Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / From Concrete to Commerce: An Accidental E-Commerce Entrepreneur's Journey, with Matthew Stafford | Finance Series

Transcript

From Concrete to Commerce: An Accidental E-Commerce Entrepreneur's Journey, with Matthew Stafford | Finance Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes
0:10
how they've overcome adversity and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences
0:21
so we can learn from their successes how they've overcome
0:24
adversity and explore current challenges they're facing.
0:28
My name is Anthony Cotispoti and today's guest is Matthew
0:31
Stafford, CEO of Build Grow Scale, an organization that has
0:35
helped thousands of clients optimize their e-commerce
0:38
presence. They do this through hands on
0:40
training and offer a Done for you service where they've helped
0:43
numerous companies scale past eight figures.
0:47
Before COVID, they hosted the largest yearly e-commerce
0:50
focused event in North America. Through his own personal
0:54
challenges, Matthew has come to understand the importance of a
0:56
healthy mindset and puts a big emphasis on helping others to
1:00
achieve their goals. Before we get into the good
1:03
stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company, Ad
1:06
Backs Benefit Agency, where we offer very specific and unique
1:11
employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally
1:14
optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to
1:18
save over $900 per employee per year by implementing one of our
1:21
proprietary programs. Another client is going to save
1:25
over $1200 per employee per year by implementing a different
1:28
program, a patented construct that we offer.
1:31
Results vary for each company and some organizations may not
1:33
be eligible To find out if your company qualifies, contact us
1:37
today at add back benefitsagency.com.
1:40
Now back to our guest today, the CEO of Bill Gross Scale.
1:44
Matthew, I appreciate you making the time to Share your story
1:47
today. Thank you.
1:48
I'm looking forward to that. So Matthew, before we talk about
1:52
Bill gross scale or BGS as those in the know call it why I I'd
1:58
like to talk a little bit about kind of how you got started on
2:00
the whole e-commerce train, what what did that track look like?
2:04
Yeah. So it was, it was actually very
2:08
unintentional to start with. So I owned a commercial concrete
2:12
business I had. I ran that approximately 23
2:17
years, 24 years and about five years before I ended running
2:24
that I went to a Tony Robbins event and it was my first one
2:30
and he was selling a program called Money Masters and it was
2:34
a DVD series. So it kind of dates, dates me a
2:37
little bit. And the very first one is a
2:42
monthly you're going to get a new lesson every month.
2:45
And the very first one I got was Frank Kern talking about selling
2:49
an e-book on how to train your parrot to speak and how he had
2:55
sold thousands and thousands of copies and made, you know,
2:59
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
3:00
And I just, it blew. It literally just like shocked
3:05
me. I used my computer every single
3:08
day for blueprints and emails and FTP files, you know, sharing
3:13
stuff, but had never once even thought about making money
3:17
online, or at least not that I can remember.
3:21
And I was like, wow, that's pretty fascinating And and from
3:26
that point forward, I thought, I'm going to figure out how to
3:30
make money online because I was with the commercial Concrete
3:33
business. We were on the road about 200
3:36
days a year, so we were traveling all over the country.
3:39
We're doing Menards, Walmarts, Home Depots, Lowe's, the big box
3:44
stores and like distribution centers, stuff like that.
3:47
We were pouring the flat work. And so there was just so many
3:52
variables. We had to have millions of
3:55
dollars worth of equipment, 30-40 employees.
3:59
And then if we traveled to a job and it rained for four or five
4:03
days in a row, that didn't matter.
4:06
Like we just had to eat it and that was part of it.
4:09
And so come come around 2008, 2009, and I'd already been kind
4:16
of going through that process of learning how to generate money
4:21
online. We did a Walmart for a general
4:24
contractor who we'd probably done 4 or $5 million at the work
4:28
for. And they'd made some poor
4:32
decisions when the housing market crashed and they decided
4:37
they weren't going to be able to pay the contractors for the
4:39
Walmart. And so our particular, our
4:44
particular contracts around 360 grand for that, the work we did
4:47
there and we didn't get paid for it.
4:50
And we had a subcontractor for another couple 100,000 which is
4:53
a Caribbean contractor. So we were on the hook for over
4:57
half a million. We leaned the Walmart and you
5:02
know us, that being the first time we ever did any of that
5:05
stuff, Walmart just bought a bond and like basically skipped.
5:11
Arlene was still able to open the store, do other things and
5:15
we never got paid. Fought it for several years.
5:18
Just ended up being, you know, on moneyless pit.
5:22
And that just fueled my desire to figure out the online stuff
5:26
even more because the risk verse reward in that business had
5:30
flip-flopped and it was no longer worth the reward for the
5:34
amount of risk that we that we held.
