Everything I Learned Building Multiple 8-Figure Companies

In this video, you're going to see a presentation that I did for a bunch of business owners and sales reps at an Australian event called Helio Scale. I'm going to go through how I got to where I am today and some of the business lessons along the way. Some things around market positioning and how to have a successful product and how you can do and how you can make that product successful without having to rely on paid advertising and how to actually position yourself in the marketplace to where there is a demand immediately for what you're selling. Alrighty, guys. So what I want to talk about is like, essentially how I got where I am today. Kind of give you a little bit of a rundown and a kind of a brief explanation of where I am, like what I used to do and like what I've done, I guess in between when I kind of started in business and now essentially. Let me just. For some reason this thing's not working. If it doesn't work, I'll cut it away. That's weird. All right, anyway, I'll cut it away. It doesn't matter. Oh, there we go. All right, cool. All right, so if I can put it in play mode, does that look right to you guys? You guys see that? All right. All right, cool. All right. So most of you guys probably know me from sales sniper or seventh level, right? And then now I have $IO. Okay, so what I used to do, okay, I used to be a sniper. I was in a tier one special forces unit called 2 Commander Regiment. So that was me from the age of about 19 through to about 26 years old. Multiple combat deployments, you know, yada, yada, yada, all that kind of fun stuff. So it used to be cool. Now I just sort of hang around my family, my kids. I try and make enough money to do the stuff that I want to do, but that's really about as deep as it gets on that component. And what I'll do is I kind of run you through who I am, right? So 2005, I joined the military. All right? And I'll just kind of reference these in and out. 2005, I joined the military. I was desperately afraid that I was a heinous pussy. And that's. That's the honest truth of why I joined the military. Right. I lived a good life. I had good parents. And I just really wasn't sure that if someone fucked around, like, what I would find out, essentially. And so I wanted to prove to myself that I could do difficult things. And so I went and did what I thought was to be the most. The most difficult thing where I was guaranteed to find a difficult and arduous situations. And so I joined the military then from there in 2008, I went on my first deployment. In 2010, I went on another deployment and I was deployed sort of different things and different theaters in between there then I knew that I wasn't a lifer, though. It's just not like I'm not someone who takes direction extremely well. Like I always say that I was in the military and I still never actually had a boss. I just don't work well in that environment. And I prefer to be kind of a free spirit. I'm about as true of an entrepreneur as what you can get. And so I became a personal trainer. Personal training was a great thing for me to do. One it got me into fitness and all that kind of good stuff. But what it did do is it taught me like, how to go out, approach people. And it's a really good little way to learn how to do sales, marketing, operations, kind of everything business. And then I graduated to owning gyms. I owned one gym. I opened up a second gym, a third gym. Then from there, partner with a guy called Travis Jones, and then me, I put my gyms in, except for one of them, and then a bunch of other people. And we ended up opening up about 18 gyms altogether. I was the person that would go forward and I would do all the sales for that. So I was an owner, but I was predominantly like a salesperson. And I would open up the new gyms and that was my role. And so I never really. I wasn't really good at sales. I was someone who just kind of did it because it was required, but because there was so much pressure to be able to perform. Um, and our, our KPI was 40% lead to sale, not lead to set, not contact. It was 40% of all leads had to be sold. Now, we didn't know that was kind of ridiculous. And we would just get emailed an Excel spreadsheet twice a day. And. And that's how we did the sales. We would just call them. I would do outbound sales for about eight hours a day. And through that, selling eight hours a day, five, sometimes six days a week for years. That's how I sort of started to use the processes that I learned as a sniper in order to, you know, kind of figure out what's the most optimal way to do this, because I wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination. But what I was Was I was pretty systemized and processed around doing that because I didn't want to have to work insane hours to get the outcome. I didn't really trust anybody else on the team to be able to do it. So I just kind of like, when it came to the opening of the gyms, I would just do all of it myself. And then from there I'd pass on to other people. Like, as we went in about 2016, I had my first child. So I had my son. I was pretty flat broke at that stage, to be honest. Like, it was a really tough time. And even 2018, when my daughter was born. Sorry, 2019, my daughter was born in 2018, my wife felt pregnant. Like, we were pretty much flat broke as well. And we had to borrow the money for the. We had to borrow the money for like some of the tests, right, like for the, like some of the genetic tests that you do. And then when 20. And then it was around that time, around 2018, 19, where I went to my wife and I said, like, I'm so incredibly unhappy doing what I'm doing. I just kind of have to leave. So I just dissolved my equity and left. Right. Which you'll start to see a theme, right. So I was extremely unhappy. The people I was working with I thought were kind of scumbags. And I think I was proven to be true after the fact that. But I was. I just didn't like what was going on. And instead of going through some sort of long drawn out process where I try and like sell and get all the money that I can, I just decided to bounce out and leave. And then I started my own thing was called, like, the only thing I really knew how to do was sell fitness. So I started thinking fitness sales sniper. And that was with James Sackle. So that was me. And then I asked James to come in. And James is instrumental in the building of that business. I mean, James are still pretty close to the today. And then, you know, I was doing sales myself for about seven to eight different gyms all around the world all at once. And James is doing all the operations. And I was doing that and we started to grow that I've never done, like, I've never done paid advertising for one of my own businesses, separate seventh level. But I wasn't the face of that. That's a different business. But I'll go into that. I'm a big believer of like, if you position a product well enough in the marketplace and you espouse the value that it does, and like, you really don't have to do paid ads. Paid ads are sort of a solution to either massively scale or to subsidize having a kind of a shit offer. Right? Most businesses do not need paid ads to be quite successful, and I'm going to give some examples of that. But paid advertising budgets, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit, are