3 Lessons Learned Going From $0 To $15,000,000.00

What's up, guys? Devin Zander here. Now, today is going to be a special episode of the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. Today. We actually have my co owner at scup, Matt Schmidt, on call with us today and he'll be discussing how he got to zero from 15 million on his print on demand store. And most importantly, or more specifically, we'll be discussing the three biggest lessons he learned along the way. Now let's get into the episode. Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. This is your host, Devin Zander. And these are tales, methods and strategies that took me from a high school dropout in Jimmy John's Delivery Driver to being the CEO of an eight figure software company with over 50,000 customers around the world. So if you're ready to improve your marketing and skyrocket your business, you've come to the right place. Now let's hop in to today's episode.

We came a long way. That's what the song said. And I could do all.

So I think, Matt, that, and you can correct me if I'm wrong in just a second, but Your store's about 4 years old and you've hit 15 million at this point. Now, this is why we brought Matt onto SCUP originally and which was coincidentally about four years ago as well. It's because we really wanted someone with their finger on the pulse in E commerce. You know, we practice a little bit of E commerce ourselves and things like that, but when we're building our apps, we're like, okay, so if we want to make great apps, we should bring someone on who's great at E commerce. Lo and behold, we found Matt and it's been quite a perfect relationship over these years. He yells at me, we fight and all that kind of stuff. But I also think it's really important that when you're working with someone, you shouldn't always get along. You know, you guys should butt heads a little bit and that's how you really get amazing results in business. You don't want to be surrounded by sycophants. Anyways, so Matt's going to be here, as I already mentioned today, telling us his three biggest over the past few years, taking his Shopify store from zero to $15 million in revenue. And now he's doing. I think you're on Track to do $2 million alone this month, which is amazing. So, Matt, why don't you introduce yourself to the audience and tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hey, I appreciate it. Hey. And about the fighting stuff. People will be like, whoa, why did they fight? I fight with my brothers all the time, so take that with a sign of respect. I actually don't fight with anybody else other than probably you or my brothers. So I love my brothers and I love you too, man. You've been partners for a long time and I think like you said, fighting is a good thing. You want to be able to work and flesh out good ideas. And I think we've been doing that. So yeah, I mean like you said, four years for this individual store. Been in the game quite a bit longer than that. You know, I started in paid traffic, which seems like a lifetime ago. I started right after I got out of college because I got out in another, you know, pretty wild time in recent memory, which was the Great Recession and with an IT degree and there wasn't any jobs, you know, anywhere for me. So I was actually the only interviews I was getting. I was losing MN7 twice. I was losing jobs to guys that had, you know, 20 years of experience that were taking entry level positions because that's how fast jobs were disappearing. So it was a pretty wild time. There's a lot of parallels between now and then for multiple different reasons. So it does give me a good time to reflect back on that. So I started in Google traffic to just like random affiliate offers. Found my footing pretty well, but things change and actually got slapped by Google, which means just your account band. Funny thing is I and I always talk about this and I still haven't put it together quite yet as I got banned for promoting something that was on the Google affiliate network. So Google AdWords banned me for something that was on the Google affiliate network. I can never quite put that one together. But that is kind of something I want to talk about later. I figured out that I really wanted to do this entrepreneurial thing, create my own business. And so I didn't let that stop me. And it took quite a bit of time to really figure out what was going on and what I wanted to do next. And you know, like I said, I've been in this game for a while. There wasn't even Facebook ads back when, you know, I'm talking about what I'm talking about now. They were just getting started and definitely couldn't do it on mobile, which is funny now because that's like 80 to 90% of our traffic. And you know, there wasn't very much to sell either. A little company called Teespring came around, around I was very early on that platform that was a print on demand Shirt platform. Found quite a bit of footing there. All while working a day job. And, you know, I always just came home and put in some extra hours trying to see if I could do something on my own. I loved the company that I was working for. I was quickly accelerating through the company and getting promotions and more responsibilities and things like that. And it was relative to my age, was paid very well. And you know, a lot of people looked at you sideways when I said I wanted to quit and do something on my own. But I had a firm belief, and luckily so did my wife, that I could do it. And so, yeah, I left the corporate world after six years there. All those six years I was doing something on the side and putting in long, long, long hours. And you know, Shopify was very early on in its infancy then Dev and I were talking earlier today and I think their stock is at like $963. I remember when I created the store, it was five, I think it was five years ago. And it was shortly before. This is how big of a nerd I am. It was shortly before the Force Awakens came out. And I remember talking to my brothers and again, probably right after a fight or something like that, but we were talking, we're all hanging out, we only get to see each other once in a while. Every year. Every year, a couple times a year. And I was like, man, this Shopify thing is exciting. I think it's going to work. One of my other brothers had been doing a little bit of E commerce on a predecessor to Shopify and it was very, very difficult and cost intensive. And I saw how this wasn't. And we were selling random drop ship stuff back then because POD hadn't really developed yet and the stock was at like $25. And somebody could probably go check.