5:37
So that was that was really how I got into it and and my main
5:40
driver behind figuring it out and doing it as quickly as
5:43
possible. So Tony Robbins event exposed
5:46
you to Frank Kern sort of a legendary marker in the space
5:50
and then from there like did you just continue to follow Frank in
5:54
in terms of how to like learn and get a foundation and what to
5:59
do or? Yes, I definitely followed him
6:01
and I don't remember the order. But then in that 12 series, was
6:09
Jeff Walker, Brendan Bouchard? Russell Brunson A.
6:17
Lot of big names of those ecoms. Yeah, all the all the O GS of
6:21
the, you know, getting started doing that and and showing
6:24
people how to make money online. So there was just a lot of
6:27
different examples. And the way my brain works is,
6:32
you know, taking as much data as possible and then try to
6:36
optimize it. And so I do feel very fortunate
6:40
that you know, for the 10 years that I've been online that I've
6:44
actually, you know, probably well not 13 years, time flies
6:49
that I've been able to do fairly well at it and and I actually
6:53
really enjoy it. So, but yeah, that's how it
6:55
started. So let's talk before build.
6:58
Grow Scales still talk to us about some of those successes
7:01
that you found in the E Com space early on.
7:04
Yeah. So the very first, well, I did
7:07
like some SEO and back then it was pretty easy to rank like
7:13
local businesses. And so I did that with, I had
7:15
two brick and mortar stores. So I did it for my own brick and
7:19
mortar stores and we were able to really grow those more than
7:25
100% year over year for the first few years, which is pretty
7:29
incredible. And it kind of gave me that
7:34
whole feeling of like, man, I I can't mess up.
7:37
But then then when that contractor did that to us, I was
7:41
like, Oh yeah, there, you know, there's things that can happen
7:44
that you don't plan for. And so for me, that was my first
7:50
experience of actually making money from doing something
7:54
online. And during that period a
7:57
platform came out called Teespring, which is where you
8:01
could essentially put designs on T-shirts and then market them
8:07
with Facebook ads. And again, for some reason why
8:13
my how my brain works, I had I'd studied how to figure out how to
8:20
like back then you could use the user ID on Facebook and target
8:25
people with certain name and so so you'd.
8:28
Be be able to serve up an ad to me that had Anthony in the ad,
8:33
which really going to draw my attention in.
8:35
Yeah, yeah. And so when I figured that out
8:39
and and Facebook would serve it to you, they would say, oh,
8:42
like, OK, the number of Anthony's in the United States
8:47
is 65,000. Like, OK, cool.
8:51
So I came up with the shirt called Schmidt Happens and
8:56
targeted everybody with the last name Schmidt.
8:59
And within 24 hours that sure did made me, I want to say close
9:04
to $15,000. And I was like, Oh my goodness,
9:08
I mean profit 15,000, not sales 15,000.
9:12
And I was like, I think I'm on to something here.
9:15
And so then I started coming up with as many different names as
9:18
I could think of, launching a bunch and made at the time what
9:24
I thought was a ridiculously large amount of money for how
9:29
easy it was. And what I realized is those
9:33
campaigns would run out after a week or two, and they just felt
9:37
like, man, it feels like there has to be a lot more than that
9:42
many people with that name in the country, and somehow they
9:48
just don't have it. And so one night I literally
9:52
opened up a Excel sheet and put every single state on it.
9:57
And then what I did was I asked Facebook for everybody with that
10:01
name in that state, and then the next state and the next state.
10:05
And after about seven or eight states, I realized the number
10:08
was already as big as they had given me when I asked for the
10:11
entire United States. And so it exponentially grew my
10:15
market and I relaunched a bunch of them and literally three or
10:19
4X what I had made the original time, because now all of a
10:23
sudden a lot more people are seeing it.
10:27
So some for some reason Facebook was kind of limiting the number
10:29
of people that they were showing your ad to.
10:31
You went in and said hey, this doesn't make sense.
10:34
What happens if I like split the ad groups out into individual
10:38
States and for whatever reason, however the Facebook algorithm
10:42
worked, it opened you up to a much bigger audience.
10:44
Yeah, literally like gigantically.
10:47
And it worked just as good. Those people have just never
10:49
seen the ad and and didn't have the opportunity to buy.
10:52
So I was in a couple of Facebook groups at the time around that
10:57
stuff and I just shared it with everybody.
10:59
I've always been really good at just sharing what I'm doing.
11:03
I don't care. Like I have no scarcity mindset
11:06
and and everybody else started doing that and it literally got
11:11
to the point that Facebook turned that ability off to where
11:15
we couldn't target people because so many people were
11:18
getting targeted that they were afraid of Facebook like oh, they
11:21
have way too much information on us.
11:23
They didn't really understand it back then And so then we just,
11:28
you know switched over to like hot market like people would
11:32
make phrases with celebrities or whatever.
11:34
We come up with you know fun sayings and put them on shirts
11:38
and and then market it and that's what I did to I think, I
11:44
think within the 1st 20 well probably closer to three years,
11:51
we had done about $15 million in sales and T-shirts and.