things that are. People lean into it way too heavily, but what they don't really understand is how to position an offer that is going to be wanted and needed by the marketplace. Or they don't know how to establish need in the marketplace. And that's where they struggle. Right? Or they get commoditized and then they have to do tons of paid advertising. That's when margins start to blow out and stuff like that. And so like marketers who rely a lot on paid ads just aren't very good at marketing. And so in 2020, we grew that up. That got to like $50,000 a month pretty quickly. But then it sort of collapsed because like I was overselling the ability in order for us to actually fulfill it. So we scaled it back down and then started to slowly scale it back up, put some actual systems in place. But we had like, you know, I think at one stage we had 50, 60 gyms on and it was all going pretty well. Then from there I transitioned into like high ticket. And because I've been selling gyms and fitness and all that kind of stuff for so long, I went into high ticket. And I was very successful very quickly because I've been a full time salesperson for about eight years at that point, I think. And so I remember I made $12,000 commission my first week of being a high ticket closer. And then I kind of went to James and I was like, hey, let's just fire all the gyms and just do this. And so we did that. So we fired all the gyms. And then it was actually way easier to find reps that could sell the ROI kind of business coaching stuff. It was way harder to find people that could sell $300 fitness programs. And it wasn't harder to find, like, it wasn't numbers, it was people who could actually sell. I had so many high ticket closers that came on that we recruited that could not sell a fucking. Could not close a door in a fitness program like at all. So like the disparity of skill set from someone who like sells cheap gym memberships to someone who sells $25,000 business coaching packages was stark. And so I brought those fitness Guys in. And that was like the first round of people that were like sales sniper. So sales sniper was a done for you sales agency. It grew into a done for you sales and marketing agency. And we, you know, and sort of like. And a consultancy grew that to around two and a half million dollars a month, I would say in about two years. Roughly zero advertising. Not a dollar was spent on advertising. And when I say not a dollar, I mean not a cent. There was not a single line item that was like ads or marketing even. There was no marketing budget. Everything was done through completely organic content that had no spend behind it. And brand positioning. Sales agencies are something that to be fair, are relatively easy to get clients for because it's a very needed. It's a very needed thing. People hate sales. And so anything they can do to like get rid of it is something that people will do. Right. In 2021, I met a guy called Jeremy Miner. I hired him to be my sales coach. And then from there he asked me to come on. When I came onto seventh level was doing roughly $20,000 a month. I came on as a sales rep. Then from there was asked to be sort of run it. Sales sniper was doing pretty well. It was about, I think it was over, over a million dollars a month at that point. And so I was doing, running this, but I was a full time salesperson for this. And then I kind of became CEO. I got offered a good chunk of the company and then I kind of grew that up from there. And I think, you know, we grew to. I think it was like two and a half million dollars a month US by the time I sort of left. I left in January of 2024 was when I handed the company over. And then that's when I started a call center. Okay, the call center was a total, like it wasn't a ruse, but what it was, it was never meant to be a real business. It was meant to be like I wanted to start a dialing software because that was the biggest problem that I saw with an industry that I knew quite well. And also like wider calling leads and, and then so but I needed, I needed some, I needed a way of testing my methodology of dialing and the ideas that I had. And software, I've never done software before. So I knew that if I started a call center that I could grow that I. That did that to $300,000 month one. Again, no advertising. That was all off like referrals, networking and then just like positioning. It was called the SDR call center. So I Thought the name was quite good. And it was like, allow me, everyone hates your SDR team. So I started shifting content towards like the unreal, the unreliability of SDR teams. And then from there that sort of got enough traction to where I could then launch that had about 30 to maybe 40 agency clients. Day one, we had about 80 call center staff over the course of a year that ran quite smoothly. And then from there it gave us an opportunity to really problem solve the dialer. Then from there I sold the call center and I didn't really have to put any much of my own money into development because I use the call center as the cash flow for that. And then from there we launched Dialer, launched Dialer in January, January of 2025. And at the moment I think we just crossed a thousand users right at the moment. I'm actively in sales. I have act, I have sales calls like round two call twos booked next week for Taylor Welch, Tony Robbins, Cardone Venture, Hiros. Right. And then we've got Andy Elliott, we've got one of Tony's already on there, We've got Cole Gordon and like a number of other quite large, well known companies already on the platform. And again, we've spent $0 in advertising. We also haven't like borrowed any money from anybody. But it's all been through like strategic partnerships. And so that is kind of what I want to talk about. And then we'll do some Q A. But it's like, why do some offers work? And I'm sure if there's sales reps in here, which I'm sure there are a lot of, it's like, why are some things easy to sell and some things are not right? And like why is it that you can go onto an offer and like people just crush it? Like I ran an offer called Yield Farming, which is one of the like last offers that I personally ran at Sales Sniper. And we did, we went from a launch of an offer, brand new business to $3 million a month U.S. in six months. Right. And that was because it was a crypto offer during a bull run. Like it was a very well placed offer. It was a yield farming offer when the yield farming concept had just, had just become a thing. And so it was a real like kind of unicorn meteoric type rise. And it was crazy and it was a lot of fun to run. It was actually a really good program. The guy who runs it's really smart. I still talk to him to this day. But like that is market positioning is incredibly Important and really negates the need for insane amounts of advertising. That they had a 30x roas, which is wild. But the market positioning was fantastic and there are a lot of companies that rise with that. Like Tesla has a $0 marketing budget, Costco has a, has a tiny marketing budget. Zara, Trader Joe's, WhatsApp, Slack, Dropbox, GitHub, GoPro and Lululemon all have minute tiny marketing budgets. Like I've never seen a Lululemon ad. I've never seen one, right? But I've been to plenty of Lululemons, right? And so that's because like what the product that they offer is really, really