[Johann Nogueira] Unlocking Opportunities: Scaling, Success, and AI

Welcome to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success with your host Jane Slack-Smith, where we celebrate the incredible journeys of individuals who've transcended their limitations and achieved extraordinary success.

Hello, it's Jane Slack-Smith here. I am the host of Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Now, these sliding door moments that my guests share with you are moments that I hope inspire you to look at your own life and ask, hmm, what am I missing? And today I have a very special guest and a dear friend, Johan. And Johan is a visionary entrepreneur. He is a tech investor, a public speaker. Look, he's dedicated to sharing his knowledge and he's driving innovation. And Johan specializes in so many things, but I'm just gonna pull out a few. So he's been developing and investing in technology that helps businesses grow rapidly and sustainably. And his journey all began, which I think is where we're gonna start today, when he was doing his PhD at the University of Melbourne, where he discovered the power of systems and leverage. Now since then, he's built thriving companies, he's exited an incredible successful building tech business. He now leads CometSuite, which is a revolutionary AI-driven lead generation platform and one that I use and love. And as a founder of Business Authorities, Johan has impacted over a million lives by fostering a community of growth-minded entrepreneurs. He's passionate about helping businesses scale strategically strategically creating lasting legacies while living abundantly and loving up his family like no one else does. Hey, Johan, welcome!

Thank you so much. Wow, that is some introduction. You are absolutely incredible. I'm blown away.

Oh well, I, I feel the same way, and I'm so excited to have you in my life, and I'm so excited to share, I guess, part of your journey as well, because we've, we've known each other, I think, for 4 or 5 years now, and, um, Feels like it. Feels like that, doesn't it? And sometimes you meet people and you're like, there's a heart connection. And, and you and your wife and your family and the community that you've built and, and the friends and family and how you support them is something that I'm very privileged to be part of. But what has always, you know, interested me is that it didn't always start out like that for you, did it? And I really kind of want to bring you back to those early years and, you know, sharing that sliding door moment for you where life kind of changed and you saw something different. Different and you took an opportunity. So I'm going to throw it to you. I'd love to hear a bit more about, you know, I guess that origin story.

Yeah, for sure. The origin story is I was, I was out in the country in a little tiny town. There were 12,000 people in the town. There was nothing to do after 6 o'clock. I grew up in Melbourne, so like 6 o'clock is when you go out and start, you know, having some fun. But there wasn't, there wasn't anything to do there, so I jumped online and I said, hey, this is 2004, so the The most ranked keyword at that point in time was make money online. So I went in there and typed in make money online. I got to figure out a way to make some money online because what I'm making— I was making $20,000 a year on my scholarship, and it's not that much by the time you take rent and fuel and all that thing into, into play. There wasn't much left at the end of the day. And then I, through a little bit of trial and error, I discovered eBay. So 2004 was eBay. It's the exact same opportunity right now with Amazon. So any of you guys who want to do the strategies that I'm going to talk about, You can follow the exact same thing. The platforms change, the strategies don't change. So I ended up on eBay and how that happened, what was the sliding door moment, was I was talking to somebody who I looked up to a lot. Keynote speaker, travels the world, written books, influences a lot of people. And I went, wow, I want to be like him when I grow up. And it was Friday night, 11 o'clock at night. And this guy came into the, came into the lab and I had been watching water drip through soil and measuring the rate of flow. It's already boring you, isn't it?

Doing a PhD at this stage.

To you.

Okay, it wasn't just like I was hanging out the lab on a Friday night.

This is my experiments. And, and then I said, you know, I broke my dad's rule. My dad has a rule which is never ask a man his wage and a woman her age. So I said, okay, cool. But I was just curious. I'd been, I'd been working 16, 18-hour days, and I been stuck in this lab, just me by myself. And he came in and he said, keep going, in 10 years you'll be at my level. I said, wow, okay, 10 years. I need some inspiration. And I said, I'm sorry, I need to ask you this, but How much money do you make? And then he told me and my heart was broken and I said, I cannot wait 10 years to make that amount of money. I need to do that like this year. And that's, that's what spurred the thing to go onto Google and type in make money online. And then I went down all the rabbit holes and read all the threads and read all the forums and, and then I ended up saying, okay, I'm going to give this eBay thing a try. And I did. And then 6 months later it was making more money than my potential future jobs would ever make. And so that put me leveraging systems because I set this thing up once and every day I just wake And there were all these orders. I got so cocky on eBay, right? Then I used to go to the Officeworks website for the people who are in Australia. Uh, it's the equivalent of your Walmart over there. And I'd see what's on special and I'd put that on eBay. And then by that night, I'd already made 10 or 15 sales. And then in the morning, I'd just go to Officeworks and order it and mark it as a gift. And then they'd ship it out and my feedback score would go through the roof. And I made my profit of—