11:57
And this is kind of a nice business model from what I
11:58
understand because you don't own the equipment, you don't own the
12:02
T-shirts, you didn't have to outlay all that capital to to
12:05
sort of create the foundation. To have inventory anything we
12:08
would literally run a campaign and we could set the time frame
12:13
and we played with that to figure out like what was the
12:15
best time frame, you know, because people don't want to buy
12:18
it and wait for two weeks before the campaign ends.
12:22
So that would that would hurt sales.
12:24
We had to figure out like you know, when we could how long we
12:27
could get away with that they would still wait and then how
12:31
long before we could relaunch it again and people that wanted it
12:35
the first time that didn't buy it, we get it again.
12:37
And I I that's the way that my mind worked.
12:39
I was figuring out how to optimize all of that stuff early
12:44
on and figure out how to maximize that rather than just
12:47
trying to come up with brand new ideas every single day.
12:50
And by doing that, for sure, you know, I I feel like it helped me
12:56
a lot to have the success that we did.
12:59
So what you've just described is known as the print on demand
13:02
space or POD. Are you still in that space?
13:06
Did this eventually kind of taper off or dry up?
13:09
What? What was sort of the trajectory
13:11
of that? I would say I'm still in that
13:13
space from the standpoint of I help several companies that are
13:19
in the print on demand. I'm closely connected to it
13:23
because we ended up starting a software company and having our
13:27
own platform that then we sold. And so yeah, the pinned on
13:31
demand happens every single day at AI mean probably hundreds and
13:37
hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
13:39
So yeah, it is. And I help those people, but now
13:41
they do it off on a Shopify site and kind of own a brand that
13:46
their particular T-shirts are centered around.
13:50
And so prior the transaction was taking place somehow on Facebook
13:53
itself and now? You're it was taking place on
13:56
that platform and then they would pay you out when the
13:58
campaign ended. And this is a platform that you
14:01
helped to develop, is that what you said?
14:03
Well, Teespring was the first one and then redeveloped one
14:05
called Canvas and I went around the country and got I was the
14:10
first one to get a license to print on demand for the SEC
14:15
schools. So we had Florida, Alabama,
14:18
Georgia, a bunch of like all the big, all the big ones.
14:23
The only one that we did not get was the University of Michigan,
14:27
which really bummed me out because that's, you know, that's
14:29
where I was born in Ann Arbor and I got all the ones but the
14:32
one that I really wanted the most.
14:35
And so yeah, we, we got to print licensed merchandise with print
14:41
on, you know, demand design. So we'd submit the designs, get
14:44
them approved, and then we were the only ones that could run
14:47
those. And so once we did that, we
14:49
ended up selling that platform to someone else.
14:52
Excellent. So the guy who was in the
14:54
commercial concrete space somehow trips and finds himself
14:58
in the E com space and then now he's out building a platform and
15:04
getting licenses from all the major colleges and universities
15:08
and turns around and then sells this platform.
15:11
Yeah. And then from there I I jumped
15:15
into my very first Shopify site, which was a kitchen, kitchen and
15:19
kitchen brand. What?
15:21
Was the name of that brand. Kitchen bright.
15:25
OK, yeah. Not something that you're still
15:27
involved with today. No, we sold it.
15:30
OK. And so you had some E com
15:33
successes along the way. We touched on a handful of them.
15:36
What were some roadblocks, some stumbles that you had along the
15:41
way? Or was it just all rainbows and
15:47
sunshine up to this point? No, definitely wasn't I I think
15:55
in all reality, the stumbles were probably my own personal
16:00
ones, you know? Looking back, it could have been
16:06
wildly more successful, or I could have done better things
16:10
with the money that we made. But you know, I can't.
16:15
I can't go back and change that now.
16:17
What I can do is learn from the lessons.
16:19
And I will say again, part of my discovery into a lot of the
16:25
reason why entrepreneurs do certain things, it doesn't make
16:29
logical sense. It has to do with our
16:31
subconscious making a lot of decisions for us every single
16:37
day that we're just literally, it's on autopilot, we're not
16:40
aware of it. So yeah, I would say that what
16:47
would have been better early on is to get a mentor that
16:50
understood how to handle that type of success and how to plan
16:56
for, you know, eventual issues. And then the second thing that I
17:04
would do is yeah, learn how to take emotion out of learn how to
17:11
take emotion out of the decision making process when it comes to
17:14
business things because a lot of times that emotion obviously
17:20
fuels feelings which create our actions.
17:24
And so if you if you're emotional about something, that
17:28
means that you're not being objective about it and and so
17:31
typically your decision making a lot of times will be reactionary
17:37
rather than instead of a decision that you make you know
17:45
with all the facts. Can you think of a specific
17:48
example that you went through where you had kind of this
17:51
emotional, reactionary response? Yeah, I was part of a I had, I
18:02
had a business partner and he wanted to invest money in
18:05
something that a friend of his was doing.
