
• 20:52
  Matt Putra: Yeah.
• 20:53
  Matt Putra: So when someone comes to me and there aren't fires burning, the question is, look, we want to keep the train moving and we just don't want to derail it.
• 21:01
  Matt Putra: And sometimes There's a fork in the road, which one should we take?
• 21:04
  Matt Putra: They ask me.
• 21:05
  Matt Putra: Right?
• 21:06
  Matt Putra: So that's what we do when everything's going well.
• 21:08
  Matt Putra: So first thing is we put in kind of reporting rhythms, metrics maybe it's OKRs that we use, but we want to keep the train or the ship in the right direction.
• 21:18
  Matt Putra: And so we use reporting to do that.
• 21:19
  Matt Putra: We want to have weekly, monthly, sometimes daily reporting, which we use.
• 21:24
  Matt Putra: We're triple whale partners, so we use triple whale for e-commerce people, if it's not that we use other things.
• 21:29
  Matt Putra: That's a big one.
• 21:30
  Matt Putra: And the other one is where is this all going?
• 21:33
  Matt Putra: So because we work.
• 21:34
  Matt Putra: Not necessarily globally, but we work with people in a bunch of different countries.
• 21:37
  Matt Putra: We worked with a whole bunch of e-commerce folks.
• 21:40
  Matt Putra: We sort of have an idea of what's working for people.
• 21:42
  Matt Putra: So how do you take appropriate bets?
• 21:45
  Matt Putra: And so this is something that we're now working on with people is when you looking at taking a risk on something, how do you quantify the upside downside?
• 21:53
  Matt Putra: How do you mitigate your risk?
• 21:55
  Matt Putra: How do you take the bet appropriately?
• 21:57
  Matt Putra: At what point when you start, is there kill point where if it's not working, you stop the bet?
• 22:01
  Matt Putra: Right?
• 22:02
  Matt Putra: So that's a big thing for companies that are doing it well is just to help them keep doing it well and make appropriate bets without betting the farm or losing too much money or that kind of thing.
• 22:12
  Matt Putra: And in fact, one of my clients is in this position, everything's going awesome.
• 22:16
  Matt Putra: They're like, we wanna grow 300% over the next three years.
• 22:19
  Matt Putra: Just help us make sure we don't mess it up.
• 22:21
  Matt Putra: And that's what we're doing.
• 22:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.
• 22:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So 300%, a hundred percent a year for three years, 300%.
• 22:27
  Jeffrey Feldberg: If I'm doing the math right, I gotta be careful.
• 22:28
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I'm with the CFO here, so Matt, how do you do that?
• 22:31
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What's going on?
• 22:32
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I mean, That's huge in terms of growth.
• 22:35
  Matt Putra: Yeah.
• 22:35
  Matt Putra: So for them we're looking at what are the sales channels that make sense?
• 22:39
  Matt Putra: Is it wholesale, is it Amazon?
• 22:41
  Matt Putra: What is it?
• 22:41
  Matt Putra: What are we gonna do?
• 22:42
  Matt Putra: then when you approach the sales channel, how do you approach it?
• 22:45
  Matt Putra: Do you do it yourself?
• 22:46
  Matt Putra: Do you hire a director?
• 22:48
  Matt Putra: When should the director pay for themselves?
• 22:50
  Matt Putra: Who should you find from?
• 22:51
  Matt Putra: Where should you find them?
• 22:53
  Matt Putra: And sometimes it's look, if you can get into a really big account, sometimes you don't do it when that account asks you to do it.
• 22:59
  Matt Putra: Because what you don't wanna do is get into a big account and mess it up.
• 23:03
  Matt Putra: So then it's is your supply chain there to support this account?
• 23:06
  Matt Putra: Do you have the staff available to support this account?
• 23:09
  Matt Putra: So that's what we're doing, right, is we're helping them figure out what to do, when to do it.