good and like what I love in business and what I love to sell because I sell full time. That's like my main job is product led growth. When I came into seventh level, they had, he had, Jeremy had tried to grow it many times before but like I pretty much single handedly grew to about half a million a month because like I was the sales rep, I was the marketing guy, I was everything in the business but like it. But we developed a strategy which was nobody was doing scripting and nobody was doing mid ticket, right? Like sort of everyone was either doing insanely high ticket, like I'm talking fifty hundred thousand or they were doing five hundred bucks. And so we brought out like inner, the first generation of Inner Circle was a bit cheaper, I think it was about 13,000. But it was really around scripting and that was a real hole that was in the marketplace. And the product was fantastic at the time. I have no idea what it is now, right? But the product was all about like it was an insanely good product and the value proposition around it was really, really clearly espoused, right? And so what that does is it means that like the time to value that someone gets is extremely fast, right? And a lot of the times like if you're not getting referrals in sales, like if it's not, if you have to create these hyper complex marketing and sales processes and funnels, it's because like the underlying mechanics and of the value that the, and the positioning in the marketplace is just ultimately undercooked, right? Because when you have it, your referrals should be a good chunk of your business, right? If referrals are not a good chunk of your business, then like one you have super lazy reps, right? But I got five referrals last week. We made 14 sales for dialer this week, which for a software company that sells more enterprise level software with zero advertising is fairly Fantastic, right? And five of those were like referrals, right? Customer LED content is incredibly effective. So like case studies, screen grabs, like proving that your stuff works, you know, I mean, and then showing people how you can give value and then like when you're in your category, supplying a narrative, right? That works. So in Dialer, for me, the narrative is compliance and pickup rates, right? And so if you look at my content, you'll see like that narrative throughout it. Because like I'm trying to shift a marketplace with the small following that I do have only got 18,000 on on YouTube and 30,000 on Instagram. You wouldn't think that would be enough to have a very fast growing $250,000 a month net positive cash flow software business taking absolutely $0, right? But it is because the market positioning was thought about very carefully. And like, if you look at other dialers, some other dialers do relatively similar things. I think that ours does things exceptionally well in certain areas, but we're probably undercooked in some areas that they're not. But they're all like just talking about these stupid features that no one gives a fuck about because none of them ever sold anything before, right? Then from there, you know what I mean? You've got community and then distribution partners become incredibly important, right? Like you want to have people that kind of get your stuff out there. And when you do that correctly, you can sort of like, you can create. I'll just like do it the lame way. But you can. You know, these are some of the companies that we have on here. And these companies are like New Reach Education. We have Circle of Greatness, which is a huge coaching company. They do about 300,000 leads a month. Profitable tradie sub two, which you might have. It's Pace Morbi, if you haven't heard of him. Andy elliott, Cole Gordon. Mastermind.com is the, is the Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi Company. Pedro Dow, Taylor Welch and Rick Riesing, for example, is the largest solar company in Australia, right? And so these companies all came to us because like someone saw content or someone saw something and I was referred to them. Every single one of those ones that I showed you, they were all referrals, right? And so that's what, like when you have a really good quality product, it's really easy to sell. You don't have to do crazy. And that's like what I am super passionate about. And in business, I love getting businesses off the ground and I love selling things that are a stupid good offer. And it is the one thing that I see talked about the least in this space is how do you actually make your offer incredibly enticing? And I'm not talking about the offer where you're like, hey, give them 30 days money back. I'm talking about, like the fundamental, underlying, core principles of what you're giving your customers. And so many people are trying to come up with these crazy marketing tactics and plans, when in reality, if something is really good, people will buy, just is. And if people are not buying what you're selling, it's probably because it's shit or you're really bad at positioning it, so it comes off as crap, Right. And it's just never really spoken about. And I love it and I'm super passionate. All of my businesses have worked pretty well, and none of them, except for seventh level, have required advertising. But the bigger it got and more advertising it required, the less profitable it became by a significant margin, right? And so, like, if I had my time again, I would have, I would have controlled that differently. But I've never spent a million dollars a month in advertising. So, like, I was, I was learning as I was going, right? Hey, guys, what's up? Matt here. And I've noticed that a lot of you are not subscribed. So what I want you to do is like, go over and hit little subscription. It really helps the channel out. And if you like the kind of content that I do, and you're like, hey, how can I get similar content but pay for it, then I have a membership. You can go over and join that at any stage that you want. It's like 5 49amonth, up to about 200amonth. And we do like live Q&As. We have a coaching call nearly every single day, and there's like well over 100 videos. And I upload like sort of private trainings and stuff that I do all the time. So if you want to check that out, go for it. You know, sign up through YouTube, cancel anytime, all that kind of good stuff. And anyway, back to the video. Bye. So that is like my favorite thing in business. That's what I've learned over the years as to what it takes to be successful. And that is what I think my, my greatest skill set is being able to find the holes, figure out what they are, and then create a product that fills a gap in a way that other people haven't filled it, and then provide messaging consistently enough around it that speaks to people to where I don't have to spend enormous amounts of Money to get people to do stuff. Which is why, like, I have a sales coaching program that has 600 clients. And I've 600 coaching clients. I've never once spent a dime. And I only launched it four months ago, you know, and it's a side project. Like, I don't really. It's only two hours a week, but that's 600 people, 600 coaching clients. It makes about $85,000 a month. Right? Two hours a week. And all of that is just from like, again, I called it the gurus. And so it's a. It's a very specific positioning to be able to provide outsized value. And