18:08
And so we did without. I did without any due diligence,
18:13
just literally taking his advice.
18:16
And yeah, I lost a lot, a lot of money.
18:22
Probably more than I care to admit, but it was because I got
18:27
emotionally caught up in what the potential upside could be
18:33
instead of looking at all the instead of looking at all the
18:35
factors that actually go into those type of decisions.
18:40
And having gone through something like that, if you were
18:44
to come across a similar situation now, how do you think
18:47
you would treat it differently? I'm I'm pretty good about like
18:54
realizing now that like the questions that I ask help me
18:59
focus on the right things. And so I would say I have a list
19:04
of questions that I would ask myself about that and then
19:09
questions that I would also ask of the other person.
19:12
And I also have a network of people that I could reach out to
19:17
now that I've built really strong relationships with that
19:21
would help me make a better decision.
19:24
So how did you get from running your own e-commerce endeavors to
19:31
now training thousands of people to do it and for some clients
19:37
taking it over for them and and doing it for them for their
19:40
operations? Yeah, it actually happened
19:43
organically to start with. So I had I started the Shopify
19:48
site with the Kitchen store. It did really well to take off.
19:52
You know, it took off really well in the beginning.
19:54
I was really good at Facebook ads from running all the ads for
19:57
the T-shirts. And I thought that meant that I
20:01
could do anything on the store I wanted to and they would just
20:04
get bigger and bigger and better.
20:06
And what I realized was we went from making hundreds and
20:10
hundreds of sales per day to actually losing money or
20:15
breaking even and only being profitable some days.
20:18
And I didn't really understand why.
20:22
You know we we were kind of always blaming Facebook and
20:25
saying oh it's it's the it's the ad platform must be a algorithm
20:29
change or whatever. But I had invested.
20:32
I saw a guy and he's still around.
20:35
He's a really nice nice guy. Demetrius Skedaddis, he's from
20:40
Greece. He was selling, hey, learn how
20:44
to use Google Analytics to look at your data.
20:47
And I'll give you like a call a week for six weeks for $1000.
20:52
And so I invested in that. And after the first week, I was
20:56
like, Oh my God, like, there's so much data in here that I had
21:00
no clue that if I figure out how to do that, I'll be able to make
21:05
more sales and and figure this out.
21:07
I did not. I really didn't understand the
21:11
magnitude of that at the time, but by the end of the six weeks,
21:16
I certainly did. And I've had, you know,
21:18
Demetrius is a super nice guy, good friend.
21:21
I've talked to him a ton of times since then.
21:23
He's like, yeah, nobody else latched onto Google Analytics
21:27
like you did and you've taken it 10 times farther.
21:30
All of our decisions are data-driven.
21:33
If what I've learned is like this is all we do every single
21:38
day now and we still make lots of mistakes.
21:41
And so for us to make assumptions and not use the data
21:44
to continue to optimize it would go back to one of those
21:48
subconscious beliefs that like oh I know better, oh I know I
21:51
could. I don't need to do that and I
21:54
just don't do that anymore because I realize every single
21:57
time I do it cost me money and or it cost my clients money.
22:01
So in that process of figuring out the data and optimizing the
22:06
store, we were able to take it back to hundreds and actually
22:09
even scale out way past that where it was in the beginning.
22:14
And so I reached out to a couple of my friends from the T-shirt
22:18
world who had started Shopify sites and said, hey, I think,
22:26
you know, I want to make sure I didn't just get struck by
22:28
lightning and it was successful once.
22:31
I think I can help you optimize your store and make a
22:35
difference. And so there was two clients,
22:40
three actually. One was Organify which is in a
22:46
widely known and in Drew's testimonials on the homepage of
22:49
our build growth scale site In the first they're cited done
22:54
2.75 million the year before and I think I got on around April
23:00
but around the beginning of April the following year and
23:05
within 90 days we had them at 8.7 or $8.7 million run rate.
23:11
So it was basically cleaning up the shopper experience and
23:16
looking at the data and and continually tweaking it and
23:19
making it better and better. And they ended up doing
23:22
16,000,000. So even though after 90 days it
23:25
was 8.2 they ended up doing 16,000,000.
23:29
So they had more than 5X their sales on the site and they
23:34
didn't even run traffic to that. They were running traffic to
23:37
funnels and that was basically where people would go that
23:40
didn't buy the funnel or would come back to reorder and by
23:43
cleaning it up. So that was all found money for
23:45
them and they went on to do extremely, extremely well, super
23:52
happy for them. And then another one was two
23:56
friends of mine. They were in the print on
23:58
demand. They were literally coming up
24:00
with Saints, putting them on shirts and doing that and they'd
24:02
done it at to a specific audience.