Yeah, I originally bought it like 20. It was a good time, man. Sold at 30, now it's at 950.

Yeah, well, I didn't have any really money back then because I had been investing so much in my business and I was a little hesitant to what I did have. I was a little hesitant to let go of into some new venture which was keeping my mind focused. It worked out. But I remember being like, hey man, if I just had a little bit of money, I would have, you know, I should buy some of this Shopify stock. I think it's going to go somewhere. So I've been to learn from 25 to 926 or whatever it is today. It's been quite the journey. Several different stores, drop ship Brand, you know, worked on some brands, my own included. But like, you know, inventory products, helping out there, and also of course, print on demand, which is really been my bread and butter just because my mind works very, very well with it. You know, creating designs and targeting people and providing something that, you know, they could never buy in a store. So that's the long story of it. Been a wild 10 plus years in paid traffic and certainly the last 5 plus years in E Commerce.

Yeah, I think my biggest takeaway on all of that was the fact that you don't measure your life or you don't anchor your life events to things going on around the world or politics or anything. Matt measures his life when the latest Star wars movies came out, or maybe even the Marvel movies too. Oh, yeah, I think that was around the time Iron man came out.

Well, the Star wars thing was a really big event. I mean, that was huge.

That's funny though. Cool, man. Well, thank you for sharing. And it has been a long, wild ride. You know, I remember looking back, starting E Commerce or getting in the industry myself in like 2014, and I think all of us had really big hopes for the industry and I don't think any of us knew where we'd be now or like how far it actually has come because it certainly blew my expectations. I remember when Shopify stock hit 100, I was like, wow, how did this happen? How'd they get here? And, and then lo and behold, I mean, they're expected to hit like a thousand this month actually, or at the very beginning of the next quarter. And then, you know, they've really just opened up the doors to so many entrepreneurs around the world. Absolutely insane. I mean, like, look at you. 0 to 15 million, right? Look at our app company making, you know, like 10 million plus dollars over the past few years. It's just crazy. This infrastructure and opportunity that Shopify has built and brought to the world. So absolutely crazy. And hey, you know, if for some reason the guys from Shop Fire listening salute you guys. Thank you for, you know, changing the world for us and for so many other people out there. But let's, let's get into it, man. It's been a long journey for you. You've learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes along the way, I'm sure. And I mean, your growth has just been insane. And just so to put Matt's growth in perspective, guys, I think last year it was like what, $3.8 million in sales and now you're on track to break 2 million this month. Alone.