a little margin, the arbitrage of what you were selling it for.

Exactly, $20 or $30 times 10, right? When you're making $400 a week and you made $300 in a day in 15 minutes, it's a massive difference.

You're not holding stock and you've got someone else doing the distribution. Like, exactly, it's like dropshipping now today in Amazon, right? That's what you're saying.

Fulfillment by Amazon, that's what it does. So that, that was the sliding door moment. That was the thing that went, oh my God, I, I don't have to be part of the matrix. I don't have to follow what everybody else has outlined in front of me, and I'm going to do it my way. And at this point in time, Bon Jovi is my favorite band and still is. And, you know, I did it my way anyway.

Um, Frank Sinatra, you know, you could go either way.

Yep, yep, exactly. And so that took me down the path of learning about technology, learning about the power of technology. And so from there, now here we are. 20 years later. And my God, am I so glad that, that past Johan— I give past Johan so much credit. I'm like, dude, you were the best. Thank you so much. Because of all the sleepless nights and everything that he went through, I get to enjoy the fruits of his labor, right? So, um, so tell me this, you know, you're, you're doing, completing a PhD.

You've looked to your mentor idol and gone, okay, if I project where I am in 10 years' time, that's not quite the income or the lifestyle that I want to create. Did you then stop your university degree? Did you complete it? Was there pushback from your family going, you should go into—

I had. So now, by the time I did my bachelor's and then I did my PhD, it's a total of 8 years invested of my life. Yep. And I finally got it to a point where I was about to submit it, and then they go, hey, there's this brand new statistical analysis come out, you should do that and redo your entire stats. And that was going to take another 6 months, but by this time my business had taken like it's, it's soaring. And so I said, I'm sorry, I don't have another 6 months to give to this thing. And when I told my parents, my God, they were devastated because 8 years. And we come from, um, we come from a, a family where you don't, you don't take risks, you don't do business, you don't, you don't break the mold. And you know, this, you've sacrificed your life to then have, you know, a predictable income and all that kind of stuff, whereas I'm going into business, which is completely variable. Now that doesn't mean that there wasn't ups There were many times that I wanted to quit and give up. I remember at one point I was like, I'm done, I'm finished. And then I took, went out for dinner with a friend and then she said, but you know, why are you going to quit? You've already been, you've already done the hard yards. Just push through a little more. And I did. And then that took us to the next level, right? So there's, and by the way, that's, you know, being an entrepreneur, nothing is, nothing is ever easy. Hey, here we are 20 years later and I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to die tomorrow. It's just part of the journey.

I remember, I mean, when, when my husband and I were doing property investing and renovating and things and, and coming home from, you know, working long hours and seeing the painter go out and he's gone, by the way, with the paint that I've done in the bedroom, you can't sleep there tonight, otherwise the fumes will kill you. And we didn't have extra money to go to a hotel, so we moved this mattress into the into the kitchen and we're laying on this floor and it's freezing cold. We've got to be up at like 5 o'clock the next morning and it's midnight. And I'm like, is this worth it? So you have those kind of moments, don't you? Like, is this how it was supposed to be? And sometimes the steps along the way, there are the challenges. But, you know, I think what— the people who look out for you the most are the ones who love you the most and want to help you. And so I can imagine 8 years of your life life that's gone into that. And a lot of, you know, parents who have come from, you know, a difficult overseas background or, you know, lower socioeconomic areas or whatever, often they actually have more invested in their child having a better life as well. Just, just that kind of conversations and getting them to see your vision of not completing the PhD. How did you navigate that?