• 23:13
  Matt Putra: And it's, quarterly goal planning.
• 23:15
  Matt Putra: Monthly reviews, weekly check-ins, things like that, just to make sure everything's going in the right direction and staying in the right direction.
• 23:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So, Matt, what's interesting is more than just forecasts and numbers and projections.
• 23:27
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You're really getting into the trenches.
• 23:29
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You were talking strategy, growth strategy, sales, strategy, what can go wrong?
• 23:32
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Let's find those skeletons, let's prevent them.
• 23:34
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So you're doing that and a whole lot more am I correct with that?
• 23:37
  Matt Putra: Yes, for sure.
• 23:38
  Matt Putra: A good CFO you know, is not just an accountant, right?
• 23:41
  Matt Putra: A good C F O is a business partner and one that is really rooting for the owner or owners and look, you're gonna tell me where you want the ship to go and I'm gonna help you point it in that direction, make sure it has enough fuel, make sure the right people are on board.
• 23:55
  Matt Putra: And then look, you know, is there a log in the way?
• 23:57
  Matt Putra: How do you get around it?
• 23:58
  Matt Putra: A good CFO does all of those things.
• 24:00
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And let me ask you this, and I suppose you could easily say, and you'd be right, the question I'm gonna ask is, you know, Jeffrey, every company is different.
• 24:06
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It all depends.
• 24:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Generally speaking though, knowing that there's gonna be some on either side of this.
• 24:12
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Most companies, when they're coming to you, Matt, they need help otherwise they wouldn't be there, and you step in and you begin to turn things around.
• 24:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: How long does that process take back of the envelope, generally speaking?
• 24:23
  Matt Putra: If there are troubles, I would say probably takes six to nine to start getting out of the
• 24:31
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Mm-hmm.
• 24:31
  Matt Putra: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 24:32
  Matt Putra: And then probably about, it takes about three months to have a clear path to know where we're gonna go.
• 24:38
  Matt Putra: Six to nine months is you start like taking steps and you start to see the improvements.
• 24:43
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.
• 24:43
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So a little bit of a timeline there, and let me ask you this.
• 24:46
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's one of my favorite questions to ask outside of my favorite question when we do the wrap up.
• 24:50
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We're not quite there yet, though.
• 24:51
  Jeffrey Feldberg: As we sit and talk here today, artificial intelligence, ai, it's in the headlines every day.
• 24:57
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's growing by leaps and bounds, and I suspect by the time this podcast airs, it's already changed.
• 25:04
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So what we're talking about today may even be obsolete and out of date.
• 25:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: But that said, where's the biggest impact in your world, Matt, of where AI has really made a difference?
• 25:13
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And then if you had to fast forward six or 12 months, where do you see it heading?
• 25:17
  Matt Putra: Oh man.
• 25:18
  Matt Putra: So one big one is the customer intelligence.
• 25:22
  Matt Putra: So, a use case I've heard of recently, which I like is piping all your reviews.
• 25:27
  Matt Putra: Back to chat g p t and assess.
• 25:29
  Matt Putra: For mood, for common themes, for common problems, for common benefits, and then crafting landing pages based off of like massive amounts of customer feedback.
• 25:40
  Matt Putra: So that's a really good use case.
• 25:42
  Matt Putra: One that I've done is when I have phone calls with people who might wanna work together with me.
• 25:47
  Matt Putra: The call's recorded.
• 25:48
  Matt Putra: I will put the transcript into chat PT and just double check what I understood and what I heard.
• 25:52
  Matt Putra: Say, Hey, what did they think?
• 25:53
  Matt Putra: What's the mood?
• 25:53
  Matt Putra: What do they want?
• 25:54
  Matt Putra: When they wanna hear from me.
• 25:55
  Matt Putra: And it's actually pretty amazing the you get.
• 25:57
  Matt Putra: Like I had a response from chat PT saying this person wanted these three things, but email them in 10 days because they're doing something in those interim 10 days, so you shouldn't bother them.