Yeah, yeah. And a lot of that came, you know, strategically, a lot of that came, you know, I don't want to say on purpose, but yeah, truly on purpose. And that's kind of some of the lessons I would love to talk about today and some of the things that, you know, I've kind of tried to implement. You know, I learned a lot in my corporate job and one of the things was I used to work for an Hunter Busch and obviously they have some pretty big brands and I learned a lot then and I knew some of the things that I implemented. It took me a couple of years to really kind of put the pieces together 100%. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not sure. But when you're starting this journey off and when you're an entrepreneur, I think you focus on the day of way too much, right. And you're worried about how much money is coming in today. And I 100% understand that. Right. I understand where that comes from. But if you look at some of the biggest companies in the world, they don't think in that mindset. And so, you know, especially as a startup, right. Some look at Uber or some of these other companies out there, or even Amazon for that instance. You know, they didn't take a bunch of a profit for a very long time. I don't remember exact date, but it's a very long time and they had a bigger goal in mind. So one of the things that I did a couple years ago was identify the fact that I have multiple streams of income and I needed to make a decision, do I want to take this brand to 10 million plus a year or am I just happy with the profit that I was getting from it? Which was nice. And I decided that I wanted a brand that is going to be big, right. I had some competitors in the area and I thought, you know what, I want to make a decision conscious decision to reinvest almost everything I can back into the company and do very big buys in terms of, you know, maybe some inventory to get into some marketplaces that needed it, like Amazon. You know, some areas of, you know, hiring on agencies to optimize my site, some investment back into the company in various different areas. And especially doing a brand required me to put a brand on every single one of my products and then eliminate products where I couldn't do that. So that took a lot of data, a lot of research, a lot of time. And one of the biggest things that was my lesson was just the persistence. That's required to make it in any industry, any business, that you're going to see things go up and down like a roller coaster, and you got to fight through it. And I think if you're going to be making it in this entrepreneurial world, if you see it go down the roller coaster go down and you freak out and walk away. It's, you know, if that's, if that's your mindset, then it's never going to work because that could be multiple times in a day. That could be, you know, multiple times in a week. It could be several different days and weeks in a row. But an entrepreneur is going to look at that situation and think, all right, how things are not going the way that I want, why is that? And how do I fix it and address it as quickly as possible, right? And that kind of mindset, I see it time and time and again, is definitely not in every single entrepreneur. I mean, Devin and I, you know, are all in different groups and things like that on Facebook. And a lot of guys can make a lot of money and ride the upswing very well. Right now that upswing might be a couple of days. They might have a couple of months for a really hot product. But what happens when that product stops selling? And that's kind of like, you know, that kind of short one product, product lifetime is kind of the entrepreneurial journey in a nutshell, right? It's, it's. You see the ups and downs like the products. If you have a hot product, it's going to go up, right? You can have this huge upswing, but at some point it's going to curve back down and go down. There's multiple ways you might be able to turn it back up, but you're the person who has to address it because everything's on you. You need to be persistent and you're analyzing your day to day life, setting things up in a way where you can see what's going on in your business and make changes to address the really bad areas. And I think one of the things that I identified is that I was really doing well at a certain level. The store was doing a million, 2 million, and then last year was like 3.8. But I was having some ups and downs, and I think that it was really just about the strategic footing in the niche that I needed to how do I make myself stand out, get some brand loyalty that was the difference maker between me and the other competitors in the niche, right? So I took some downswings on purpose in order to differentiate myself and had the long term goal in place that once I was ready and once the things were all. And all the pieces were in place, I was able to push and ride that upswing. And that's kind of what happened. And it worked out really well. It actually worked out far exceeding my expectations. Even with this wild world that we're in right now. You know, we were battle tested through it. And I think that's a testament to not only the team that I put in place, because everybody on my team is awesome, that I've hired and trained and gone through some wild times with, but the brand itself is able to ride through. And I think that's only something that a brand can do, is ride through some kind of. You know, there's so many fires when you're in a pandemic that it's hard to even describe, but I think that that's one of the things. And if you're listening to this call and you're having the ups and downs, just know that like you, you have to keep working. If you're backed into a corner, the entrepreneur is the person who's going to look at it and see that and then use it as motivation to push through and be persistent and make sure that the, the overall goals that you have in mind and the, and the plan that you have is being reached day by day, regardless of what's happening on that upward swing or the downward swing.

Yeah, I totally agree too. And what you said about being backed into the corner, like how entrepreneurs react. Yeah, you back an entrepreneur into a corner, right? That's when they turn into a tiger. Like, how the fuck do I get out of this? And then they'll do whatever it takes, right? Like whatever you say, whatever you want, bro. This is the podcast. This is where we come to be ourselves. And hey, you know, if you don't want to listen, you can unsubscribe. It's okay. But yeah, I mean, getting backed up into that wall, dude, the claws come out. Like you, you'll remember maybe the beginning of this year. Well, obviously you remember, but it's scuffed. You know, we over invested in the R and D last year and we had tough financial decisions to make. And when we. One of our partnerships that was making us hundreds of thousands of dollars per month fell through and we got the clause, they came out, man, and we made it happen in like two, three weeks. Just non stop work.

So.

Totally get what you say there. But I think something that you were saying that really stuck out to me too though is the Logic versus emotion and using that when you react to situations, Right? Because when you talk about these ups and downs, if as a business owner, our listeners here are reacting emotionally, your emotions are always going to make you scared. They're going to make you want to back out. It's the lizard brain like, oh no, I need to back away or else I'm going to get hurt. But you have to think logically. If something bad does happen, it probably won't actually be that bad, and it probably won't even happen at all. You can just work your way through this, right? So many people, like we can even look at coronavirus again as an example, right? So many people stop spending on ads because they were reacting emotionally. Oh, no one's gonna buy anymore. This, this, this and that, right? Well, logically, I mean, the way I saw it was, number one, dang, ads about to be real cheap right now. It's going to be much easier to, to reach my customers. So even if people are buying less, since it's so much cheaper to reach people still making more money, right? And on top of that, it just really allowed businesses who doubled down to take over the market, while those who reacted emotionally just like, ran for the hills. So.

