The Four Tools Every Entrepreneur Must Implement to Grow Revenue and Save Time

If you want to launch or scale your business, there are three critical elements you must master. The right actions, the right tools and the right mindset. And that's why today we're joined by Matthew Garlett. He's the co founder of Smart Passive Income. He's an entrepreneur and he's an expert at financial modeling, pricing and finding the right tools to help you scale your business. Today he'll share how to find the right tools for your business, how much to spend on these tools and how to make sure you actually use them. Let's get started with Matt Right now.

I'm Matt Gartland. I'm an entrepreneur, investor and advisor to a couple of different tech startups. My main project right now is with my good friend Pat Flynn. We're co founders in SPI Media, which is the business behind the SPI brand that a lot of creators and entrepreneurs have come to love over the last decade. So we are really trying to help early stage creators and entrepreneurs, small business owners, you know, really develop their audiences and figure out how to, how to monetize, you know, their hard work through their own engagements online.

So if you'll notice, Matt made a very clear distinction between creators and entrepreneurs. And if you're a knowledge based entrepreneur, a consultant, a service provider, that distinction can be very critical. You make a very clear distinction between a creator and an entrepreneur. Can you unpack that distinction?

Absolutely. It's so oftentimes, you know, these skill sets and these, these mindsets do reside within the same person, but it is a composite set of, you know, skills and aptitudes and experiences that, yeah, I think we have to think about as divergent things. So on the creator side, you know, that that is in fact a certain proclivity to writing and creating really valuable knowledge and educational material. And really that thrust, I think, to build audience in a way that is potentially oriented around social media or fan based relationships.

Right.

That is at least where kind of the term creator has stuck to kind of be the new gold standard for this all encompassing idea of writers, bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers.

Right.

Whereas an entrepreneur, especially if we draw from say the tech side of entrepreneurship, these are folks that are really thinking about capitalism and thinking about the enterprise and thinking about how do I build something of value that can grow and the economics behind it and potentially investors, whether they be big or small.

Right.

And especially in our world on the SPI side where a lot of folks come into this digital entrepreneur space, they come to that through the lens of creator or being a creative because they see others really putting themselves out there, you know, through social media engagements, starting to build a following in some capacity that's helping other people. And that's amazing. But in what we have seen, and certainly my analysis kind of being more on the business side, you know, is that for creators to really be successful and if in fact they do start from sort of a creator mindset in a skill set sense of being a creator, they need to work on the business skills, they need to work on the entrepreneurial skills around how do I run a company, how do I, how do I grow this thing? So that's the distinction that I have. But I absolutely believe that especially early stage folks that certainly aspire to maybe just keep their business small and be solo funded, they're not maybe going the tech route, they really should work on both sets of skills. So be both a creator and an entrepreneur.

I want to stay here for a minute because there's a very clear benefit to being an entrepreneur and a creator. And as Matt's about to explain, it can also be very pivotal to you finding your product marketing. So thanks for that distinction. I think where I messed up early on in my career as an independent consultant is this. I focused way too much on the entrepreneur side and not nearly enough on the creator side. So having videos, content, lead magnets, stuff like that, I think if I had done that first, it would have been a lot easier because when you have that content out there, it's working for you in the background, even while you're going about your day, right? You could be watching your kids working out, whatever it is. But when you have content, people already know like and trust you before they even get on the phone. And it makes it much easier to get a sale as an entrepreneur. So I'm glad you made that distinction. I wish we had talked in 2015, but I'm glad we're doing it now because until you said it that way, I never really thought about what the distinction was and why they're both so important, especially for someone who I would call a knowledge based entrepreneur. So coaches, consultants, course creators, you got to be both. Otherwise it's like it's too hard to win or to scale in general.

I agree. And I also agree with, especially with just how the technology has been advancing over even the last five years online, that potentially leading with content, leading with audience building pursuits and mechanics to find, I dare say market fit, right? Being a buzzy term from the tech community is more advantageous so that you're not investing potentially too much time and energy and even financial capital or other resources and into establishing your small business and trying to get that up and running if there isn't a community there for you or an audiencehip or as you say, starting to build potentially a customer base that knows, likes and trusts you and is willing to then invest in you in some way.

Earlier we talked how important it is to have the right actions, tools and mindset. Right now we're going to discuss how to develop the mindset to leverage the tools. All right, so we all know automation is important. There's all these tools and apps that can help us scale our time better and get better outcomes. But what are some of the roadblocks or what's some of the apprehension you see from other creative entrepreneurs into actually using and implementing these tools?