like, hey, I'm a full time sales rep and I don't have time to do this full time. So I'll make it so cheap that it's ridiculous. And if you want to join it, it's like a hundred bucks a month. High five. Good stuff. You get all this stuff and all the coaches work for free. Why? Because they can sell you one on one and I'll take a dime. So, like, that level of transparency and the fact that I am a salesperson, I do sales full time. I'm actually in the trenches because I have a software that I'm growing and I have salespeople that do that stuff as well. But I handle most of the big sales. That's a unique positioning point that allowed me to grow. I think I get five signups a day. I don't have a single person who runs that except for a VA that 20 hours a week. There's no sales calls, no nothing. All of it's just people signing themselves up. And again, that same market positioning thing, you know? And so, yeah, so that's me. That's what I've been doing over the last little bit. That is the importance of market positioning. I don't want to go too far into it because I reckon that you guys will probably enjoy Q A about something else far more than listening to me talk in a hotel room with a PowerPoint presentation. So if you guys have any questions, I'll open the floor. Give me a clap, guys. You don't have to. It's okay. Again, the back looks familiar. Am I unmuted? Matt, can you hear me? All good. I can, yes. You got me walking around here. Anyone have questions they want to ask? Matt? Brian, It's a big room, long walk. Go for it. I'm just slow mentally take place when it comes to growing a business. And how can you. Can you. Can you make. Can you start that again, I didn't hear the first bit of it. Talk a bit closer. Yeah. So how important does reputation play when it comes to growing a business and what's your thought process around managing it since a lot of new businesses are bound to just make mistakes? For sure, man. I mean, if you ever follow me on Instagram, I call my followers on a daily basis, right? And so like, I say whatever I want pretty much all the time. So I think like, reputation is a funny one. I see. Like, I think the news cycles are extremely fast. I think that like, reputation will cycle through and everyone makes mistakes. Like I've made mistakes, everyone has to make mistakes. And I feel like people are relatively forgiving of that and people have fairly short term memories. I think the important thing is that like, you know, for every person that you piss off in business, it's like online reputation. I'm not, I'm not as super concerned about the reputation amongst people when they're talking in small groups. I think is more, more important. And so like over people or just being an in general, I think there's no bueno. I think being two different people is incredibly easy to see. So like, if you ever meet me in person, I'm the exact same now as what I am in camera. I'm like the same person all the time. And so I think that reputation amongst peers is important. I think online reputation is just a news cycle thing. And like, I couldn't give a shit what anybody says about me at any stage in saying that if you have problems with it online, I you it will affect things like show rates, close rates, stuff like that. And it is something that you should monitor and get on top of. Like Reddit is the cesspool of humanity. And so like, you know, there's a bunch of people that you could give away $100 bills and someone goes, go and go on Reddit and complain that they weren't the right, you know, fucking year, right? So, you know, it kind of is what it is, but I don't think it's sort of as important in the context that you were saying as what people think it is. Makes sense. I appreciate that. Yeah. Who asked this question? Hey, Matt, just wondering if you've ever worked on or partnered with an offer that had poor positioning and what are some like, fundamentals or key principles that you use to recraft that offer? I mean, you know, I would say no if I knew it was bad, right? Like, because like, what do I care? I mean, like, I'm not, I'm not your savior, you know, you got Jesus for that. So I, I would say, like, if, if, if something is positioned poorly, you know, it, you really want to do an analysis of, like, what is everybody else doing? And am I doing it in the same way? And is there actually allows me to stand out. The problem is everyone's kind of selling the same shit to the same people in the same way with the same messaging. And they think that because they have, like, testimonials that it's going to make a difference. It's like, people don't care, you know? And so what you've got to do is you really got to sit down and fundamentally think, like, what is actually truly different about me that I could say in, In a, in front of a group of people that were also my competitors and they couldn't argue the point, right? And like, that is a really, really difficult thing to do. And it can take days, weeks, and. Or a month to actually really sit down, dive deep and think about that. The problem is most people are too stupid or too lazy to do it. And so, like, if, if I was to sit down and I thought, like, okay, this dude's good. They're actually really good at what they do, I would sit there, I would hire out a hotel room for three days and, like, have someone who is not on your team and who is willing to be confrontational go, nope, that's stupid. They have that. Nope, that's stupid. They have that. No, you're full of shit. That's not how it is. No one cares. You have testimonials like, what's different? What's different? And if you have nothing different, you better figure that out, because that's what keeps the business going. That is the lifeblood of a business. The moment that you stop having a thing that nobody else has, then you are just a commodity in the marketplace and you're going to be victim to the fluctuation to the economy just like everybody else is. Yeah, makes sense. That was probably a little bit vitriolic. I apologize. Matt. What do you look for in an offer that has good market, like, positioning in terms of a sales rep and how do you actually find it? Yeah, it's going to be. It's probably going to be difficult, but I would say, like, you know, do they have. They need to have multiple lead sources. And what I mean by that is they need to have a set. There needs to be referrals coming in. There needs to be organic leads, and there needs to be, like, probably pay leads as well. I Don't. I'm not saying paid marketing isn't a good thing, but if it's your only thing, I think you're in a bit of trouble, right? Because like, then it's just a case of who, who can spend the most wins, right? Like, like with Dialer, I can't outspend these people because like close just borrowed 100 million. I can't beat that. But I tell you what, I've been railing their client list to the point where the owners booked a call with me and started to ask me a bunch of questions. And I said, who the do you think you are? Like, I'm like, I give a. Like I'm gonna answer your questions, you idiots. Right? And then I just made fun of them for 20 minutes and I hung up the call like it was. That was it. Like I was like, I'm not doing anything. I give a. So like I can't outspend them though. But I can out think them because I'm pretty sure I'm smarter than they are, you know, I mean, and so, and I'm