24:06
They were doing about 400 grand a month and they thought like
24:09
they had really let the world on fire, which in many cases that's
24:14
phenomenal. Like I'd I'd love to have that
24:16
even now. You know it's a great store, but
24:18
within six months we had them at 2.7 million a month and we could
24:25
have got there a lot quicker. The issue was with print on
24:29
demand. They literally kept selling more
24:32
than their supplier could do and it was causing it's causing
24:38
fulfillment issues. And so once they got that worked
24:41
out, they they scaled it you know a lot higher and ended up
24:48
selling it for you know high high 8 figures.
24:52
So super excited for them. Then the third one that I did,
24:56
same thing they were only doing about 10 grand a month but it
24:59
was more of a friend of mine and I just said hey like I'll help
25:03
you and then if gets bigger then we'll figure something out.
25:06
And so we did that. So literally I was 3 for three
25:10
plus my own. I'm like, this works.
25:13
And at the time I I was in a mastermind with Tanner Larson
25:20
and he basically started teaching his group what I was
25:24
doing. And then he asked me said, hey,
25:27
you know, we should really just do this together and everybody
25:31
else is teaching Facebook ads. What you're doing matters to
25:36
everybody and it means, you know, it makes Facebook ads work
25:39
better and so that. Was So what was the difference
25:41
between what everybody else was doing and what you were now
25:44
doing? You had talked to Dimitri.
25:46
He'd sort of shown you how to look at the the data inside
25:49
Google Analytics. What were you seeing back there
25:53
that then you were able to apply for people that other people
25:56
weren't doing? Man, it's well now.
26:00
It's been so long. I'm trying to think what it
26:03
really was. Back then.
26:03
It was very simple things that move the needle because
26:07
e-commerce was some new that it didn't take.
26:10
It didn't take the same amount of level now that it does.
26:15
But like, it's really funny. I see themes now being built and
26:19
they have now for the last four or five years with our ideas
26:23
built right in them. So we know that, like our
26:26
influence on the market has been really good and it's positive.
26:31
So essentially, back in the day, the themes were built by
26:39
developers. They're just like an online
26:41
store catalog. While it didn't make it easy to
26:43
find stuff, it wasn't clear. People are asking for
26:49
commitments, you know, way too early.
26:52
You know, all the different things that like through years
26:54
of going through that data and figuring stuff out, we just keep
26:59
refining the process and we're still doing it and still you
27:02
know, making changes and scaling businesses that have have hit
27:08
like a plateau and can't move past that.
27:12
So I kind of sensed a bit of a common thread here.
27:17
You know, Matt, is you're just, you're sort of naturally wired
27:21
to be both curious and introspective.
27:25
You want to dig in, You want to learn, You want to understand
27:28
how things work. And at the same time you're kind
27:31
of humble enough to say, oh, hey, here's somebody who's
27:34
really figured something out, let me learn from them.
27:38
And and then take it and and sort of take it to another level
27:42
by just applying your own curiosity.
27:44
Are there people that even today that you sort of count as those
27:49
types of teachers or mentors that help you to continue to
27:53
grow? Yeah, for sure.
27:55
And and The funny thing is, they're not in the ecom space.
28:00
But the truth of the matter is, you know, we're all human.
28:05
And so understanding the human psychology has a lot more to do
28:12
with helping the website convert better than the color of a
28:17
button and and different things like that.
28:20
And so yeah, I I do. And I would say that part of the
28:24
reason why the things that we come up with are different is
28:29
because we're not following everybody else in the E com
28:31
space and just trying to make it a little bit better.
28:36
I'm literally trying to find things from other industries or
28:40
other places that have worked really well and figure out how
28:43
to adapt them in into e-commerce in order for it to be what I
28:49
call a behavior change. And those are the where the big
28:53
wins come. It's not in like it's no longer
28:56
in just making the person feel comfortable because that's part
29:02
of it for sure. But that's not enough.
29:05
And so for us, we're looking for ways to make that customer
29:12
journey so smooth. They're like when they're done
29:15
done buying, they're like, oh, I'm glad I did that.
29:17
Like that just felt good instead of it was hard to do or it was
29:21
choppy or whatever. And so giving them that
29:24
experience, we know that we have it really well when our repeat
29:30
customer rate goes up or our average order value increases or
29:33
our, you know, value per visitor goes up.
29:35
So we look at a lot of different metrics than conversion rate
29:40
just because conversion rates good, but I can raise your
29:43
conversion rate by putting your products on sale, but that's not
29:47
really the end result of what you're looking for as a business
29:50
owner. What you're looking for is happy
29:52
customers that come back again and again and tell other people.
29:56
I I love this is something I enjoy doing myself, drawing
30:00
inspiration from 1 industry and figuring out how can I apply
30:04
this over here where nobody has thought to do that before.
30:07
Without giving away any secret sauce, can you think of a
30:10
specific example of where you've done that in the past?
30:15
Yeah, and and and in all reality, it's pretty much what
30:19
set us apart early on was I took from those O GS like who didn't
30:26
ever run an e-commerce store, but they had funnels that were
30:31
wildly successful. And so I looked through the
30:34
different stages of the funnel and and started building out a
30:39
map of the e-commerce store like that.