• 26:07
  Matt Putra: it's very powerful.
• 26:08
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And Matt, let me ask you that if before you, you move into the next one, I mean, that's fascinating what I've seen when it comes to chat, g p T and ai.
• 26:16
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's the quality of the question that you ask.
• 26:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Makes sense.
• 26:19
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Garbage in.
• 26:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Garbage out, or gold in gold out.
• 26:22
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So what exactly are you asking it?
• 26:25
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What's a specific question when you're saying, okay, chat, g p t, here is the transcript of an interview I just had with somebody, or a client conversation.
• 26:33
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What's the specific question that you're now asking?
• 26:36
  Matt Putra: Yeah, I am asking something like, please act like a VP of sales whose focus is to move this potential client a little bit closer to where they might consider working with us.
• 26:50
  Matt Putra: And I'll say please give me the mood of the conversation and it'll do that.
• 26:55
  Matt Putra: Please give me the three pain points.
• 26:57
  Matt Putra: This person.
• 26:58
  Matt Putra: You feel like they had please give me some of the words you might use to address the pain points.
• 27:04
  Matt Putra: Those are some of the things that I do with it on a regular basis.
• 27:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.
• 27:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's crazy that it can really do that.
• 27:11
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And because when you read something on paper, you're not hearing the emotionality of what's going on or.
• 27:18
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I deliberately pause right there for effect that doesn't come through either in the transcript.
• 27:23
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So because it's just reading what's on the page, which can be easily misinterpreted, even for a human to read it, you can come out very different as to not being there and hearing that.
• 27:32
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So how accurate is it based on what you've seen from reading the transcript verbatim, you know, word for word, what's there to saying, okay, Matt, here's my assessment of what's going on.
• 27:41
  Matt Putra: Pretty good actually.
• 27:42
  Matt Putra: There was one in particular that I'm thinking of when I asked the questions.
• 27:46
  Matt Putra: I went back and I read through the transcript, cause I used like a note taker, right?
• 27:50
  Matt Putra: And so I read the transcript and listened to a bunch of parts of it.
• 27:52
  Matt Putra: It classified the pain points the same way that I would have just did it faster.
• 27:56
  Matt Putra: And then when I combine a whole bunch of calls into one input, it does a fairly good job of classifying what I would say are people's pain points and which we just did that recently.
• 28:08
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.
• 28:09
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And let me ask you for our listeners, for their benefit, is there any particular note taking or transcribing tool that you're using, or are they all the same, more or less?
• 28:18
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We don't have to give a commercial here for any of these companies, but is there any one that you found that's better than the other, or are they're all fairly good?
• 28:24
  Matt Putra: So I currently use Otter otter.ai or otter.com.
• 28:29
  Matt Putra: I don't know.
• 28:29
  Matt Putra: And I think I'm gonna move to the.
• 28:31
  Matt Putra: Fireflies Otter does not have an api.
• 28:34
  Matt Putra: You can connect to chat g b t fireflies does.
• 28:37
  Matt Putra: So if I use fireflies and I have my own instance in which chat, g b t is not gonna take the information I give it and use it publicly, I can connect fireflies to chat G P T and then I can ask it questions probably on the fly as it's ingesting live ish till fireflies is my recommendation right now.
• 28:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What a different world it is with AI and how it is changing anything.
• 28:59
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It absolutely is.
• 29:00
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And, so you're speaking about today of how you're putting AI into the mix from prospects to hiring to everything else.
• 29:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So based on what you've seen, and I know it's still early days, we're entering the golden era of ai.
• 29:12
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Matt, what are you seeing, best guess, six months, 12 months from now?
• 29:16
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What does that look like?
• 29:17
  Matt Putra: If I look at this from the financial services point of I would say that there are gonna be entry level tools people can use.
• 29:26
  Matt Putra: So a ai C F O is my guess.