Right. I mean, and if you think about it too people, there was more people than ever at home, right. The amount of impressions and available inventory on Facebook ads was, was nuts. So you not only had more impressions, more available inventory, but you also had people backing off on, you know, my competitors and running ads and things like that. So it was a double whammy of craziness. It was, it was, you know, for a couple of weeks there, it was dirt cheap. I haven't seen cheap CPMs like that and, and years, and you just don't get that anymore. And it was a massive opportunity if you were positioned correctly in order to take advantage of it. 100%.

Yeah, guys. And that's why you gotta listen to us when we tell you to double down certain situations. We're gonna see it a little differently than you will. It was a really good time. It's still a good time, but things were really cheap at that time. Anyways, let's just, I guess, recap. The first lesson is persistence is gonna win if don't react emotionally to things. You know, sometimes it's better to not get that payday right away and just remain persistent so you can get that huge payoff.

I mean, yeah, and the guys and everybody always. I say that, you know, I'm a, I'm a mostly illogical person. You know me for a while, Devin. Like, I look at things like that by, by numbers and everything like that. But it's not like the emotions aren't there, right? A lot of the times you're scared shitless in your entrepreneurial journey. Like, you don't think leaving my safety of the job that was paying me very well, I could have stayed there, been very happy. Well, happy would have been a question mark because I really did want to be an entrepreneur, but I was being paid really well. The emotions are always going to be there. The difference is that you have to overcome those and be able to draw yourself into a situation or maybe a mindset of, okay, I don't like this, right? I feel like I don't like this. Well, here's my other part of my brain that's going to help me walk through the steps that gets me out of this fucking situation, right? And how to, and how to do that. And on the flip side of that, guys, which is actually the second step is being humbled, right? If you, if you get success, right, that's the other side of the emotional coin of where you're just, you think you're the biggest dude on the block now and all you want to do is show how much money you have and you're just again, right in that upswing. And, and I see this time and time again where you get cocky and you get complacent and you don't think that you need to learn more or do anything else. And one thing that is true for the 10 plus years that I've been doing this is I've never stopped learning. I will buy courses, I will read books. I will always, you know, and maybe the person, people that I listen to has changed and I go, you know, higher and higher. But you got to be humble on the other side of the coin, right? So we're talking about being, not being emotional, right? But you still need to be logical. On the other side, when things are good, you need to be thinking, how the hell do I keep them good? How do I keep this amount up? Or how do I keep this feeling? So even if you want to look at it like that, how do you keep that feeling up? And that's the other thing that I think a lot of people fail because if you aren't prepared for the downswing, by the time you already have that upswing, it's already too late, right? So if you're, if you're, you know, you're starting to see sales fall off and they fall off A cliff. And that's when you try to address it. Then it's already too late. Like, you're going to have a certain X period of time where sales are going to suck. And that's now what, like, a responsible business owner would do. So you got to have the plans in place of, how do I keep this up all the time? And they have to be constantly going, right? And not just in a reactionary mode of, oh, shit, my best seller suddenly doesn't sell anymore. So what do I do next?

Yeah, dude, it's so big. I used to have this saying, this is probably like, back in 2014, but the day you become comfortable in your business is the day it starts to die. It's like, once, okay, I've made it, now I can relax. I mean, yeah, you can, I guess, but you need to at least hire people on to make sure they can manage it for you or have a team on to make sure things keep going. There shouldn't be a point where you're like, okay, I'm at the top. I can just relax here. Because there's so many different things that could happen. There's market conditions, there's competitors that will see someone who's lazy and complacent at the top and come take it from you. It's never safe at the top. And once you do get there, or even if it's not at the top, but you're doing really well and you think that you can take your gas off the brakes a little bit, number one. I don't know why you do that, because it's like, man, I'm doing really good right now. You know what would be great? If I did a little worse, you know, slow down. But. And if you are the kind of person who wants to take a break, because I totally get that because we. We even recently hired an operations manager at scup because I wanted to stop working on certain things. I'm like, dude, I need a break from this shit. Because, you know, nothing. There's nothing fun about managing employees all day long.

I mean, I guess, but you hit the nail in the head, right? Like, you're not. We're not taking the brakes off the gas. Like, doing what you want is part of, like, the entrepreneurial benefit, right? Like, I don't want to do customer service in my E Commerce business. I mean, I did it for a while, but I probably. I'm not the kind of person to do customer service, right? So I had. For multiple reasons. So I had to get that out of there, right? So yeah, hiring onto your business is part of the journey and you kind of, you know, you sacrifice a little of that profit that you would have to make sure that your business is running the most efficient as possible. So you can take breaks and eventually have vacation day, which I don't know what, what that is anymore, but. But yeah, for sure.

Vacation guys, don't listen to them.