30:42
So you know your homepage is basically top of funnel and back
30:47
in the day you'd see like add to cart or buy now or all these
30:50
different things. And I just went from the concept
30:55
of they don't have enough information to buy yet.
30:58
I just want them to like me and get to the next step.
31:01
Well, then the next step would be the category page so that
31:04
they could narrow their focus and find what they were looking
31:07
for. Then the product page was used
31:10
for giving them the information they need to make a decision, so
31:16
understanding. And another one of the ones from
31:20
the money masters at Dean Jackson and he said, you know
31:23
you need to enter the conversation that they're having
31:26
in their head at the right time or whatever stage of this
31:31
process they're in. And so I looked at each one of
31:34
those pages like what would they be thinking right now or what
31:37
are they thinking of buying right now or are they are they
31:39
in browsing etcetera. And so that's really what we did
31:44
early on in order to be able to take us a store and make it
31:49
convert really well enough to run cold traffic to it and and
31:54
make make it profitable. So for the uninitiated, sort of
31:58
the traditional way of doing things is you'd run a maybe a
32:01
Facebook ad and when you say a funnel, it's basically like a
32:05
very simplified web page or website that.
32:09
Or a series of pages, four or five pages that you're just.
32:12
Kind of you take them through the steps of, OK, here's the bit
32:16
that they need to know now. But there isn't like a lot of
32:18
distractions like the about Us page or this kind.
32:21
You know it's like there is a very targeted funnel that you
32:24
want to send them through to get them to the purchase process.
32:27
And what you guys did is you said well that seems to work
32:30
really well. What if we set up the whole
32:33
website to sort of function like that.
32:35
So we get them here, we know that this is the starting point
32:39
and we take them here next and here and you sort of take them
32:42
on this journey to hopefully at the end buy from you.
32:46
Yeah, 100%. That's exactly what we did.
32:49
We still do it today and are constantly, you know, e-commerce
32:52
is growing, maturing, it's always changing.
32:56
So people feel like, Oh well, I optimized my store, yeah, about
33:00
six months later, you know, there's things happen in the
33:04
code and and you know, people become more familiar with things
33:08
and and so there's always more work to do.
33:12
And so tell me about build gross scale BGS today.
33:16
There's still training going on. You're still helping lots of
33:19
clients paint, paint picture. For, yeah.
33:21
So we have, again, like you said in the introduction, we have it
33:25
done for you. So we help companies typically,
33:28
they're doing about a quarter million a month or more before
33:31
it makes sense to hire us with that service because we put
33:35
about 5 people on on that each store.
33:38
There's what's called a, we call it Arrow, which is a revenue
33:42
optimizer. He's kind of in charge of the
33:45
data and the communication. Then they have two developers, a
33:49
front end and a back end. They have a bug checker and a
33:52
Google Analytics person. So that's the team that is
33:57
constantly going through the data and doing the updates and
34:01
running the tests and figuring out how to how to move the store
34:05
forward and grow it and scale it.
34:07
And then for the people that aren't at that level, we have a
34:10
membership that's called the ecom insiders that you can join.
34:15
And inside of there we teach people what we're doing and you
34:20
know, live. So it's basically what we're
34:23
doing on our partner stores without giving their information
34:26
away. But the concepts and ideas of
34:28
what we're testing, what's winning, things that we've done
34:31
that didn't work so that you don't have to try them and and
34:34
waste your time. And because we have so much
34:37
data, it gives us the ability to, you know, give them a much,
34:42
much better chance of succeeding.
34:45
So if you look at the success rate in e-commerce, I think
34:49
about 3000 new stores are opened every single day in Shopify.
34:52
And of that they say like one in 140,000 will ever make a sale.
35:00
Yeah. And the and so the success rate
35:03
is very, very low, like very low even though lots of people have
35:07
done well at it. The the number of people that
35:09
have tried and not is extremely low in our membership.
35:16
We've had about 1000 members over the little over 1000
35:20
members now over the period of you know the higher level
35:23
membership. And from there we've had over
35:28
200 stores hit the $1,000,000 mark.
35:31
And so just out of that thousand, if you figure that's a
35:35
20% success rate to the point of hitting $1,000,000, it's already
35:40
hundreds and hundreds of times better than the average person.
35:45
And we have lots of people that make 1020304050 grand in a
35:49
month, don't don't hit the $1,000,000 mark.
35:53
But for them that's successful. And and you know, I would agree
35:57
that that's successful. Everybody gets to determine
36:00
their own. And so, yeah, I I know what we
36:04
do works and it works really, really well or we won't have the
36:08
success rate that we have. Well, what I love about the
36:13
approach that you're describing is you're working with these
36:16
larger clients, you're getting real world data from the
36:20
different tests that you're running.