Um, yeah, I did it my way. I said, I'm sorry, but this is, this is the way it's going to be, and I just need you to trust me, and it's gonna my father says you make your own bed. So I said, I'm making my own bed, I'll face the consequences. It's all good. And now it's obviously paid off. So it's all been, it's all been worth it. But there were many, many, many, many, many times where you had to double take and go, did I, did I make the right decision? Yeah.

And I think that's that belief. And just, you know, as a little aside, obviously You know, the opportunities that you've created from the business, you've just had an incredible experience with your dad, right?

Yeah, 100%. Yes, we went away, we went walking across Spain for 2 months and just, just going walk a bit. And, um, to— it's called a pilgrimage, it's called, um, the Camino de Santiago. And it was like being in a mastermind for 41 days. So it was 41 days of walking either side. We spent some time in France, we spent some time in Spain, just having some fun. But The people who are on this pilgrimage, every 9 out of 10 of them are not doing it for a religious reason. They were doing it because they had reached the epitome of success. They couldn't buy any more cars. They couldn't drive. Yeah, couldn't buy any more houses. They couldn't drive any more cars. They've got everything. And then they were there because they said, there's got to be more to life than this. I have all the money in the world. Now I have time, money and time. But what did I miss out on? What more can I do with the time that I have left on this planet? And so being around people, and just to give you one example, one of the ladies that I met there, her department, she's 3 down from the VP of American Express. Her department does $450 billion in transactions a month. My brain could not even comprehend those numbers. But throughout our journey for 41 days, I learned about leadership. I learned about culture. I learned about how to grow a company that's 200 years old and continue to open up new markets and all these co— so it was one of the most amazing experiences, not only just being meeting these people, but being with my father, obviously.

And it's kind of like an interesting metaphor really for your life as a business person because you're also dealing with the fact that, you know, you've got injuries and, you know, tired days. Every now and then I see your post, I'm like, oh my gosh, how are they going to keep going? But you kind of push through, right? You know what the destination is. So, um, Johan, one of the— I guess you've had a few sliding door moments, and I'd love for you to share the story about that the building tech business, that you saw an opportunity because I think a lot of us just walk past problems and don't seek solutions. And I just, I love the innovation that you demonstrate.

Thank you. A book that I recommend everybody read is called Unlimited Wealth by Paul Zane Pilsner. And he shows you that no matter where you go, there is unlimited wealth lying around everywhere. And if you stop, you can just pick that up. So this is the start of the story. I moved into a building and it's in the heart of Melbourne city over here. And when I moved in, they said, this is the best building in Melbourne. I said, fantastic, this is amazing. And after I moved in, I get a piece of paper slide under my door and it says, your windows will get cleaned. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. That night, the gym is for maintenance. Okay. And then the next morning, the pool is out of order. And then that night, the pool is fixed. Like, you know, I'm like, what is going on?

All these pieces of paper going under your door. Exactly. Exactly. Don't leave home for a month, right?

After a month, I've got an inch of paper sitting next to the table next to my door with all just one sentence on it. So I went up to the guy and I said, hey, how much is this costing me? He said, it's a dollar per sheet, the owner's corporation fees. And so dollar per sheet, twice a day, 500 apartments, that's $1,000 a day. I said, man, you're spending $1,000 a day plus some poor soul is walking around up and down the stairs, uh, not the stairs, but up and down the building putting these things I said, why don't we build an app for the building? He goes, what do you mean? This is 2012. I said, you know, mobile app on the phone. You can just send out a push notification to all the people and say, hey, the garden's getting watered. You know, it doesn't matter. He goes, I don't know about this technology. So anyway, so I went to Dubai, looked at their stuff, came back and said, okay, cool. This is the tech. We built it. And then I showed it to him. He goes, we've got to show the owners corp. We showed it to them. They loved it. They took it up. He comes chasing me and going, hey, how much is this going to, you know, how much profit did you just make? I said, I did all right. He goes, do you want to partner up? And then we partnered up and we launched it into 30 of the buildings and that's how this business started. And then he retired, I bought him out and then, um, yeah, I get a phone call literally 24 hours later. So I'm sitting at home going, okay, I've just bought this business, but I'm not the guy who goes and sells the technology. What, what was I thinking? I go, universe, please give me a, give me a way. And then 24 hours later, my phone rings and these guys go, we've been trying to copy your technology for 2 years. What's it going to take to buy you out or partner with you? And I said, wow, well, that's timely. Let's go meet up. And I go to meet up with these guys and the last company that they built, like after they emailed me, I looked them up and they're in the newspapers. Like they built a company to $1.2 billion. So I'm sitting down at the table going, how did I find myself at this table? This is incredible.

