SMMA: Matt Shields Reveals FASTEST Way TO $10k/mo, Thomas Gonnet, & His Millionaire Mindset

But you're thinking like a broke person, bro. Like, you're just thinking like a broke person. Put a gun to your mother's head or to someone you love's head, and it's going to motivate you arguably even more. Right, because we just have this. He also told me he's actually. Well, maybe I shouldn't say that. You're a CEO running 100k a month company and you're solving the client's problem. You're not a CEO. You're a client success manager. That's what took me from like 10 20k a month to 100k a month. What took me from 0 to 10 is like.

All right, guys, welcome to the first podcast we have the man, the myth legend, Matt Shields, believe he scaled from 10k month to 150k a month and pretty much three months. So, Matt, do you want to introduce yourself?

Yeah. Well, Eric, thanks for having me, dude. I'm honored to be the first guest. Excited to chat with you. I think we're both doing standing desks, so.

Oh, yeah, that's fire.

Let's go. Let's go. Dude, I just got this a couple weeks ago. Life changing, man. Life changing. Anyway, yeah. So, guys, my name's Matt. I started a few agencies. At this point, I've built six different SMMAs to six figures multi six figures. And our most recent agency, we took from 10k a month to 300k a month in one year. And like Eric said, 10k a month to 150k a month in 90 days. And yeah, I don't have a course. I don't have a program. Might make one one day. But I just like making YouTube videos. I love business. I started writing a book a few days ago, dude, and I'm just like, writing out all the things I've learned about SMMA and building an agency. I'm just reminded of, like, how much I love this game. Like, I just love this game of business. So that's why I do content. That's why I do podcasts like this. And that's why I'm excited to chat with you today, dude.

Yeah.

Get some value out.

Yeah, for sure, man. Yeah. So. So, yeah, I believe that when you. When you first started your first few agencies, I believe you started quite, quite a lot already. Right? Like a lot of agenc. Yeah.

This is number six.

Number six. Wow. Okay. Okay. And how would you describe yourself as someone who was like, very, very first starting out compared to who you are now? Like, what would actually change about you?

Mainly it's a good question. It's a really good first podcast question ever. Dude.

Yeah.

How would I compare myself back then to who I am now? Back then, Eric, I operated from a place of deep darkness and anger and fear. And I didn't know how to manage those emotions. So my way of utilizing that energy was transferring it into action, which was the best way I knew how to utilize it. Now I've learned how to manage those emotions better. I wouldn't say I've mastered them, but I've learned how to, how to manage those emotions better. And so I transfer that energy into actually handling that energy rather than just distracting myself with action, action, action and covering up what's actually going on. I've done the inner work as a human being and I'm still doing it every single day. It doesn't go away. But now I'm a person who, I think I operate from a little bit less of that darkness and I focus a little bit more on love than hate. And I'm focused on like, how can I do the greatest thing possible in order to have the greatest impact I can as a human being? Rather than how can I do the greatest thing possible so I can prove to everybody who ever doubted me that they were wrong and it's a huge difference and that darkness is still there. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. But the light and the love has become the more anchoring motivation for me of why I do what I do. And it's a funny thing because you, you think that anger and pain will be the most motivating feeling you can have, right? Like put a gun to your head and what are you going to do, right? You're going to get to work, but put a gun to your mother's head or to someone you love's head and it's going to motivate you arguably even more, right? Because we just have this, this innate sense as human beings to like deep rooted and it's been covered up by society, but deeply rooted in our nature. We want to look out for our fellow human beings. And like we know that if we, if. And it's primitive because if other people don't survive and we're the only people left on earth, we're, we're gonna die and we're never going to reproduce and we're not going to get to achieve our mission of continuing the, the human race. So like deeply rooted in our nature, we want to look out for human beings and help them in some way. And I think I'VE just realized that because I've blown the smoke that covered that I blow, I blew the darkness away that covered the actual light that I think I've discovered which is we are here to serve our fellow human being. So I know that's a lot, but yeah, that's, that's what came to mind.

Okay. And so I guess did your self image have a pretty big play in that? Like I guess change your self image, someone who's I guess kind of has drives of, you know, anger and all that stuff into more into more like I guess, love and positive, you know, that stuff?

Yeah, dude, 100%. I just finished Psycho Cybernetics for the second time. I don't know if you incredible book and Maxwell Maltz talks about in that book, you cannot change the self without first changing the self image. Like it's, it's literally impossible to change. You're gonna pull out the book, aren't you?

Hold on, hold on.

Let me see if I have it. No, I don't have it with me. It's somewhere.