36:22
So this isn't like theoretical, this isn't like you're, well,
36:27
you have a theory, you have a hypothesis, you're testing them
36:29
out on these sites, and then you're coming back and you're
36:32
saying, OK, here's what's working, here's what's working
36:35
today, and then you can take and share that information with the
36:38
the members, the training members that you have.
36:41
Yeah, yeah. And then they can implement it
36:43
and then grow up and then they become our clients too.
36:46
And that's happened, you know, off and on for the last eight
36:49
years. That's great.
36:51
Where do you see BGS going from here?
36:55
I I don't think e-commerce going anywhere.
36:58
So we definitely, I definitely went through kind of a a a regal
37:05
like you said introspective period for the last two years
37:10
determining you know really what I wanted to do going forward and
37:14
something and I wanted to build something that I would truly
37:16
enjoy and and love. And so yeah I we've put a lot of
37:22
revamping into what we do and a lot of care into figuring out
37:27
how to make sure that like what we deliver is something that
37:31
I'll be happy to deliver for the next five years.
37:34
And so yeah I'm I'm really I'm actually really excited to grow
37:38
that membership again and add new members in there and teach
37:43
people you know how to. Basically, when you think about
37:46
it, I don't really look at it as I'm just teaching someone how to
37:51
have a successful e-commerce store because so many of those
37:55
people have become friends of mine and I've seen their life
37:58
radically change. You know, they've left their
38:01
corporate job and and make five times more.
38:04
Or they left their corporate job and now have a good relationship
38:07
with their wife or their kids. Or like, the people that send me
38:11
messages and thank me and tell me their stories.
38:14
For me that, like, really does give me the energy to keep
38:20
pushing to figure out more stuff.
38:23
And so, yeah, that's really super fulfilling and that's why
38:26
I'm excited to do it moving forward.
38:29
So if somebody is interested either in being a a client in
38:32
the done for you service, or if they're interested in learning
38:35
more about the membership program, they would go to
38:37
buildgrowscale.com for both of those.
38:40
Either one of those, Yeah. Yeah, they can look in the menu
38:42
and they can even just submit a form and we'll get a hold of
38:44
them, talk to them, find out what their individual needs are,
38:47
yeah. So there is.
38:49
Yet we've used the word introspective to describe you
38:51
here a couple of times. I get the sense in hearing some
38:56
of the past stories that you're you're sort of driven by your
38:59
heart and a genuine desire to help people.
39:02
I mean the first handful of clients that you had were just
39:05
friends that you said hey this is working for me and you helped
39:09
them make a whole lot of money. Are there other ways in your
39:14
life that you're you're sort of presenting this sort of giving
39:19
caring compassionate side of Matthew outside of kind of the
39:24
the e-commerce like hands on nuts and bolts way.
39:28
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
39:30
I think that's a loaded question.
39:31
You and I have had conversations around that.
39:37
Yeah, I think part of the reason why I am so happy and so
39:42
fulfilled and want to do this again is because of my own
39:46
journey. I think originally when I did
39:49
it, I just wanted to make money, wanted to make more money
39:54
because I thought that would make me feel better.
39:56
And the truth of the matter was, what I realized on this journey
40:01
and during the last couple years is that I was always looking for
40:05
something outside of me to make me happy or not feel broken.
40:09
And when I realized that I could actually go inward and find the
40:16
piece that I was looking for, that the business part became a
40:18
lot easier and a lot more meaningful.
40:21
And so yeah, 100%. I once I figured once I
40:26
recognized that that was possible, I dove into that.
40:30
Just like I dove into e-commerce 8-9 years ago with the same
40:34
passion and what I've discovered over the last two years, I've
40:38
been sharing that with other people and they're getting the
40:41
same results that I have. And so I just kind of realized
40:45
like that That really is my journey is to figure stuff out
40:49
and then figure out a way to articulate it in a way that
40:54
people can actually use it and make the transformation that
40:58
they're looking for. And I don't.
41:00
I definitely don't presume to know what success is for
41:05
everyone else. But for me, doing that for other
41:10
people to me feels very successful and I really enjoy
41:14
it. Any particular mentors in that
41:18
space that you want to call out? People have been particularly
41:21
helpful for you and your journey.
41:24
Or maybe they weren't even individuals.
41:26
Maybe we were books or podcasts that.
41:29
Yeah, for sure. A book called Letting Go was
41:33
really, really good. Another one was called the by
41:38
Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul.
41:40
And then he has another one called the Surrender Experiment.
41:44
Those two were really, really good.
41:48
And then probably the one and and I and I think all of them
41:53
were instrumental at a certain point and and I would probably
41:56
get a lot more from them going back to them from where I am
42:00
now. But I read one called Dark Side
42:04
of the Light Chasers by I think Debbie Ford.
42:09
And essentially the premise behind it was and and I had
42:15
experienced that like I always thought if I was nicer than the
42:18
bad stuff would go away. And what I realized was I was
42:24
shaming those parts of myself. And in that process of doing
42:29
that, I was suppressing instead of feeling, feeling the feelings
42:34
that I needed to feel, I was trying to avoid them.