Now a quick word from our sponsor, Your Success Club. Your Success Club is a group of vibrant, abundance seekers. If you subscribe to ExitTheMatrix.io, we are going to drop you into the club room, which has lots of goodies, resources, and a free gift just for subscribing. Now back to the podcast.

Right. So anyway, so 4 years later, we partnered up. 4 years later, we built the company to $20 million. I exited that in 2019. And Yeah, and then after that, just chilled out for a little bit. In between, bought and sold a couple of other companies, built Business Authorities, which is a community of like-minded people who help each other. And then Walt, well, we were in lockdown and then we got a week off where we got to fly anywhere. So I flew up to the Gold Coast and Walt had messaged me and I said, hey, do you want to catch up? And we caught up for breakfast and then he showed me everything that he was doing and that blew me away, which is the lead generation ticket.

You are enjoying the nice life. Retired, going, ah, this is good. Opportunity presents again.

Yep. When you have a clear mind, all you see is opportunity everywhere that you can fix. Yeah. And with this, in this day and age, like literally every day there's, there's opportunities coming around every 10 minutes. So if you miss something, it doesn't matter. There's another one coming around in 10 minutes. Opportunities are like buses. Every 10 minutes there's a new one coming. So that it's about picking one and then going all in. Um, a beautiful little thing that I learned— now, I've had the privilege to be around people who are poor mindset and rich mindset, and one of the biggest distinctions that I've realized is the poor people— so I'm in tech, obviously, and I have a team, and my team can build out absolutely anything. The poor mindset people, every time I go, how you going? Yeah, good. What are you working on? Ah, I'd love to tell you, but you've got to sign an NDA. I'm not signing an NDA. I'd love to tell But no, I don't want to tell you because you've got a team and you can build it. And okay, cool. No problem. Anyway, a year goes past. How's it going? How's the idea? Is it coming? Oh, nearly, nearly. You know, I just had a kid, so I need another year. Okay, cool. Another year goes past. How's it going? Oh, you know what? Uber stole my idea. That was my idea. I was going to build Uber. Right. Okay, cool. Now that now contrast that with the rich mindset people, success mindset. Anyone and everyone that I talk to in that frame of mind, they go, hey, I'm doing this, this, this, this, this. What do you think about blah, blah, blah? And they'll tell you all the ideas because in the They know that if you, if they put it out there, you'll be like, oh, I am, and most people are, oh, wow, cool. Yeah, I know exactly who you need to connect with. And then I just make connections and everybody connects you. So the difference between the poor mindset people is they have a scarcity mindset. The difference between the rich mindset people is they just want to tell everybody everything. It doesn't matter about whether someone's going to steal the idea and they're grateful if they do because they've now imagined it into existence. Right. And so it's not about stealing an idea. There's ideas coming around every 10 minutes. And so, yeah, that's the difference between the the rich and the poor mindsets.

It's interesting. I love that analogy. I, I have a similar one, which is essentially the universe is sending out so many arrows and we just have to be present with the target to catch them. It's not, it's not like there's one idea. It's like the same idea could go to everyone. Everyone could have had the Uber idea. It's just that you missed it. And, and the other thing is you have to be present and as you said, your mind clear to actually have the opportunities. And what I've seen is a lot of people are living in the past or they're living in the future. And they're hoping and wishing something will happen, or they're regretting that something did happen. And unless you're in the present, like, if I can think that I'm sending out every single day, you know, top-notch detectives to find opportunities of synchronicity and, and people and connections and, and wealth or whatever it is, and they're bringing it back— if I'm not here, if I'm in the past or if I'm in the future, I'm not going to get it. And so unless you're actually here and present and open and talking and connecting You know, those, those opportunities miss people, don't they?