Yeah, I think the only time I'm gonn vacation is if I actually like toss my phone into like a safe and don't. And don't actually take it with me. Yeah, yeah.

The thing is too, is even when you do hire those people and you know, you mentioned sacrificing your profit, you're not really sacrificing your profit because all that means when you hire people to do things within your business, that allows you to focus on the things that actually make you money and you just make more money. I mean, that's, that's really obviously why people hire employees in the first place. So many people are scared too, because they're like, I don't want it. But then my profit goes down. It's like, well, you know, if you're hiring, right, these people are supposed to be making you money. You shouldn't be paying more for an employee than they make you within the company, you know?

Yeah. And that's a long term mindset too, Right. That a lot of people don't have is they see it coming out of, you know, today's money. Right. And not thinking of the long term. Also, your time is valuable. Right. So, you know, that should be part of your profit. And your ROI as well is your. Is the amount of time that you can spend doing the thing like being with your family or doing that kind of stuff too. So if you hire somebody and they free up three hours of your day or whatever it is, it's a value to that too that cannot be ignored because otherwise you're going to go crazy as a entrepreneur for sure.

I also, I want to tell everyone how committed Matt is to learning. I know he touched on it earlier, but Matt, Matt will like message me. He's like, damn, Devin, I'm going through this course. I think it was like Bob Eger, his master class or something, right? Yeah. It's so bad. I'm so bored. I hate it. I think I'm gonna watch it for another four hours tonight. I'm not taking any away from this. I'm gonna watch it tonight though, because.

You know, Star wars, what a disappointment though that class was. There were some there were some golden nuggets. I don't know if I like that platform or.

Did you check out the book? His book?

No, I haven't, but I'll put it on the list. I'm working through stuff, doing my 75 hard. So I'm reading, you know, 10 pages a day.

Dude, I. A story to tell you for, for anyone who, who's listening. We're going to go off tangent for a second, but. And there's another podcaster, Andy Frisella. He has the Real AF podcast. Definitely. Awesome. Go check it out. My favorite podcast, personally, Matt, he. He has a little challenge called 75 hard that Matt and I are doing. I failed like 10 days in. Matt has much more discipline than me, so he's doing much better. Anyways, Matt, I don't know if you saw, but his shirts went on sale the other day and I went to buy you one like three seconds after the email went out. By the time I completed the checkout process, your size was already sold out. I got mine though, because apparently, you know, I'm one of his more dainty listeners.

Yeah.

So Andy Frisella, for those of you who don't know, he's a. He's a really big Jack dude. So maybe a lot of his listeners are too. He owns a. He's actually an E commerce store owner as well. He owns first form huge supplement business. Hundreds of millions. And yeah, I guess they're all big Jack dudes. And here I am wearing a size small. I'm actually a large. But you know, we're getting a little too off track now. I don't want to take. I don't want to bore people too much about that. So point number three. Let's. Let's hear it.

Yeah, I think these all kind of work together, but it's something that in the last. And speaking of 75 hard, but something that in the last six months especially that has been super powerful. I said, in six months, what the hell month is it?

Well.

Quarantine. Life is wild, right? So time is just irrelevant at this moment. At a newborn plus quarantine. Like time is so weird. So a goal setting, guys, and it's like, oh, that's the most cliche bullshit ever. Is like. It's so fucking powerful. Okay, So I wanted to have a million dollar month on the store, right? And so about six months ago, I kept getting like kind of close, right? And I thought like, okay, man. And this was, this was late 2019. I got close a couple of times and I was like, all right, well, that's Q4, you know. Okay, I'm going to write it down, and hopefully we can attain it in some month and sometime in 2020, I'm going to write it down when it goes. Well, I did it, like, three months after I wrote it down. Right. And so it's. It's super. I really am, like. It was that really, because I had that in my mind, and I figured out how to do it. There is actually a stat out there. I've seen it a couple of times about how much more you hit your goals if you do write it down. Because something about putting it in for, you know, in the front part of your brain, and especially if you can see it every day. So I got a board to my left that has my current goals, and the next goal is 10 million for just a year. So it was just super powerful to me. And I do this with tiny little goals now, too, of hiring people or doing this or whatever it is. But it's super powerful for you to have that gold in mind, because if you don't, you just kind of swim around in this sea of nothing. Right? Because, you know, we're. We're. As an entrepreneur, no one is structuring your day for you other than yourself. Right. At my old corporate job, it was, like, pretty easy to know what I was doing that day, because most of the time, shit was getting put on my calendar or my boss was telling me what to do, right? And there's nobody doing that. And I think we all want to. We all want to be millionaires or we all want to have this one goal in mind, but figure out something that's attainable for you and try to hit it, and then do not be complacent with pushing to the next one. So I don't know if it's a coincidence that, like, I started doing 75 hard and these goal settings I was doing a little bit before that. But having the mindset of, like, structuring these things together and putting them down and having them be something that is literally visible to me through the course of the day, is that a coincidence that I also started hitting and far exceeding those? Right. And finding ways to do it, I don't know. But I can't say that it isn't, because I definitely think it's a factor of it. So I think you got to do that as a business owner, and that's something that you probably like.

