Episode #564 - Taking Charge Of Your Business with Matthew Pollard

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. You wrote that book. You've got very prominently displayed the edge. We're coming up on a hard stop on time. Talk about the. How did you write there? Did you write. Did you get yourself a. Just use editors or did you get a ghostwriter to help you get it down and get it in shape? How did you, how long did it take too?

Yeah, so, I mean, it was a long journey mainly because I didn't want to write the book truthfully. I mean, I had reading speed issues. I kept saying. So what happened is I deliver a presentation I deliver for association small businesses called Rapid Growth the Lazy Way. Originally I delivered it for free to get clients in the local area. And I started every time I spoke for free, I'd get, you know, five figures worth of clients. And then people started offering me five figures to speak and then I'd still get five figures. I never sell from stage, but I, as a matter of fact, I tell people not to hire me. But the psychology of that is, you know, people, they resonate with someone. And if you tell great stories because they short circuit the logical mind, you speak to the emotional mind, they also activate the articulate activating system of the brain which creates rapport. Right. If you use it. I mean, speaking from stages are great, just like being on a podcast is a great pedestal. But I started delivering this keynote and I talk about differentiation, which Wendy was one of the story that I used. Then I talk about niche marketing and I talk about my old education business. And then I talk about sales systemization. And before I talked about sales systemization just to bring myself down a peg. Cause I wanted to come to people's level. Because what happens is people project extroversion and this person was always going to be successful on you. They see someone that's doing well and. And they go. It was easier for them than it is for me. Right. Be careful the stories you tell yourself. Right. People see me as this person that had a natural ability. So I felt like I needed to really. I put up this photo of me with terrible acne at my sister's wedding. I talk about how horrible that was for me to know that that was going to be on the mantle for the rest of my life. I bring myself down a peg. I talk about my introversion, my shyness, and the story of How I fell into sales and my success afterwards. And while a lot of people came and said, thank you for those ideas, I'll go and implement them. I was blown away at how many introverts came up afterwards and said, matt, I had no idea that I could sell as an introvert. I thought I just had to accept subpar performance or I've avoided sales and, you know, just paid affiliates or, you know, just paid agencies or relied on agencies to send me work. I had no idea I could actually sell. And I kept telling people, you'll laugh at this. I kept telling other authorities in the world of sales that I knew were introverted that somebody should write a book on introverted selling. I, not me. But after years of everybody saying to me, matt, no one's going to buy a book on introverted sales. I mean, I know niche marketing. There are business owners all over the world that are introverted trying to run businesses that are tired of feeling like they're stuck in that hamster wheel and believing that they can't sell. So eventually I worked with this guy called Derrick Lewis. And Derek Lewis was a ghostwriter convinced that people couldn't afford $20,000 for a ghostwritten book. We called him the authority architect. We picked the niche of highly complex authors. We built out his sales system. We put his price up to 40,000, which was still low compared to industry averages. But he went from making 27,000 in 2013 and 12,000 when he reached out to me in October of 2014 to making 40,000 within two weeks, 80,000 within six weeks, 120 by the end of the year, just shy of 300,000 the year after that. He now charges $130,000 to do a ghost written book. And he's booked out months and months and months in advance. So Derek said to me, he's like, matt, you've got to put these principles into a book and I don't want to write a book. He convinced me. So we ended up writing, which actually isn't the book, you see, that was actually the introvert's edge to sales, which is the white cover book. And then, I mean, that book, I mean, it's in 16 languages now. It sold over 75,000 copies. And it's just transformed people's lives. So we went back to the drawing board with the networking because when I came to the US I had to recreate my brand. And it was this kid's story that blew me away. Like he wrote, he found the sales book on his dad's, like, coffee Table and he picked it up and he read it. And if you can imagine a young teenager walking around with this book at high school. But he had determined that if Matthew could, and I'm talking about myself in third person because this is him thinking if Matthew could create a system for selling, then he, a shy guy that had a used to walk around the hoodie and never used to make eye contact, he could develop a system for making friends. Within weeks, the hoodie went away. The eye contact, he's got friends, there's a girl in the picture. And his life has transformed. Not from anything I taught him, but just seeing that you could make friends with a system because I made sales a system. And I went, that's it. We're writing the book the Introverts Edge to Networking and we focus on a completely different mechanism for. For being. For having a sales conversation that focuses on passion and mission as opposed to function, that focuses on momentum, partners and champions as opposed to transactional deals. Because for me, I have no interest in helping people get a deal today because that's giving them a fish. While of course the book will help people do that, my major focus is ensuring that long term they can get people to chase them from all over the world. And that's about getting the message right. Learning how to share what you love to see what you hate to see. The mission that you're on as opposed to I've got this skill set and I work with this group of people which sounds pitchy and horrific. And then helping people transition into a conversation after networking. Because you should never sell in the networking room.