Go right here.

But yeah, you can't change the self without first changing the self image. So my self image has changed a lot and I just have a better relationship with myself now. And that is the thing I'm the most grateful for. The money, like all that stuff is cool. It has its place. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like it doesn't. But what's way cooler, what's way more important, what's way more powerful in my opinion is just having a better relationship with your own self. So that's the thing I think has changed the most and the thing I'm the most grateful for.

Okay. Okay. And I'm actually curious like how, what, what really made you take you from 10k months to 150k a month in the span of 3 months. Like what? I want to kind of understand the whole process and what actually like I know you talk about like Newton's third law and stuff, but kind of I just want to break it down a.

Bit more, get into tactics. Yeah, okay. We won't do the mindset thing the whole time. Tactically, what we did to go from 10k a month to 150k a month in 90 days. We hired a sales team immediately. We hired commission based closers. We ramped up our ad spend from a thousand a month to 10,000amonth in the span of like two weeks. And we built a machine, an acquisition machine. Because if you're an agency, you're not a Marketing company. You're a sales company that sells marketing. And making that shift in our minds really dictated our actions. And the shift in our actions, which is hire three closers, ramp up ad spend, fill their calendars, master sales management, and how to get the most out of your salespeople. And then on the back end, how can we streamline the operations? Automated onboarding, group onboardings, a more scalable model. So we went from like one on one coaching and one on one account management to a group in a community which is way more scalable. And we really just focused on mimicking the Flywheel model, which Amazon has, I think really kind of, I think they've, I think they've innovated on and they've really created it. The most out of anyone I know is the Flywheel model. Can talk about that if you'd like, but we tried to recreate that for our agency and once we did that, it just scaled and that's why we went from 10k a month to 150k a month in 90 days. I think the other thing we did is we focused on the right things. Like we didn't get distracted in, oh, we have 12 clients now. Let's pause all acquisition and let's just like make sure we, we don't up their Facebook ads or oh, a client, their ad account got disabled. So like what are we gonna do, right? We can't sell any more clients until we get our client's ad account fixed. The reason we were able to operate and focus on the right things is because we had a team. So I think the biggest, the biggest thing we did is we had people that didn't need to get caught up in all the bullshit that we get caught up as founders, which is you're managing the clients, you're running the ads, you're doing the sales calls. So when one of those breaks, you inevitably self destruct the other two versus if you have people who are focused on those for you. When something breaks, yeah, that's what you get drawn to as the founder. But then the other two things, they don't break too because your focus is not in all three categories. It's only in one category because you have people. So the best thing we did was we focused on the right thing. We hired a team and we invested massively in ad spend.

Okay, okay, that totally makes sense. And so I guess it also, I think that's kind of like the power of having a team, you know? Cause then you could actually, when your mind is stressed, you can't really think of new innovative ideas. But when your mind's only on on one thing and other people put out the fires for you, it's like it's a way better setup, a hundred percent.

And you know, you still have to help them put out the fires. You still have to be there. It's not like, you know, they just do everything for you and then your fire becomes them in their minds. So there's still fires, but you're leveling up the fires. Right? Your fires are supposed to grow as your company grows. You're not supposed to be solving the client problems, you're supposed to be solving the team member problem, who is solving the client problem. And then eventually you solve the manager problem, who's solving the team members problem, who's solving the client's problem. And then eventually you solve the executive's problem, who solves the manager's problem, who solves the team members problem, who solves the client's problem. And like that is the natural ascension. If you're a CEO or running 100k a month company and you're solving the client's problem, you're not a CEO, you're a client success manager.

Yeah.

I'm short form content Spencer podcast. Get some views please.

All right, and then how. So it seems like you, you hired a lot of people pretty fast. So should people hire as soon as they get a 10k a month or should they hire when they're the first client? Like what do you think is the actual most optimal time to, to hire?

Dude, that's a great question. So I think we're a little bit unique because this was our sixth agency and I say we as my partner and I, Jared Curry, it was our sixth agency so we knew how to run ads. We knew a little bit about client management. Jared had ran 100k a month agency before, so we didn't need to learn the skills anymore. Like if you don't know how to manage clients and then you bring in a CSM who doesn't know how to manage clients, how are you going to manage clients? You're going to have to now teach them how to do it when you don't even know how to do it yourself. So getting hands on experience in the beginning was super valuable for me. I learned how to talk to customers, I learned how to sell, I learned how to run ads, I learned how to use zapier. Right. Like doing everything in the beginning to an extent I think is okay. What I would tactically focus on offboarding is the, the, the cheapest skills in the beginning. So like appointment setting, cold dms, whatever you're doing for appointment setting, calling leads who book and trying to confirm their appointments, those things can be offloaded for like five, ten bucks an hour. So immediately offload the cheapest activities and then just work your way up to the most valuable activities. Based on what would it cost me per hour to find somebody else to do this? Right, like don't go offload the sales team and then go send all the cold DMs yourself because that's a way more valuable skill selling than setting appointments, unless you suck at sales. So tactically speaking, focus on the cheapest hourly activities, offload those first, and then work your way up to the more expensive things like talking to customers, selling customers, all that stuff.