better at this, I'm better at the marketing. Like I know how to get people to do stuff. So like I want to have referrals, I want to have organic leads, I want to have multiple channels coming in. They don't need to have like an organic presence. Like say what I would, but they need to have some sort of, like the brand needs to stand and mean for something, you know, like Nikes. Just do it. When you think of Nikes, you think of that now the just do it is like not just a phrase. It's like, that's Nike. Yeah. I mean it's like, just do it, man. Just go out and do it. And so all their advertising espouses that. And so you get, there's a feeling attached to it. Brand, I think is like a feeling, you know. And so, you know, it can be hard to do that, but it can be small and then it can grow out. But if they're just relying on like paid advertising channels, I think they're going to be in a bit of trouble. And if you can't really sit down and see like what's different about these guys and why would a client choose them over somebody else if you can't like clearly and articulately espouse that, like, I think easily and with a gut feeling, I think chances are that business is going to be here today, gone tomorrow. And aside from the actual product, the marketing channels and the brand itself, is there anything you look for in the product specifically, is it really good? Doesn't really work. And I mean like, not like salespeople have these like rainbows and unicorns kind of way of looking at things. Because like, salespeople are good at selling themselves the dream. But it's like, you know, at some stage you have to have a look and go, like, how happy are their clients? And can you call any of their clients or do they try and stop you? Oh, no, don't, don't, don't. Don't call the clients. Why not? Why not? Let's go home know. And you can't make everybody happy. So that's not what I'm saying. But the thing has to work. And it has to work a good chunk of the time, you know, not every time, but a good chunk of it. Okay. Some things you can't know until you get there, though. Matt, could you please, after you get asked a question, can you just say the question out loud so everyone can hear? Oh, yeah, for sure. What hair gel do you use? What hair gel do I use? No, my real question is why do you think you are the best in the game compared to your competitors? Well, I guess, I mean, I guess it depends on like, like in what context? Like every time I bring your name up, everyone like glazes you and like, you're like the best of the best. So like, why do you think that? Or like, if the question is why does. Why do so many people glaze me? Right. Well, I'll give, I'll give you two. I'll give you two answers. One is probably more honest and one is more ego based. The ego based answer is that I think I'm, I'm. I'm exceptionally good at sales and I think that I am. I have a unique ability to articulate what I'm doing in a way that is not dumbed down. So which makes me sound smart, right? Because I don't dumb down the words that I use. And so. But I can articulate it very clearly. And so there's a, there's a, like it, it seems, it seems clear at least that like I'm. There is nothing that isn't happening that isn't on purpose, right? What I think that. So that's my ego based reason for that. The second reason, which I think is probably more accurate is because I represent a father figure that a lot of young men in sales never had. Right. So that's probably more apt because I'm 41 years old. I used to kill people for a living. So I. I sort of espouse, like, a traditional alpha male. I say a lot, you know, which, like, I suppose is cool. Right. And I really don't seem to give a. What people think about me, which is, like, young men as, like, want to be that. And so people who. People don't want to be a salesperson. People fall into sales, and usually it's people with relatively difficult backgrounds and they're younger. And so, like, they see someone like me who's made it, who used to be military, who's alpha, and they're like, that guy's cool. And so, like, that's why, like, a big chunk of my following it, like, like, is. Is very. It's not, like, cult. Like, I wouldn't say that, but they're very avid, if that makes sense. Yep. Amazing. Thank you. So I'm not that I know that answered your question, but. Because I'm a legend. Well, that's why I'm a legend. I'm twice as good as they say I am. Following on from that question, Matt, what do you think separates, like, so many people in this space? Like, there seems to be quite a big gap between 95% of reps and then the top 5%. There's such a big difference. So what do you feel like separates the top 1%? Because it's pretty evident that you've been there for quite a while. Yeah. So the question is, what separates the top 1% for the rest? So I'll answer this in a couple different things. So let's just say you have an IQ of 130, which is a pretty smart person. The average IQ is 100. Right. You have a larger gap between you and the average person than the average person, somebody with down syndrome. Okay, so, like, just. Right. Just, like, mentally think about that for a second. Okay. So, like, that's. There's a lot. Intelligence is like a. It's like a. It's a cheat code that you were given at birth. Like, you didn't earn it. You were just given it. And intelligence plays a large role in all things. Right. Also, most people just don't do stuff. Now you guys are all in the room, so you guys probably all do stuff because you're there. You know, I mean, but. But in reality, I think that there's. When I did selection for Special Forces. Right. So it's. It's one of the only courses that's designed to fail people and one of the common threads that is one of the only unifying threads between all the people that pass selection and People who didn't is the ability to compartmentalize. Now what does that mean in this context? It means that like when you're given a series of really difficult things, like if I say, hey, for the next day, you're going to be doing this extremely difficult task. Now that is enough to break like 80% of people. Just the thought of having to do that for that length of time, like they'll just give up. 80%, like hands down, no questions asked. 80% of people give up before they even try. Now why is that? It's because they're looking at the totality of the task and they think about how big it is and how difficult it is. Right. Whereas compartmentalization is going like, when I'm going to break this down into a series of 10 minute goals. Right. And that's what they've done a lot of studies. And people who pass SF selection across the world have this one trait where you go, I'm gonna get to there and then I'll see what I do. Now what does that do mentally? It gives. Every single time we hit one of those barriers, it gives you a dopamine spike. Okay, Because I now have hit a goal, a really tiny one, right? And so all day I'm sitting there and I'm getting 5,000 tiny little dopamine hits. Now, when you get a dopamine hit, what do you now want? You want the next dopamine hit? So now you're hunting for dopamine hits, whereas the other person has foregone their dopamine hit for 24 hours. And that's just too overwhelming of a task. And so I feel like inherently most people who do really well are good at breaking down large things into a series of smaller things and