Yep, 100%. And there's so many good opportunities that I missed. I've seen some friends actually. Here's, here's a great one. So we ran one of the Business Authority events and this friend comes and he goes, I'm so skeptical about all this business stuff. I'm only here because my wife brought me here. All right, cool. No problem. Anyway, so that was the start of the weekend. It was a 3-day thing and And at the end of the 3 days, he's like, man, I'm super motivated. I'm going to make something happen. So, okay, cool. Go for it. 6 months later, he comes to me and he's like, dude, I've started my own business. And he works for Monash, Monash University. And Monash builds technology all the time. And they did a project with the CIA, right? And from that, they've, he gets the license to use this technology, which the CIA no longer need, but Monash has the license for it. And he pays them a royalty of 5%. He then takes that and he's now turned it into a multimillion-dollar business.

Beautiful.

Time.

I love it. But what we're talking about multimillion-dollar businesses, you have another one that you've currently developed. You know, you, you started to talk about your, I guess, ah, let's meet up with someone from the group and have a chat to Walt and you loved what he did. Now you, you've doubled down in that. So tell us a bit about of what you've created now.

Yeah, for sure. So that was a lead generation technology that he used to sell on CD back there 10 years ago. Obviously, evolved a lot over those 13 years. But now, in the last— so 4 years ago we built this company, and in the last 2 years we've upgraded it with so much AI, it's crazy. And so what it can now— you can tell it, I'm looking for all the CEOs in Melbourne who love creating impact, who are into leadership, and I'm— I want to invite them over to an event that I'm doing, and they have to be doing $5 million to qualify. And now it'll go find them, start talking to them, booking them into your calendar, showing them the video, inviting them. So now the technology is there where we can literally pin, pick out exactly who we want. There's no more tire kickers. There's no more, let's go have a coffee and see if we gel. We already know with the click of a button, the AI will summarize everything about them because it knows all of their LinkedIn. It knows all of their Instagram. It'll tell me their values. It'll tell me how to build rapport. You showed me this. Oh my God. I got to say. Your NotebookLM, I put in the link to, I put in the chairs, the guy who's running the event yesterday, I put in his profile and I said, help me build rapport with this person. What do I do? And it goes, talk to him about luxury travel, talk to him about this, this, this. And then I showed it to him. I go, look, it's telling me to talk to you about this stuff. And he's like, oh my God, only my deepest, you know, friends know this stuff. Literally with a click of a button, you know, everything about it.

I mean, we love sharing tools with each other. But it was interesting. I spoke to someone at a property conference recently who is probably one of the preeminent property experts in Australia and does a, you know, 50-page charts of all of the different property information. He does his own kind of walkthrough. And I showed him how I put the chart into NotebookLM and made a podcast out of it in 2 minutes. And he's just like, my job's gone. I'm like, no, you keep doing the data. So, you know, this is, I mean, and that's just one tool, but there's so many tools coming up. I guess just to finish up, you know, we've talked about a couple of these sliding door moments and some of the businesses that you've built and what you have now. And I know looking at White Label and Comet Suite and being part of that infrastructure, I've seen the opportunities where, and we've talked about this, technology doesn't hold people back anymore. And, you know, your example of being in a building building with 500 other apartments, there's 500 other people, 500 at least people getting the pieces of paper with these opportunities coming, right? And you're the one who's gone, wait a second, this is a problem that could be solved. And technology was an answer. And technology, you know, some people sit back and think that it is, um, they have to work it all out. But now with what we've seen with AI, technology is no longer a barrier. You know, it's around if you desire what you want to create, you can create it.