Yeah, because the thing is giving them tools and insight that'll basically change their DNA, their expectations, the way they look at things, their natural responses and allow them. Because you're giving them things where they can build up the confidence and convince themselves there's no reason for themselves to settle for failure, mediocrity in given situation or no reason to stop because they run into a brick wall. When you read real quickly now, you came to the United States. What was the first? How did you get started in the United States? And how long was it before you're getting asked to speak to these Fortune 500 companies and get these big paychecks for speaking to big groups. And how long did that take?

Not as long as you think. So there's actually a story in my new book because again, the first five chapters of my book talk about strategy and the second half is all about tactics. And everybody thinks everything takes forever. What actually takes forever is Convincing yourself that you can do it and then sitting yourself down to do the hard work, which is days of work, not weeks of work, then everything's much quicker. But because you don't do that, everyone's got this mindset if it takes forever to get speaking events. So I mean, I was getting flown within that first year. Electrolux flew me all the way. So I'm trying to remember where I spoke. Thailand, to speak for their entire Asia Pacific group. So not very long I was speaking. My first presentation came from a networking event where I used my, what I call unified message. I'm the rapid growth guy. And then when somebody asks me, what is that? Because what I do is when I go into a networking event, I say, you know, I prefer to be interested before I try to be interesting. So I'll offer suggestions and introductions and like eventually, oh my gosh, Matt, I've been talking about myself for 20 minutes. I haven't even asked you what you do, what is that? And I respond with, oh, I'm the rapid growth guy, full stop. Like I just said, I'm an accountant. They should know what that is. Yeah, it's like their brain almost has a meltdown and they're like, what exactly is that? And then I say, well, you know, one of the things I love to see more than anything in the world is an amazing introverted service provider with enough talent, skill and belief in themselves to go and start their own business. I just find that more often than not, I just hate seeing this. They get stuck in an endless hamster wheel of struggling to find interest to people, trying to set themselves apart, trying to make a sale and, and you know, feeling like really people only care about one thing, price. Do you know anyone like that? And the response I get back is, well, of course, because I've gone to the right networking event because I've done my research before I went. You're not looking up networking events, connecting with people before you go so you know who to speak to when you get there. It's like a shopping list. Why would you go to a grocery store without a shopping list? So once you're there. And they respond with yes. I said, well, I'm on a mission to help introverts realize they're not second class citizens. Their path to success is just different. And if they focus on just three things outside the scope of their functional skill, which they're usually amazing at, they really can build a rapid growth business that revolves around them, their family and their life, not the other way around. And then I might step into an example like Wendy and tell them that story. Now what was interesting is the first time I did that at a networking event in Austin, Texas, because I was speaking to the right people. One of those people said to me, oh my gosh, I need to introduce you to someone. Walk me straight up to a person that ran an event and he's like, oh, we've got to get you to speak from stage. That was the first networking event I went to and I got clients from that. I then spoke at a bunch of other events. But I mean, that wasn't the first time I got a client, but it was the first time I got a client from going actively out into a networking event. So now if you think I've only been in the country now for eight years, yes, I'm listed. You know, I'm listed on a lot of places as one of the best sales speakers in the world, which gets me picked up by a lot of corporations to go and talk about stuff, storytelling, because I talk about three dimensional, emotionally driven story. But I mean I was speaking at least once or twice a month within six months of landing in the United States without people knowing my name. And to put a finer point on it, within six months I went from no one knowing my name and me landing to getting invited to events in Austin as one of the most connected people in the city.