Duh.

I know that. But however much I would be, I would put money on the line that a lot of people listening to this who are entrepreneurs, who are just maybe even said, you know, we're goal setting. Of course, how much of you are actually doing that? How many of you are writing it down, hitting it and figuring out a way to get there if you're having. Maybe you didn't hit it, right? I didn't hit it the first month. I wrote it down. I didn't hit the second month. I was running out. But the whole fucking time I was. I was looking at it and thinking, how do I get there, right? And keeping that in mind. And it's. It's one big goal with little goals kind of built up to it, right? I'm not just trying to hit a million dollars in revenue. I had, you know, wanted to maintain my 20, 25% profit margin on top of that. But pushing yourself, and then that kind of goes with the same first two things that we were talking about, like the being persistent, being humble, but achieving a goal in a way that makes you motivated in the every day, right? And like, getting up, making the baby steps to the bigger goal keeps your mind on track, and it all snowballs together for you to really take it to the next level for yourself, whether it's fitness, whatever stuff. I did the same thing in fitness. Devin knows this. I used to be £340. I got down to my lowest. I think I was 218, and I put on some size, and then quarantine came along, blah, blah, blah. But then I was excused. Now I'm back on the track with the 75 hard and doing, you know, challenging myself to lose more weight. And I think it's the same thing that works. And fitness is going to work in every aspect of your life and especially in business. And like I said, nobody's doing it for you, so you have to do it and just take it to the next level by, you know, having that thing in front of you and achieving it. The vision board, that shit's real. As corny as it sounds, that stuff works. And I think that's something that really has helped me this year, is getting back to setting goals and knocking them out of the park and then setting the next one and figuring out how the fuck to get there and do it again and keep pushing and see how far I can take it. And it hasn't stopped yet because now, like Devin said, we're going to possibly hit. We're going to get really, really close, and I gotta. I gotta. We're putting in some plans to make sure it happens. We're gonna do 2 million this month, right? And a couple years ago I did 1.7 million in a year on the store, and now we're going to do that in 20 days. Goal setting is the corniest thing probably possible, but it is super, super powerful. And I debated whether or not I wanted to say it or whatever today, but I think it is something that is super important that has really knocked it out of the park for me this year.

Not. Dude, you mentioned that you don't know whether or not that actually has a role in your success. Dude, it completely does. Like, I can basically come down with a formula that will prove it and I can even word it a few different ways. So if you're not setting goals, you literally do not know what to work on during the day because you don't even know what you're trying to achieve. So you're like, well, maybe I should do this today or maybe I should work on this. Maybe I should do this. You don't know because you don't have any goals. Like, what are you even trying to accomplish as a business? What are the benchmarks you're trying to hit, right? And another way to look at it too is let's pretend you're a new store owner, right? And you're like, so you're trying to judge what you should do in a day or how hard you should work in a given day, right? But you don't have any long term goal set. So you're like, man, I'd really just like to have 3,000, $5,000 extra a month so that, you know, they, they say that on Monday and they're like, okay, well I can do that working, you know, four hours a day. And then the next day they're driving downtown and they're like, nah, fuck that, I want a million dollars a month, right? And then they change their work schedule again. Now I need to do 12 hours a day. And then the next day they're burnt out. Oh, you know what? 3,000 is actually fine. I'm going to go back to two to three hours and stuff like that. And it's just they're stuck in this endless loop and they, you know, constantly changing what they're working on, how hard they're working, all these different things, and they're never going to reach success. So not only should you set goals, but, but you should try to really stick with those goals, at least for a little while. You know, you shouldn't be changing them every day because then, you know you're never gonna get enough work done or work hard enough on something to do it anyways. The way we do it at SCUP is we do okrs. So objectives and key results and those last for a single quarter. So we'll set goals for each team as well as the company for a quarter and we have a quarter to hit those goals. And the way we do it, and Matt, I'm sure you do the same thing as well, is you set goals that you think are unrealistic or super hard because that way, you know, like, even if you don't reach your goal, you still worked your ass off because that's the only way you could have reached that almost impossible to hit goal anyways. So that's definitely the way you want to do it. But I mean, you know, I think it's a huge part of your success. And you know, as you mentioned, you just started it six months ago or so. Right.