focusing on the now like a giant staircase. Look up, just do the first step, then the second step. Don't look up at this giant staircase and go, oh my God, how am I going to achieve this? Right? And like, I do that subconsciously. A lot of you will do that subconsciously. Some of you realize that you don't and probably figure out a way to do it consciously. Because, like, that is really, I think, probably the largest thing that separates people who end up doing the things required to be in the top 1% and don't. And the people who achieve it, I. And the people who don't. I think there's a level of luck, level of circumstance and a level of intelligence that probably separates some people. You can do everything perfectly if you're a total dum dum the chances of you hitting the jackpot are pretty low. Yeah. I mean, and that's just a shit circumstance, you know, but you'll probably do all right if you do all the right things. But yeah, so it's that like, compartmentalization, that series of small doing. And then the other thing that I think is crucial and vital. There's a great book called the Hard Thing About Hard Things. And to sort of summarize it crudely is that the difficult thing about hard things is that it's seeing 10 things that are wrong, but only fixing one and leaving the other nine. Because when you leave the other nine, you. You leave all the other variables the same, which then allows you to see what's working and what's not. And I was taught that as a sniper, and I didn't even figure out that's like, that helped me until, you know, years later because, like, everyone else would be going, like, we have to change this, this, this, this, and this. And I would say, yeah, but if we do all that, we'll never know it works. So just change this one. Because when you're shooting, if you change multiple things at once, like, you're never going to know what's working right. And so, like, I was drilled into me from quite a young age. And so for me, like in my sales, I just worked on one thing and I would get better at that one thing, then I would go to the next, then I would go to the next and I go. I just systematically did that. And when I started making really good money in sales, it was because, like, it was incremental increase over the course of, over the course of time. And then by the time I sort of like everything came together, I was just very, very efficient. And when you, when you, when you have efficiency, hard work, intelligence and a good opportunity, that's what creates like that hockey stick, like ramp up of income. Is that clear? Hey, Matt. Yeah, so I'm in the property investment space. So we're obviously dealing with people's finances. So it's going to be a good time for you the next 10 years with that stupid 5% thing they brought out. Yeah, it's like madness. Yeah, it's crazy. So obviously because we are dealing with finances. Quite an emotional topic for a lot of people. Every now and then you get somebody who wants to bust your balls. So after a really challenging call where someone's riding you or they're putting a lot of pressure on you to make you jump into like a dancing monkey mode, what's the best Way to self regulate and get back on the horse essentially so that you can get back onto the next appointment, next call and still show up and be effective. Okay, so question is best way to regulate yourself so you can be most effective on sales calls and not let one throw into the other. Pretty, pretty much. Okay, again I'll answer this in two different ways. The first way is that you should know how many calls you can handle in a row, right? And I'll preface that with the newer you are to sales or the more thinking you have to do whilst on a sales interaction, the less you should do in a row. Right. I can sell kind of all day because at this point I can like play chess and sell at the same time. Like it's sort of, it's a relatively automatic process for me these days. I've done a lot of it, right, so that seems fair. But like when I was selling like initially it was like three calls with my max and then I would have a little break and then I could do three more calls. The reason for that was because I found it just, my brain would just melt. There was just a lot of decisions going on. I was listening very intently and there's a lot of like internal dialogue, exorbitant external dialogue and it's decisions, right. It's like putting together a puzzle time. And so people shouldn't do 10 back to back. I would argue if you do 10 back to back, the chances of you closing your last four is like 5%. And if you ran the numbers, I guarantee you you're not closing those people, right? If you are, more power to you, right? And so like know that limit because sales is a mental exercise. Like you need sleep, you need to eat, you need to fuel the brain, right? So know that limitation. The second thing is that a lot of that come, like if you care then that's going to affect you, right? So and what I, what I mean by care, I don't mean to be like a callous. I mean like, like one, I don't care what people think about me. And so like someone calling me something or giving me like, it just doesn't affect me at all. However, I understand that that's sort of, it's a circumstance of life. I went to 11 schools, you know, yada, yada, yada. And so what I would say is like a lot of that comes from frustration. And you can, you can tell me if I'm wrong here. But a lot of the time, you know, when, if I get frustrated on a sales call, it's very difficult to hide. And what that means is that like, there's now like a venom behind my words. There's a slightly different meaning and context. And so that makes it more adversarial. Now when a call gets adversarial, of which there's really no reason to get adversarial because like you're just having a discussion, it's like, why should it get heated or whatever. So what I would say is like, you're looking at that person's life through a keyhole and you're making a value judgment that they should do the recommendation that you've said. That's pretty fair, right? The only problem with that is that you really have no idea about that person and you're looking at them through a very small lens in a very small period of time over the breadth of their life. And you're going like, I know better than you, when in reality you don't. Right? And so if you can learn to let that go, your life will be easier, especially in sales and you'll make more sales because then there's no venom that comes out. There is no frustration because you realize that all you're going to do is your process and they're going to make their decision regardless. And the better you are at the process, the more consistent to make a decision that's in line with what you want. However, you know that you do not know what's best for them, right? So like, that's a bit more of maybe of a woo woo way, but it like, to me that makes a lot of sense because frustration ruins and then second and then, and it also like, it, it lowers your overall like anxiety about the call and you don't get heated, you don't get frustrated. And all of a sudden now most of your calls are pretty chill, right? And then it's about learning how to like remove the thought of like the red herring, like of the, the weird individual, the eggshell skull. You know, we don't make legislation based on eggshell skulls. It's like