Isn't that amazing? Unbelievable. Well, congratulations. This has gone fast. Matthew, I'm really excited about your career, what you're doing and excited about your future and the impact you're making. Does your family like Chapel Hill? They like living in Chapel Hill.

My family does. Part of my family does. The part of my family that's in Australia, my mother, father, sister, brother in law and young nephew. They wish that Chapel hill was about 45 minutes from where they live as opposed to a 20 hour flight.

Yeah, yeah, there is, there is that side of it. Well, thanks so much. Do you. Best wishes. Moving forward, let's, let's make up our minds to get together again. If you're down in Palm Beach, Florida or Aspen, Colorado, you're going to have to look me up. And let's give you a chance to make one last. I'm going to give you a chance to have the final word here before we kick off.

Well, I appreciate that. I mean for me, I think a lot of people looking for the tactical things to what to do next. So what my suggestion to you is is that I put a ton of free content out on YouTube because that's what gave me so much. But what I would highly recommend to people is strategy before tactics, exactly like I highlighted. So if you want to learn how to create your unified message and discover your niche of willing to buy clients your version of the rapid growth guide, the China Success Coach, and then pick your niche, you don't need to hire me for that. You can go to matthew pollard.com growth there you'll be able to download a template where you'll be able to work through exactly how to go about figuring that out and coming up and making those tough decisions. I wouldn't recommend you do it by yourself and don't do it with someone else in your industry. So if you're a florist, don't speak to another florist, go work with an attorney. If you're a business coach, go work with a graphic designer. Because otherwise you get stuck in your functional language and you won't get through it. But I would suggest, and I'm sure Larry won't mind, share this podcast with some somebody else that you know that's in a different industry and say at the end of this, I'd like to block out two hours of your time to do this exercise. You do it for them, they do it for you, will be blown away at the results they get. And then do not definitely do not buy both of my books. Don't even download both the first chapter of both of my books because nobody should focus on more than one system at a time. So decide whether or not you want more leads, in which case networking or decide whether or not you want to focus on sales and download the first chapter. And as I said with the sales book, if you just put it in the right order, fill in the gaps, throw out what you shouldn't, you'll double your sales in the next 60 days. So go to the introverts edge.com pick which book you want to download the first chapter with and that'll get you over your belief that you can sell as an introvert or network as an introvert. And then it will break down the system in the first chapter. You know, for me, my mission is to help introverts all over the world. I want you to feel like you have to buy the book for that. And that's why, you know, I make sure that we, we hit those milestones in the first chapter for you.

Absolutely incredible. Let me and I would imagine going through that, don't let yourself be overwhelmed with the idea of this because I think what you'll find is what will come to you from getting into this process is immediately the first 1, 2, 3. Maybe things you need to change or adjust will come bouncing out of the state, you know, off the page and, and really 1, 2, 3 changes off what you're already doing can be life changing. And so don't let yourself be overwhelmed by 27 different steps and everything because that's a period of time compressed and you've already been through a lot of steps. You already got a success pattern going and this is a way for you to kind of see what could be the next direction to go in. And of course, I think Matthew's always going to be out there in case you need to give him a ring. Thanks so much Matthew. This has been great.

Thank you very much for having me, mate.

Yes sir. Talk to you and enjoy Chapel Hill. Thanks for listening to the Million Dollar Master Buy. If you felt there were any valuable takeaways from this episode, please take a minute and leave us a five star review. Your feedback is important and really helps us get the word out to a wider audience. Remember, we have a valuable webinar that is absolutely free. Register for it right now@whiteallonwinning.com thanks for listening.