Okay, okay, yeah, that totally makes sense because I feel like if your time is, you know, if your time's like valued at 50 bucks an hour, let's say, and then you hire someone for $10 an hour, then it totally makes sense. It's like a profit essentially.

Dude, I'm so glad you said that because like that, that is the name of the game of scale. And like Jared and I, we've always said our biggest flex SMMA wise is that we never sold a single client. Jared never sold a client. I never sold a client. We've sold over 600 clients. He's not, he's never sold one. I've never sold one. I've never managed one. He's never managed one. We've never done any of the hands on stuff for over 600 people. And I think that's our biggest flex. And the reason is because we understood exactly what you just said, dude, which is in order to scale your job as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, is to focus on the highest leverage activity possible. And this idea of aggressive elimination of everything else, that is not that most important thing is what allows you to, to scale and compound so quickly. If I know that I make 10k a month and I work 40 hours a week, that's I believe like $65 an hour. That's what you're worth or something like that. My math might be off. One time my math was off.

I think it's 60.

Yeah, okay, cool. My math was off in a video and I just got like so trying to make sure I get it right. But yeah, it's like $60 an hour or something like that. So if you know your time is worth $60 an hour and you're making 10k a month, anything that is below $60 an hour, immediately offload it. Not just in your business, but in your personal life. Cooking, cleaning, getting a chef, dude getting a chef, getting maids, getting somebody to mow your lawn. If you have a house. Like, here in my house, we were supposed to mow our own lawn. I was just like, guys, like, I'm not going to. It's going to take me an hour and a half. And I could pay somebody $30 to do it. Like, yeah, it's a little bit lazy. It's a little bit like fucking Gen Z. Like, all right, get off your ass, you millennial. But you're thinking like a broke person, bro. Like, you're just thinking like a broke person. Like, you, you think Warren Buffett's gonna get out in the front yard and mow his lawn, bro? Nah, he's not gonna do any of that shit because he's thinking about what is going to allow him to have the most value in his day and create the most value in his day. And that's going to be by focusing on the most important things. So aggressive elimination of everything that is below your hourly rate and then just focusing on the things that are above your hourly rate. That is how you scale. And this idea of decision fatigue. Like, the more decisions you have to make on a daily basis, the worse you get at making decisions. You have to wake up in the morning and cook, then clean, then do your laundry, then mow your lawn, then go pick up groceries, then go talk to a client, then go do 50 dms a day to try to get more appointments. Look at how many decisions you just have to, you had to make rather than if you just woke up, took a freaking shower, hopped on the laptop, and then had five back to back to back to back to back sales calls.

Yeah.

Like, look at the difference in the, the mental energy that you have to exert in order to achieve the result you want to achieve.

Yeah, 100. And I feel like the ROI is, is there so much? Because I remember I was talking to my friend Zach Oldham. If you're watching this, shout out to Zach. But he was saying that hiring, hiring a chef or hiring like, his, his maid has been the highest ROI investment that he's ever, ever done.

I bet.

Crazy.

Most human beings spend like an hour and a half a day cooking and cleaning. Something like that.

Yeah, something, something crazy.

So, so, yeah, I, I, I haven't gotten a chef yet. I've just, like, meal prepped and done like, okay, yeah. So I'm in the process of trying to offload that, but like, meal prep's another good way to do it. I'm getting a chef, though. Like, that is. That is, like, the number one thing I need right now is getting rid of going to the groceries, cooking. Like, I've spent an hour on that already today. I went to Whole Foods to buy all this, and I cleaned it. And, like, I, I, I. All right. I just completely contradicted myself because I'm not practicing what I preach. Um, but that's because I don't have a chef right now, and I'm in the process of finding a chef, and I'm not gonna hire a shitty chef.

Oh, I'm surprised that if you're already making, you know, 300k a month, it should, should have been offloaded by that, you would think.