42:37
And so the moment that you learn how to love every part of
42:42
yourself, then it gives you the freedom to feel the feeling and
42:47
let go of it. And everybody thinks it sounds
42:50
counterintuitive, like, well, I don't want to love the parts of
42:53
me that I don't like. And the reason those parts keep
42:57
showing up is because you don't love them.
43:00
It doesn't mean that you have to condone them.
43:01
It just means that you have to realize that that's part of you.
43:05
And until you acknowledge it, you can't actually let go of the
43:08
things that keep bringing that back up.
43:10
And so acknowledging that feeling that it actually goes
43:14
away and doesn't continue to resurface.
43:18
And so for me, once I realized that it was all right, how how
43:23
much can I optimize this process?
43:26
And my brain, that's just the way my brain works.
43:28
And that's the journey I'm on right now.
43:31
And I always will be so. If somebody's listening to your
43:34
story, Matthew, and they're like, wow, that kind of
43:37
resonates Like I I would like to take sort of first steps into
43:41
that direction. You mentioned a few of the books
43:43
that were helpful for you along the way, but I don't know if any
43:46
one of them would be like a a particularly good like starting
43:50
point for somebody who's like what he's saying sounds
43:53
interesting. He sounds like he's at a
43:56
graduate level. I need to start at kindergarten
43:58
or first grade on this. Where would be a good place for
44:01
them to start? I I would say the book, The
44:03
Untethered soil is a really good.
44:05
Yeah, it's a really good book. It's.
44:09
It's basically, yeah, like, so in the end, like, we all want
44:16
the illusion of control and we don't really control that much.
44:20
And I think that's why when I looked at it from a much deeper
44:25
level and started talking about the different things.
44:27
And in this realm, I realized that entrepreneurs in general
44:32
are pretty unique in that way because trauma is like a feeling
44:37
or the definition of it is a feeling of loss of control.
44:41
And so I thought like, oh, wow, how in our business do we ever
44:45
feel like we're in control? We don't.
44:48
OK. So that's why normal people look
44:52
at us and go, heck no, I would never want to do what you do.
44:55
I want to just come in, clock in at 5:00, go home and don't think
44:59
about that stuff until the next day.
45:02
And and and they don't. An entrepreneur's brain doesn't
45:07
function that way. We function inside of that
45:11
chaos, like we get it and and we have a coping mechanism to deal
45:15
with it. And so maybe, you know, like I
45:18
said early on, maybe it's healthy, maybe it's not.
45:20
Maybe we're a workaholic, maybe we drink, maybe we do whatever.
45:25
No judgement. I'm just saying like those are
45:27
the different things that we do as a coping mechanism.
45:30
And so figuring that out for me has helped me unlock a lot of
45:37
things for other entrepreneurs that they can actually build a
45:42
much bigger, stronger business faster and enjoy doing that.
45:48
Because it's not this external thing that's making them feel
45:51
better, but they've already felt good and now they're able to
45:55
show that to the world in a way that in like can communicate
45:58
better and and yeah, the results are just so much better.
46:02
You know, I love some of the early examples that you shared
46:05
about the success that you were able to get for your E Comm
46:08
clients with build gross scale. I think Organify was one of the
46:11
brands you mentioned and how they 5X very quickly without
46:15
giving away any personally identifiable information.
46:19
Are there similar kind of anecdotes that you can share
46:21
about some folks that have you? You've kind of helped here on
46:24
the the personal side of things. Yeah, for sure.
46:30
And I the hard part for me is I don't see myself as the one that
46:40
caused the change. I see myself as the one that
46:44
helped them become aware of maybe what they're limiting
46:48
thoughts for, or maybe the unhealthy beliefs.
46:51
But in the end, like, I'm not the one doing the work for them,
46:56
They're the ones that have to do the work.
46:58
And so I don't, I don't credit myself with their result, but
47:03
their results have been really, really, really good.
47:07
You know, like for sure repairing, you know,
47:13
unrepairable or what was thought of as an unrepairable marriage.
47:19
I've had two separate very successful entrepreneurs who
47:26
ends in their brain had somehow convinced themselves that their
47:32
family and other people would be better off without them who are
47:36
now thriving and and deep, deep personal friends now because
47:41
when you go through stuff like that together, like the bond
47:45
that's created is is amazing. So yeah, for sure financial
47:50
success. But for me, just the
47:52
understanding that we get to choose to be happy every day and
48:00
a lot of times our brain is convinced us otherwise.
48:03
And so once we understand how the brain functions just like
48:07
how Google Analytics functions, we can use the data that we have
48:12
to change the results and and literally from what I, you know
48:18
from my own example, actually feel whole and and in a place
48:23
where we can help other people. That's terrific, Matthew.
48:27
Thank you for sharing your truly inspired story with us today.
48:32
I appreciate everybody learning with us today.
48:33
That's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.