And looking at the refocus on it, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

Your revenue says all anybody needs to know about that. And people can say, no, this is dumb. Like, this is, I need more than just, oh, you know what, start it, set a goal. It's like, well, come back to us in six months without your goal and you know, we'll see where you're at. Right?

Yeah. And I think one of the biggest return on investments I had, like I said, I have it right in front of me every day, is a little five dollar whiteboard that can stick on your wall. I got it off of Amazon and delivered it. It's got revenue goals, business goals, personal goals and fitness goals. And it's all right here. It's on like a little like a five by three or something. I don't know what it is, but it's really small and it cost me five, ten dollars and it's probably generated a lot of the millions of dollars this year because it's just sitting here. If I stare at my screen, it's right to the left and I can read it if I look. And yeah, I agree. Like your goal should be. You should have a big goal in mind. And I kind of think of it the same way as you do programming. In programming you have the end goal in mind, figure out how to get there right. Step by step. So, you know, I had an end goal in mind. You have to have the little milestones along the way to make sure you have an understanding how to get there. And I think when you were talking about a guy that, you know, he's just opening a store and he's like, I Want to do a million dollars, right? If you, that can, that's 100% awesome, right? But also have the little ones in place. You know, how are you going to hit your first dollar? Are you going to hit your first $10? How are you going to your first thousand dollar month? Are you going to do 10? And you got to piece your way together there. And that motivation of hitting those little ones on the way to the big one is super important because you're not losing sight and you're feeling accomplished. And we're talking about feelings again, but you know, they're not, it's not a completely logical thing like you, you need to have both the feelings and the logic, right? And the, the feelings are great. This sense of accomplishment that keeps you motivated, that again, no one's gonna do it for you. Well, maybe your loved one's gonna pat you on the back, but I don't know about you, but I'm sitting in a room. Nobody else is in here, right. I used to be in a corporate office where there's like 200 other people. People are like, oh man, good job on that po or all that other shit that I was doing. Nobody's doing that anymore, right? And so in the entrepreneurial journey, if you have those goals, you can mark those off your list and feel great about the fact that you're, you're pushing towards something, you're creating something. It's amazing, right? Being an entrepreneur is amazing. Whether whatever business you're in, it doesn't even matter if it's online or not, you're creating something out of nothing and part of the backbone of this country and why it's so great. And so I think making sure that you have realistic expectations, setting some goals, go big, go big or go home, definitely 100%. But make sure you have the milestones along the way and you pat yourself on the back. Because a lot of people, which is a whole nother story, a lot of people are not going to understand what the hell you do. I still have friends that have no idea what the fuck I do. Which is fine because I, you know, half the time I don't want anyone to explain it or know how to explain it. But you know, it's, it's a, it's a weird world that you live inside. We all. And that's why it's great to get into like minded people like in our Facebook group, because other people are on the journey. So make sure, long story short, again, make sure that you're patting yourself on the back, you're setting a goal and you're trying to hit it and write it down because I really do feel that that is important and it will help you along the way mentally and physically because this is an exhaustive journey and help you get to where you want to be in life.

Thank you so much for sharing, dude. It's so good to have you on. By the way, guys, Matt, you and I, come on, we're listening to Andy Frisella every day. What's stopping us? You know, we could do a podcast. Oh, wait, we were on a podcast.

Well, let's do a podcast and we'll have whiskey. Whiskey and scupping whiskey. Yeah.