Yep, exactly. And a tool that I was sharing with you yesterday, you know, bolt.new, and in a matter of seconds it built what we got quoted $60,000 to $90,000. And the people who quoted it said it would take 3 months. I built it in this tool in literally 20 seconds, and I just went, wow. And now I just need somebody to— it got it, it got it to 80%, 90%, and now I just need to hire somebody for 2 days to tweak it a bit and it's done. Yeah. Imagine the cost savings. So what technology allows us to do is to compress time. For me to build rapport, for me to build connections with some of the best people on the planet would take me a lot of time, but now I can do it in a matter of days. I went into our tool in White Label Suite and I said, find me all the influencers in the AI tech world. It found me a person in literally 10 seconds who has 98,000 followers. Followers. And so I reached out to him. I said, hey dude, you've got, you've got an amazing platform, 98,000 followers. For me to build up to 98,000 followers, it's going to take me a lot of time. I don't have that time. For me to buy those 98,000 followers with ads is going to take, cost me a lot of money. I don't want to spend that money. He already has the audience. So I said, hey, how about we do a joint venture? I'm going to give you all the videos, all the emails, everything to send out to these people, and I'm going to pay you 30% for every referral that comes through for the life of the client. And he's like, that's the best deal I've ever had. And so he's getting ready to promote it. Like, that's just one. By the way, I have a list of close to 1,000 of those people. So even if 10% of those people, you know, pop it off the way I think that they're going to, the company valuation goes through the roof.

Absolutely. Well, you know, I think, uh, for those of you who are listening, you, uh, we— I'll put a link below, uh, just go to exitthematrix.io johann, and that's J-O-H-A-N-N, so that you can get a link to that tool and you can check it out yourself. And I'm sure we'll get a few extra credits thrown in or as a trial for you to try it out, because I know someone who's worked in that digital marketing space, you know, in the CRM space and databases and communication with people, this is definitely a tool that allows me to actually just turn up authentically and say, what do I want to do and how do I want to create it? And it makes it so much easier for me. So I appreciate that. So I check, I want you guys to check that out. But Johan, you've exited the matrix a number of times and it looks, you know, the way you're setting up the business, you'll be exiting the matrix again. Is there anything that you have, I guess, realized? Now we talked a little about the time you had with your dad and I know, you know, you're very close with your wife and your kids and community and spending time with them. Is there any realizations of what life outside the matrix is for those who are going, hmm, I would like to have a bit of that.

Trust in yourself. You have access to all the tools you will ever need. We all got access to YouTube 20 years ago. And what did most— 99.9% of the population went on there to watch comedy and watch cat videos. It's the 1% that, you know, said, hey, I can learn from anybody and anything and utilize that to upskill every day. And that's all you can do every day. You upskill. Jane, you were telling me by the time you get out of bed now, you've upscaled like 3 things into your brain, and now I have to subscribe to something else.

complexity.ai Pro. The free version is pretty good. By the time you listen to this, it's probably obsolete. But, and I think that, that what you, you say is that you're only limited by what you can think and what you can dream.

100%. And there is nobody that you cannot get in the room with. Figure out how to be a high-value person where everybody wants to be around you. And that's just going to help you grow your network, which then increases your net worth.

So just for fun, a final piece of weirdness or something bizarre about you that maybe some people would be interested to hear.

Well, in my spare time, which there is very little of at this point in time, I love to build board games. So we build board games for fun and board games designed to educate. Board games are primarily around business and so how to build businesses with board games.

Fantastic. I've subscribed and actually played one of your latest games, which I just love. So, well, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I'm gonna possibly just do a bonus episode for 5 minutes to get to how you came up with the board game story because you gotta listen to this. It's a really great story. Sorry, but for now we'll let Johan go. And look guys, that's a wrap for another awesome episode of Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. But before you stop listening and toggle off, please go and leave us a 5-star review, because if we can hack the algorithm, we can get this message in front of more people and hopefully just inspire them to also exit the matrix and live a life of their dreams. And I encourage you to go to exitthematrix.io and subscribe. And I've very special gift for you as a subscriber, and you will get notified when the next episode is out. So make sure you go and check out White Label Suite. Uh, that's Johan's business. If you just go to exitthematrix.io/s for short, /johan, J-O-H-A-N-N, then you will be able to get a little bonus as well. So thank you so very much, Johan. I really appreciate you being here. And as always, to everyone, here's to your success.

Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to Exit the Matrix Stories of Success. Make sure you subscribe to future episodes at www.exitthematrix.io. Until next time, here's to your success. Sankumulu nathiywa. Sankumulu anyiwa.

Waila athiywa.