someone who has an odd reaction to something that's not the rule and we don't worry about it. And so my, my answer is like, unfortunately, probably not massively helpful today, but hopefully it absorbs for some people and it's helpful over the course of time is like, learn that you are not the arbiter of what is correct. That will make your sales calls far less adversarial and it will make you more sales. And the sales that you don't make won't get to the point where they're frustrating and nasty. Is that. Is that helpful maybe? Absolutely. That's very good. Very good. Bit of a parable, that one, but I try my best. Next question. How tall am I? Six. Two. Hey, Matt. Great to connect again. Probably don't remember me, but I used to work for you. I can't. I can't see your face. Who is it? It's all good. I. I have a. You could just say. You could just say your name. Oh, Kai. Kai. Kai. There we go. Okay. Okay. So this is a question for more people that are, like, wanting to scale with leverage. So I'm on an account right now, and I'm also doing sales management. And what I know is the top closers, you just leave them alone, they do their job, the company makes money. But as a sales manager, how do you. How do you separate yourself from, like, the. The top 1% sales manager in the world versus, like, every other sales manager that's trying to micromanage the team? Like, how. How can I do my role for my reps or my team better so that everyone actually, like, gets paid more money? Yeah. Yeah. It's a really good question. How do you. How do you sort of. What's the optimal way to manage sales teams? I think that you need to look at yourself like you are the coach of an NBA team. Right? I think what most people get wrong in sales management and what I've seen many, many times, and I've reprimanded many people for, is that they try and create an egalitarian sales system, which means, like, equal for all. No, I don't. I. I. Like, there's the. This is gonna sound callous, but the people don't matter. They matter as humans. But in a sales team, their performance is what matters, not, like, not the person. So I want to separate the two things. People are important, and they're intrinsic, and I made it the image. You got all that kind of good stuff, right? But when it comes to managing a sales team, I couldn't give two, right? Like, I don't care. What I want is I want to give Steph Curry the bowl. Everyone say with me, give Steph Curry the bowl. All right? What that means is that, like, there's a whole bench, right? There's 11 other people on that team, and Steph Curry makes more than everyone else combined. Is that fair? Yes. Why? Because he is that much better, and that's it. And so what you do is you create an offense that gives Steph Curry the fucking ball. What you don't do is go, let's do equal distribution because it's fair. And then Steph only gets 20 shots a night instead of his 40. No, you give that motherfucker 40 shots a night, right? Because he's the one that's going to get you the points. Now do you then disregard everybody else? No, but you have to make sure that Steph Curry gets his shots and gets his minutes because like that is what guarantees you 30 points a night. 40 points a night, right? And so a lot of the time sales management, they spread everything out and they create this like equality based system. Whereas the best leads should go to the best closer. You should fill that person up before anybody else gets a bite, right? If the best closer has a call that hasn't confirmed and the number two has a call that has confirmed you as the sales manager, go and you swap those names. Why? Because that is the best thing for the business, right? Like hands down, no questions asked and you focus on, on that aspect of it and you run it like a team. I know I've got my guys that need to give me 30, 20, 10 points. I got my rebound guys, I've got my bench guys, but I'm going to waterfall in, right? So I'm going to have cups, right? And I'm going to fill one cup, then the other than the other. I'm not going to evenly distribute because if that guy is that much better then he needs to be or she needs to be full before anybody else gets a look, right? And it's like people hate that, right? But like it's ridiculous to do it any other way because the whole point is to create a championship team, not an all star team, a championship team. And the championship team has to be run in a very particular way. And when you have your guys that are like way better, you have to nurture and, and pump as much into that as possible. And Steph Curry gets to park in the parking spot of the owner, he gets to do that, right? He gets to show up to practice 30 minutes later if he wants, right? These are things that Steph Curry's get. I, I have been that guy on those teams, right? And when I was asked to do things, I would say no. Why? Because like I'm a commission sales rep and I'll do whatever I want, right? If you don't want me here, I'll go somewhere else. Because Steph Curry doesn't need the warriors, the warriors need Steph Curry. Does that make sense? Yeah. Thanks. Hey for that mate. Thank You. Yeah, people hate that. But it's the way to do it, right? You know, you know they don't make friends. One more question. Just one, one more quick one. So I've noticed that on like a lot of sale. I've noticed that on a lot of sales teams people like bloat out the sales teams and that everything up. So what are your thoughts on like, you know, having small sales teams but everyone on the team is like a savage? I think I actually answered that one myself. It doesn't really, it doesn't really exist. That's the problem. Like, like the distribution curve is like anything, right? So the distribution curve of sales, it's very similar to athletes, you know, I mean again, Steph Curry makes more and scores more than everybody else, right? And like Michael Jordan did that. And so you've got excellent players, right, on these teams. But it's this, the distribution curve is still going to be there. You're. If you try and create a team of savages, you end up with an all star team. Would that all star team beat the championship team? They would not. Right? And so if you're looking to create a team of savages, I think you're one, I think you're going to fail. Two, I think it's going to be such a toxic environment because like when I came onto a sales team as a sales rep, I like was not nice to people. My thing was like, hey guys, Matt here, I'm the new guy. I'm gonna make so many sales that all of you are gonna quit. Any questions? Queries, double points? No, you? I'm out. Right? Because I liked the back and forth of that and I thought it was fun to mess with everybody. And then my job was to, I wanted to defeat them. That's kind of how I like having an enemy, right? This is how I work. And so I wanted, like it's not a, not a team event, this is an individual event and I want to win. And so if you have a team of savages of savage sales reps and you think they're going to work together and play nice, that is not going to happen. Top sales reps are going to want to compete with each other and tear each other to pieces. And that's what savages are. That's why it's called a savage, right? Like that's not a team player. That's a killer. Right? And so if you try and create that, it may happen and, but it's sort of more like stars aligning