Matt RyderEx-special ops sniper turned CEO revolutionizing sales calls

I made $40M/year in sales starting with nothing

25 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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1:16

In this candid monologue, Matt Ryder recounts how a financial crisis forced him to learn sales from scratch. Three years prior, he was earning a modest AU$80K salary, barely enough to support his pregnant wife in Sydney, and his business partnership was failing. After walking away with no money, he turned to selling fitness programs to gyms. Starting with cold‑calling Australian gyms to sell $97 membership packages, he quickly realized the limits of a single time zone and expanded to the US and UK, juggling multiple gym accounts across continents while working 4 am‑11 pm daily. His relentless effort attracted attention from marketing firms, leading to ownership stakes in about 18 gyms. Leveraging the sales processes he observed, he began assembling a team to build a sales‑focused business, asserting that he now understands the fundamental elements of successful sales that most people overlook.

Chapters

A lot of people are really good at what they do, but they just don't know sales. Where'd you learn all this shit? I had to do it because like 3 years ago I was broke as a fucking joke. I was working with some business partners and it just didn't go well. I was throwing all the money back into the business. I was only taking like an $80K a year salary, which is Australian, and in Sydney it's not enough to live. It's like living in Manhattan. And I just got sick of it and walked away. So when I left, I had nothing. Me and my wife, she was pregnant with our daughter. I had to borrow the money for like the Down syndrome test. And so I was like, fuck. So what I knew I could do is I could sell fitness. So I started cold calling gyms. I was like, hey, I'll be your sales guy. I started selling like $97 programs for gyms all over Australia. And then I realized like, man, I can only sell for like 3 gyms in Australia at once because the time zone. So I started cold calling US gyms, and then I called UK gyms. I was selling for like 2 UK gyms, 2 US gyms, and 2 Australian gyms. So I was working from like 4 AM to like 11 PM every day. And then I started to expand. All the marketing companies were like, what the fuck are you doing? Then they started throwing gyms at me. How come you could do it and none of their salespeople could do it? Because I'd ran the sales for all these gyms. I was part owner in like 18 different gyms. So then that started to go well. And then I started to be like, man, I think I can make a business out of this. So I called some friends and I was Like, hey, come work with me, come work with me. I've just been in the back end of so many businesses now that like I've seen so many sales processes and I've seen the ones that work and the ones that don't. But I know the fundamentals of what has to be there and most people don't.