Well, can if. See, our listeners don't know this, but we might go on like political tangents if there's like podcast and whiskey or. I don't even want to get into it right now, but. Hey guys, I'd like to take a quick moment to have a word from our sponsors, which is actually me, because we don't have any sponsors and we're not going to do any. But I did want to let you know that, you know, if you want to learn from Matt, you want some of his sweet print on demand tactics and hey, you know, just, just putting this out there. But those same tactics, guess where they've been? Featured founder, Shopify, Entrepreneur magazine. Pretty cool stuff, right? But if you want to, you know, get your own print on demand store started or you want to check out how we're doing it, we have a special offer going on right now. 67 bucks. Just go to printondemand.org that's P R I N T O N D E M A N dawg. I feel like it's so much easier to just say print on demand and spell it out because no one's going to remember that, but. Printondemand.org 67 bucks. And we have a four day workshop which will help you, you know, get your store set up, find products, launch ads, and you know, hopefully start getting customers. We also talk about upsells, cross sells, things like that. It's about five to six hours worth of content. I'm not quite sure, but it's quite a lot. And we give you the worksheets and everything you need to go or need to get your business started. So, you know, other training, stuff like that, they'll just give you information and say good luck. Right. But you know, with our workshop, we actually give you worksheets and if you're filling them out at the end of the four days, you should Literally have your store set up, product set up, ads, all that good to go. So it's pretty cool Matt's on there. I think he might have had one whiskey before each call, so, you know, he gets a little wild. But it's good stuff. Yeah, we've got, I think about a thousand people who've taken it so far and everybody really seems to love it. I haven't heard anything negative yet and we're always working to improve it. So if you guys want to join our thousands of already successful students, feel free to check it out. And if not, you know, that's totally fine. We wish you the best of luck in everything. But yeah, Matt, we'll definitely have to do this again sometime. Really appreciate you coming on, man. I think everything you've shared is invaluable, especially the goal setting. And that's just because it's something that I'm super passionate about as well. And I definitely recommend everybody check out who's listening, check out objectives and key results. It's a little more advanced, but it's really easy to do and I think it's just so powerful. So, Matt, any closing words that you've got for everybody listening or anybody listening, if anybody's out there?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is great. Hopefully this is something that can help a lot of people. You know, I talk about, you know, some of these things. I had to highlight some of the negative points. But I think it's really important not to be a nerd a little bit. But again, here, I'll be a nerd for you. How about this? If you think about Batman, right? Batman, everybody thinks he's, you know, the bravest guy in the world. But if you actually understand Batman, he's actually super fearful, right? And he uses what it gives him fear is to go out there and make a change in the world. And when you're an entrepreneur, right, you know you're gonna get a lot of that basic fear in your belly of like, oh, shit, you know, if you ever seen money go out the door and everybody else in your company gets paid and you don't, you know that's going to cause a stomach reaction. I don't want that to be the only thing that you think about the pluses and the highlights and the feelings of accomplishment that you get out of doing this entrepreneurial journey. And then I've personally felt to be able to provide for my family, on my beautiful little eight month old daughter, a future that they, maybe she won't have to worry that much, right? And I'm being in a better work life balance. By the time that she's around and running around, I'll be able to have the team in place to be able to do that. That stuff is super powerful and super motivating and it's completely life changing for you and the people that, you know, touch on an effect in your life. And I think that that's the highlight I want to leave on and make sure that everybody understands is the real benefit of this journey that we're taking place on. And that should be part of what keeps you humble. Right? Because there are people that have done this before you and the people that are out there doing it maybe at a bigger level for the time being and then keeps you persistent because you know it can be done out there. And as long as you have those goals in mind and you keep at them and you work your way there each and every day, this is something that's going to keep you super happy and fulfilled in your life as long as you're doing what you want to do. So that's it. That's all I want to make sure that you're saying a little Batman. If I can work Batman into a podcast, I feel like it's a pretty good podcast. So that's it.

I'm going to buy you a Batman mask for the next podcast. I bought one of our employees a Batman mask. Were you jealous when you saw, I don't know if you were on the meeting when Darren came on wearing his Batman mask.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Batman's a good. Batman's up there for me. He's not Iron Man. I got an Iron man sitting about two feet away from me. So I'm an Iron man guy. If you want to send me an Iron man mask, that'd be cool too.

My soon to be wife won't allow me to put any toys in the house, as she calls them. It'll ruin the decor. I'm like, dude, the man from Doom. I want the Doom Slayer. I wanted to get a little statue of Doom Slayer. I love Doom. I wanted to get him in the house. She's like, it's going to ruin the decor. And I was like, no, he's going to kill demons that try to hurt us at night.

So you know when you get a wish, right?

You're going to wish that the doomslaughter was there to protect you. But now we have a cat who's possessed trying to kill us at night. So. Good going, Patricia. Anyways, awesome, guys. If you liked Matt. If you Everybody likes Matt. If you enjoyed having Matt on the podcast, you want to see more of them, let me know. Leave us a review. Okay? Or just comment if you're listening on Spreaker. But if you're listening on Apple, Spotify, Google, podcasts, any of those, leave us a review. Say Matt is the goat. Bring him back. But you know, even if you didn't like Matt, which is ridiculous, you should still subscribe because I'm going to do episodes without him too. It's going to be fine. But anyways, guys, thank you so much for your time. Matt, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule man to join us. And guys, I will catch you on the next episode of the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. Do not forget to subscribe. Review 5, 6, 7, 8 stars. You know, whatever and tell your friends. Anyways, take it easy guys. Thank you all for joining us today.