• 29:28
  Matt Putra: And it's gonna be okay.
• 29:29
  Matt Putra: It's not gonna be But someone that doesn't have a big budget could probably use that and then just connect with a partner here.
• 29:35
  Matt Putra: And there maybe is probably one thing that might happen.
• 29:38
  Matt Putra: We're like Product or brands.
• 29:40
  Matt Putra: The other thing that I would say that's gonna happen is again, just the amount of customer data that's gonna get piped into Q P T is huge.
• 29:47
  Matt Putra: And so your teams are gonna function better.
• 29:50
  Matt Putra: Your chat box, chat bots are gonna function better.
• 29:53
  Matt Putra: You're gonna be able to give unbelievable service for the brands that really embrace it.
• 29:58
  Matt Putra: And what I mean by that is like this.
• 29:59
  Matt Putra: So someone chats you on your site.
• 30:01
  Matt Putra: G P T will know what they bought from you, what they've said before, what their reviews were, and so they're gonna say, Hey, I just question about this product.
• 30:08
  Matt Putra: The person who's responding, whether it's the bot first or not, if it's a person, G P T will pull up a list of things that they bought and when they bought them and what they said last time.
• 30:16
  Matt Putra: They said, oh, hey Angela.
• 30:17
  Matt Putra: I know you reached out three months ago and you bought this thing.
• 30:20
  Matt Putra: How was the thing and how can I help you today?
• 30:22
  Matt Putra: And just the care that you're gonna be able to give to people.
• 30:25
  Matt Putra: I think it's gonna be a big differentiator.
• 30:28
  Matt Putra: There are other things.
• 30:29
  Matt Putra: People smarter than I am will have other ideas and stuff, but I think one of the big things that I see is the amount of care and that you'll be able to show people is gonna be astronomical.
• 30:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.
• 30:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Sounds exciting, scary, all at
• 30:40
  Matt Putra: Yeah.
• 30:41
  Matt Putra: Yeah, that too.
• 30:42
  Jeffrey Feldberg: all that goes.
• 30:43
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Matt, big picture wise, we're talking about how you can find those skeletons in the closet for these companies, remove them, help them grow, get out there, scale, ramp up profits and cash.
• 30:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We could probably go down so many different rabbit holes here, but are there any questions that I should have asked that I didn't?
• 31:00
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Anything that you would wanna add to the conversation at this point?
• 31:04
  Matt Putra: You know, The only thing I'll add is a bit about financing and I'll just say on that point People do your best to avoid financing that's tied to revenue.
• 31:14
  Matt Putra: Like the repayments where they're like a percentage of revenue or a percentage of daily sales or those things, they're really hard to get out of a cycle of using those.
• 31:22
  Matt Putra: So if you can get things that are called term loans, which is where someone gives you money.
• 31:27
  Matt Putra: And you have a certain set time period of equal payments to pay it off.
• 31:31
  Matt Putra: Those are typically the best way to use debt and get out of using debt.
• 31:36
  Matt Putra: The ones where they're tied to revenue, the money didn't get sucked back so fast that you have to take a new loan right away.
• 31:41
  Matt Putra: So that's one that I would say on financing.
• 31:43
  Matt Putra: I talk a lot about it on LinkedIn, so if you follow me there DM me or comment on one of my posts, then we can go over it.
• 31:48
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.
• 31:49
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And you know what, that's such a really a potential skeleton.
• 31:52
  Jeffrey Feldberg: When we start going down, you have interest payments and then vulnerabilities.
• 31:55
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You can have a call.
• 31:56
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So I really like what you're saying there.
• 31:58
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And one other question before we go into wrap up mode.
• 32:01
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So it's safe to say now we're clearly past the pandemic.
• 32:04
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What's the biggest change, Matt, that you've seen?
• 32:06
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Or perhaps it's still ongoing from pre pandemic to post pandemic?