and it will be short lived. And it will be really fun and then it'll be really unplanned. Yeah, I mean, I know because I've been a part of it and then from there, you know. But I think the core should be how do we create a well rounded team. I think you need to have consistent turnover in your sales team. When sales teams, if they don't see people getting fired and new people coming in, they get really complacent. And so there has to be like line in the sand type stuff where you're dropping people and bringing in new people. It's just because like sales reps are very particular types of people and they require schlaps every now and then. They need to be told like they need to be shown that hey, you, you have to elevate, you have to keep getting better, you have to keep striving because if you're not, this guy is chasing your heels. And then if you don't, if you're not good enough, one day you're going to be out. That's how you keep people hungry in sales, especially in commission only rolls right. And so you know it. That's why sales teams are difficult to manage. You know. Sounds good. How are we looking for time, Matt, on your side, you have a hard stop. I mean it's hard ish. Right. As soon as my kids walk in the door, y' all can go yourselves. Right? But, but until then, I think we'll be sweet. But whatever you guys want to do, we'll go. One more question, Matt. Who wants last question. Yes. Oh, go this guy. Yeah. These hands up first. Make it a good one. Hey Matt, what's your opinion on taking a more sacrificial, long term skill stacking approach to getting into business ownership in comparison to taking hits and learning lessons from actually doing it? For example, for a sales rep who wants to get into perhaps consulting, growth, operating, business ownership, what are your opinions and what is your advice on actually getting into business ownership but not taking too many hits and not also slowing down the process? Yeah, for sure. So question is, I'm a closer and I think I can make more money to being sales manager. Is that the question? Right. If you want to come down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, you know, I think if you've only sold one type of thing, a sales manager, you will not be at least a good one. I, I would want to like, you know, I, I, I done large volume outbound, large volume inbound, a couple of different industries, lots of different types of selling. I was the top rep In a number of different places. And I don't. You'll make more money as a top rep than what you will as a sales manager. Like hands down, no questions asked. Management has a higher floor, which means you have a lower ceiling. Whenever you introduce a lack of risk, you introduce a lack of reward. Okay? So the most amount of money you can make up until like, even as a business owner, to be honest, like, you're like, it's hard to match the money that you can make as a high performing rep in a good business, even as the business owner. Because if you're, you know what I mean? Because like once you take into account the insane amount of taxes we pay in Australia, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, and then what it takes to run the company, the amount of money that you take home, and the fact that like if there is a bad month, you're not making anything, it's difficult to match that until you get to a certain point and then it kind of goes beyond. But you're looking at years of ramp up, right? And so I would say like, like, you know, I am very glad that I did not ever try to manage anything for eight, nine years because I see a lot of young reps fall into the. I've been grinding for six months and I'm ready to move on, right? It's like added outbound selling 59 fitness programs for five years. You little. Like, like I did the work. You know what I mean? Right? So I'm not talking to you specifically. You may not be a little, you might be, but you don't, you don't sound like it. So like I, I think that you would want to, you would want to come to me, someone like me, right, who's been around for a while and like proudly supply your resume and go, I will be a good manager. And until you can do that and look someone in the eye, I think that you should stay in sales because you have an opportunity to learn without spending your money. You can learn what people are doing, right? You can learn what people are doing wrong. You can, you can see what they've done and see if you like it. Because business like the, the high ticket space has a lot of entrepreneurs. And I, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, right? Because I am a true entrepreneur, right? I'm someone who from nothing can grow something. A lot of people need are entrepreneurs. They need something, they're good at growing it, right? I am someone. You give me absolutely nothing. I'll make a business out of it and I'll make it work because like that's my. I love that, right? Like nuke the world, I'll make a business, right. Like, and I've done that multiple times and I have tremendous amounts of confidence in my ability to do that. Whereas intrapreneurs will struggle with that. And entrepreneurs I think are people that want what entrepreneurs have, however, are not. Are too risk averse. Right. Whereas like I have a tremendous risk tolerance, right. And, and that's inbuilt in me, right. Like it's why I joined the army special forces. Like it's, it has good and bad. Like there are some problems with that. Like dude, I lost some money in crypto. Let me, let me tell you, right? And so it has its goods and it's bad and it. An entrepreneur is not better than. An entrepreneur is not better than an employee. We need all those things. They're all valuable in their own right. But I would, I would say like if you're, if you're not the type of person that's just going to go it, I'm doing it. You're probably not an entrepreneur because like that's a very entrepreneurial endeavor. But you might be a fantastic entrepreneur in which case you should work with somebody and then grow what they started and then become important and become an owner that way. Or maybe you can just, you know, you know, keep being the sales rep. And I think that there is a tremendous benefit in being a sales rep. And I think that if you look at managers that are really good, like one that just walked by there, Anthony Vasari, like he was a sales rep for a very long time and he was a very competent one. Then when he became a manager he'd seen more than one thing. What's up? Congratulations on the baby by the way. And yeah Msaki and so like that's a good example. Right. And I think more people would do. I think you should try and max out what you've done as a sales rep before you have a look at moving on. Because I think being in sales is a tremendous opportunity to learn thrive, make a ton of money, have very little responsibility, have a lot of fun and learn a shitload without having to spend your own money. Makes sense anyway. Yeah. Or just it and do what you want. I'm sure you'd be fine. Right. Well Matt, I thank you. I know it was late notice for you to attend. Maybe next time in person. But everybody stand up so Matt can actually see you all because it's a big room and Just give him a round of applause, guys. Thank you. Quite an audience, Quite a crowd. So, yeah, thank you again, Matt. No worries, guys. Thanks very much. Enjoy.