But, like, I. Living with a bunch of people, like, I don't know, man, it's just. It's just different because, like, I don't know. I don't know, the way I've done it in the past, I've just done meal preps, and meal preps are, like, efficient. They were efficient enough for me. Now I realize, like, I don't even. I shouldn't even think about that stuff. So do as I say, or do as I say, not as I do, I guess, on this one. But I will have the chef soon, and that is my promise to you guys.

Sounds good. And so you say you're living with. With a few people right now. Why don't you tell the audience about how important your environment is?

Yeah, man. It's a great, great thing to talk about. It was Lao Tzu, the Taoist philosopher, who said, be careful what you think, because your thoughts determine your words, your words determine your actions, your actions determine your habits, your habits determine your character, and your character determines your destiny. So if you reverse engineer that, your thoughts determine your destiny, but what dictates your thoughts? The environment that you're in. Right. So environment is, is like, the most important thing in the game of changing your thoughts, which is the most important thing in the game of changing your destiny. So for me, I've gotten very, very strict about my environment. I just went home for the weekend for Mother's Day, and I was back in my old environment, dude. And, like, I just. I realized I can't do that anymore. I just can't do it. I can't do it. It changed my. It changes my thoughts. It changes the way I act. It changes what I believe. I. I can't do it anymore. So right now, I live with a high Performance coach. He's been my best friend since I was 10. I live with a. Another agency owner who does like, 35k a month in the SEO H Vac niche. And then our fourth roommate is a CEO for a plumbing company. And this is, like, his second home. And he. Like, he's been here twice in the last 10 months, and we don't really ever see him. But, yeah, that's. That's the setup right now. So these are people that push me physically, mentally, spiritually, like, just every day. Like, we're all trying to do better, right? If somebody's slacking, eating bullshit food, drinking tap water, we're gonna. We're gonna get our ass called out. If. If you know somebody's jerking off and looking at bullshit, like, they're gonna get their ass called out. We literally have something called the casa commandments in our house. And one of the casa commandments I was just showing my buddy who's visiting me, it says, thou shalt not squirt, which basically is what you're doing when you jack off. You're. You're lit. That's what you're doing. And so, like, that's one of our commandments in the house. So just having that accountability of people who are like, I won't let you go down a standard, because I won't let myself go down a standard. Therefore, we all need to go up a standard. That is one of the biggest reasons that I've started taking my health more seriously. I've started taking my diet more seriously. I finally, like, legitimately quit porn and watching all that bullshit. I'm like, 57 days in right now, which is a record for me. And, like, I would not have done that if I didn't wake up every single day and have people in my corner that were trying to go to those levels with me. If I woke up every day and my friends were just like, frat, frat kids. And they were like, dude, let's go take some shots and chase some women, and then let's go eat some burgers. And then when. If we don't get laid, we'll just come back and jerk off. Like, we'll be good. If that was my environment, I'd be fine. I'd just be like, all right, man. I guess. Guess I don't need to be that much better than them. So, like, I'll just. Because we're social creatures, we want to fit into our environments. That. That's how we are primitively designed. So who you have in your life, take a Second, to reflect, write out the five closest people to you, right? You've all heard this quote. You are the sum of the five people who are closest to you. But when's the last time you've really given that some reflection? Write that out. Who are the people? How do they make you feel? What do they believe? Like, what do they believe? And then how do you think? And then just reflect on how that's affecting what you believe, what you do, and who you are. So, yeah, that's. That's the environment right now. That's how I've tried to optimize it.

100. And I would suggest anyone who's, like, first starting their agency or they. They're gonna start, I would suggest getting into a new environment and just starting from. From absolute zero, because that's essentially. That's essentially what I did. And I realized, like, whenever I go back to my house in Vancouver, which is like two hours away, I just. I feel. I don't feel like the same person. It's. It's such a. Like, it's a weird thing with the whole environment thing.

So, dude, you got a clean setup. Are you, like, just living in, like, a. What, like an apartment or.

No, I'm living. I'm living in Whistler in the. In the mountains over here. So.

Nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Show you later. But, yeah, it's no distractions, bro. Oh, yeah. Not to know here, maybe a bit of skiing and mountain biking, but that. That's kind of it. So. Yeah.

Dude, that's awesome.

Yeah, no, it's. It's amazing. And I kind of want to ask you this. I. I just thought of this mid. Mid conversation. So if you were to have a gun towards your head, right, and you were starting from zero and someone told you you have to hit or you have to go from 0 to 10k a month in the next 30 days, how would. How would you do it? Like, without. Let's say, like without the skills you have now, but kind of like, I guess like the same. Similar.

Similar model with money or without money?