• 32:10
  Jeffrey Feldberg: If it had to be one or two things, what would that be?
• 32:13
  Matt Putra: Yeah, in-person stuff is coming back I wasn't sure yet if I liked that, cuz remote has been so nice.
• 32:19
  Matt Putra: But it's actually been really great to meet people and connect with people.
• 32:22
  Matt Putra: People are shopping in person again, which is good and bad for e-commerce sellers.
• 32:26
  Matt Putra: But you know, I would say that's coming back in a way that.
• 32:28
  Matt Putra: I wasn't sure that it would, so that's been really nice.
• 32:32
  Matt Putra: What else has changed?
• 32:33
  Matt Putra: We're still dealing with economic fallout, so that's been tough.
• 32:37
  Matt Putra: Banks have been very tight Overall.
• 32:39
  Matt Putra: E economy VCs, everybody has shifted to profit focused.
• 32:43
  Matt Putra: And so again, that puts pressures on business owners, where it's harder to keep up with the change in sentiment.
• 32:48
  Matt Putra: Sentiment can change quickly, but to then re-pivot the business takes time.
• 32:52
  Matt Putra: And so that's been one that's created a lot of problems is the access to financing lenders that we're normally full on, ready to give you money are now declining or taking a very long time to do so?
• 33:02
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And it goes back to your point earlier of using different instruments to fund the business.
• 33:06
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And I'm old school.
• 33:07
  Jeffrey Feldberg: I would definitely not be a friend of yours.
• 33:09
  Jeffrey Feldberg: In your days at pe at least in the early days, I'm a big fan of bootstrapping and cockroach startups, wrote articles about that.
• 33:15
  Jeffrey Feldberg: That's how I ran my company.
• 33:17
  Jeffrey Feldberg: But listen to each his or her own.
• 33:18
  Jeffrey Feldberg: There's no right or wrong as whatever works best for you.
• 33:21
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Matt, listen, we're at that point where we need to start wrapping up.
• 33:23
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You've been a Wealth of information.
• 33:26
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely love that.
• 33:27
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And have a fun question for you.
• 33:28
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Let me set this up.
• 33:29
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So I want you to think of the movie Back to the Future, and in the movie you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.
• 33:37
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So Matt, here's the fun part, is tomorrow morning you look outside your window and not only is a DeLorean car, curbside door is open and it's waiting for you to hop on in.
• 33:47
  Jeffrey Feldberg: So you hop in and you're now gonna go to any point in your life, Matt, as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would be, why are you telling your younger self for life wisdom or life lessons or, Hey Matt, do this, but don't do that.
• 34:02
  Jeffrey Feldberg: What would that sound like?
• 34:04
  Matt Putra: I would have spoken to 23 year old Matt, who just got married
• 34:11
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.
• 34:12
  Matt Putra: And I would've told him to travel more.
• 34:15
  Matt Putra: I would've told him to travel more and start a business earlier with the two things.
• 34:20
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And if I may ask, what's with the travel more and starting the business earlier, what's the rationale behind that?
• 34:26
  Matt Putra: So from 19 to 28, I worked in one job local.
• 34:29
  Matt Putra: This is the manufacturer.
• 34:30
  Matt Putra: And so it was good for a while, but I think that, Seeing different places in the world.
• 34:34
  Matt Putra: I mean, We're doing it now, which is great.
• 34:35
  Matt Putra: 37 now, so we're traveling with the kids and everything.
• 34:38
  Matt Putra: But I think that there's a lot of beauty in traveling the world and seeing other cultures and learning languages and eating new foods.
• 34:44
  Matt Putra: I just love the beauty of travel and I think my wife and I should have just done it more and then starting the business, I think, again, I waited till I was 5, 34, whatever it was to start this business.
• 34:56
  Matt Putra: It's been wonderful.
• 34:57
  Matt Putra: And I think, again, I would've started just a bit sooner trying different things,
• 35:02
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Awesome.
• 35:02
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific insights and wisdom, Matt, and what a great way to wrap up what's been an absolutely wonderful interview and what makes a terrific episode.
• 35:11
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And Matt, for our listeners who wanna learn more about you, they have questions, they wanna become a client, they just wanna reach out.
• 35:17
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Where's the best place online that someone can find you?
• 35:20
  Matt Putra: Yeah, two places you can go to my website, which is ax.co e i g h, tx dot c o.
• 35:26
  Matt Putra: And then you can check out my LinkedIn.
• 35:28
  Matt Putra: So just Matt Putra.
• 35:30
  Matt Putra: Look me up on LinkedIn.
• 35:31
  Matt Putra: If you wanna just connect and just chat.
• 35:33
  Matt Putra: No pressure.
• 35:33
  Matt Putra: LinkedIn is a great way to do that.
• 35:35
  Matt Putra: I try to post almost every day and I answer a lot of comments and a lot of dms.
• 35:40
  Matt Putra: And a lot of times people say, Hey look, I have a question.
• 35:42
  Matt Putra: Can we jump on a call?
• 35:43
  Matt Putra: I do a ton of that stuff too.
• 35:45
  Matt Putra: So if you want like a no pressure way to connect LinkedIn's great.
• 35:48
  Matt Putra: If you wanna jump right to a phone call, you can go to my site and book me from there.
• 35:52
  Matt Putra: Yeah, those are the best ways.
• 35:53
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific.
• 35:54
  Jeffrey Feldberg: For our listeners, it won't get any easier.
• 35:56
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's a point and click go to the show notes.
• 35:58
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Everything is there, Matt, we've got you covered.
• 36:00
  Jeffrey Feldberg: We've got you on all the social that you have and everything else, so it can't be any easier.
• 36:04
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Well, Matt, it's a wrap.
• 36:06
  Jeffrey Feldberg: It's official.
• 36:06
  Jeffrey Feldberg: You're absolutely wonderful, and as we say here at Deep Wealth, may you continue to thrive and prosper while you stay healthy and safe.
• 36:13
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Thank you so much.
• 36:15
  Matt Putra: Thank you.
• 36:15
  Matt Putra: This was great.
• 36:16
  Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.
• 36:19
  Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that.
• 36:26
  Lyn M.: Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.
• 36:29
  Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity
• 36:34
  Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken.
• 36:38
  Sharon S.: The money was very well spent.
• 36:40
  Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.
• 36:56
  Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day.
• 37:06
  Kam H.: So it's an investment that will yield results today.
• 37:09
  Kam H.: I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road.
• 37:13
  Kam H.: But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.
• 37:18
  Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.
• 37:29
  Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top.
• 37:32
  Lyn M.: What we learned is very practical.
• 37:34
  Lyn M.: Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it.
• 37:37
  Lyn M.: The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.
• 37:42
  Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA.
• 37:43
  Kam H.: I've worked for billion-dollar companies before.
• 37:46
  Kam H.: I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business.
• 37:49
  Kam H.: I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade.
• 37:52
  Kam H.: We're on a growth trajectory.
• 37:53
  Kam H.: Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.
• 38:00
  Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated.
• 38:04
  Sharon S.: And we've done a lot of different things over the years.
• 38:07
  Sharon S.: We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books.
• 38:16
  Sharon S.: This was so different.
• 38:18
  Sharon S.: I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.
• 38:25
  Sharon S.: It's five-star, A-plus.
• 38:27
  Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.
• 38:31
  Kam H.: Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it.
• 38:34
  Kam H.: This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth.
• 38:38
  Kam H.: I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.
• 38:46
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?
• 38:48
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.
• 38:54
  Jeffrey Feldberg: If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be.
• 38:57
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast.
• 39:03
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel.
• 39:13
  Jeffrey Feldberg: Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show.
• 39:17
  Jeffrey Feldberg: And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.