Yeah, I think that's a great paradigm to step into because so many people are quickly coming into contact with these things as they start to pursue their dream business in whatever shape or form that is. And I think about this at least two, if not kind of in three ways. One is a collection of mindset sort of gaps or traps that I'm not a developer or I don't have a technical background, so I'm never going to learn how to use these things or learn them well. So there's a certain barrier to entry that's just in a headspace where whether it's an email marketing system, whether it's a no code building website tool, that there's even a resistance that they've created themselves to being able to even step into that and really being interested to potentially learn this stuff. So certainly there's a collection of mindset problems that are unfortunately blockers. And it's unfortunate, increasingly so, because the tools are easier to use today than compared to two, three, four years ago. The whole no code movement is a real thing where a lot of these interfaces are drag and drop. You don't need a software development background, you don't need to be a coder to use. So creative or creator oriented entrepreneurs can start to use these tools. And the whole movement toward making the tools more user friendly is for consumers like us that are creative first and don't understand all the programming languages that are out there. The second, I would say, is that a lot of entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs online, think that they have to use all the tools or especially all the mediums. So if we think about all the forms of content that you can produce and publish, from YouTube videos to podcasts to blogs to just your website at large, a lot of entrepreneurs Creative entrepreneurs, I see, just overwhelm themselves by trying to do too much too quickly. So if you're stepping into this space and you are a consultant and you're maybe trying to work on an online course, maybe you only should be focusing on like two or three different things. Build your email list, number one, have a website number two, maybe a website number three, and then in the background, like maybe start tinkering with an online course. So I think just overwhelmed. Just because everything is so readily available and quickly accessible and relatively inexpensive also, at least to get started, people just lam themselves into 20 different tools and then they can freak themselves out. So be more limited and more sequential, I think in terms of adopting new tools. And then the third, I think, challenge a lot of people face is just not being curious enough to learn it themselves. I think that curiosity, which is another form of just creativity at large, like get interested in this. These things aren't inherently scary or difficult or dangerous or any of that. So I think if you lean into it with a curiosity to learn a little bit on how these technologies work, how to link your email marketing platform through to your website, being a very basic example, I think a lot of creative people actually realize that it's a lot of fun to kind of start to realize how this stuff works.

So as Matt said, this can be a lot of fun for me. It's kind of like putting together a puzzle or assembling IKEA furniture. But if both those tasks sound awful to you, then you should probably consider outsourcing the management of your tools. Matt's gonna describe how that process can go for you now. So, Matt, a term you used earlier that I am new to is like the no code movement, making it easier for creatives and entrepreneurs to use these tools. But still, you have a finite amount of time during the day. So how can you best determine which tools you should use hands on versus the tools you should outsource the management to? And then how do you find people to manage these tools on your behalf?

Yeah, excellent question and so very true about the time constraint. First point that I still believe in to this day, even at our scale at spi, is that even for myself in many ways, including Pat. Also, we should know a little bit about the tool, right? So don't just immediately jump to like delegation. Delegation is an important leadership skill to have and work on and as your business grows. Yes, do that.

But.

But I at least want to know the fundamentals of the tools or at least the key tools that are part of our tech stack that make our business run. So spend a little bit of time maybe setting up the account for the first time, getting in there, having a basic understanding of how it functions. Maybe I'm taking a moment to go through the help docs and help docs in general. Terry are really an unsung hero in the whole tech space, especially with decently well established companies. But you don't even need to be large at least these days where you know, I mean it's, it's amazing like how much great content and knowledge to help, you know, the users help us, people like us use these things that are out there. So spend a little bit of time even like going through the help docs, you know, on some of these sites, you know, in the tools that you're using, you know, once you have a basic understanding, I definitely believe as, as a mode of teaching and learning, you know, training someone else on something you already know is amazing. So again, if you can have some base knowledge on how it works and how you've started to use it, then you can help train someone else, be more effective, make sure that things don't get lost in some translation gap, right to then a VA that you might find on any sort of, I guess, gig economy based job site that you can go find. Whether again it's an email marketing system like a Mailchimp or a ConvertKit system or some basic WordPress help if you're building your website on WordPress and odds are that you probably are, right? So but get your, you know, get your hands dirty a little bit and enjoy cause it can be a lot of fun and don't try to squeeze the fun out of it by just, you know, again pushing the tech away over to someone else. And again invoking of no code is that it shouldn't be all that difficult to get up and running at least a little bit, right? Even if you don't have a technology background or a developer skillset.

Okay so the key takeaway here is even if you're not going to use these tools on a day to day basis, you should have a loose understanding of how they work. Otherwise you won't know what you're paying for or how to manage the people that are leveraging these tools. But now let's hop into the specific tools that you can use to automate and scale your business. Okay, so Matt, pretend I just quit my job. I've been working at Samsung for the last 10 years and like, you know what, I'm out of here. All I have is a laptop and a Dream what tools should I implement in order to scale my time and revenue?

Yeah, great starting point. So first would just be where do you want to capture your knowledge? So if you are a knowledge based entrepreneur, a creat, how are you developing those concepts? So you need some sort of like, I dare say word processing is a very dated term but like where do you go to do that? Chances are you might have a like a Gmail email address. You know, go to Google and just start really thinking about how you want to structure a lot of your content development, you know, in writing to get your ideas out there before you start jumping into any other more sophisticated form of content development tool. Certainly ones that you would even then need to pay for. Notion is another great example. It's more modern. I do believe they have a free tier, I personally like it to where you can do a lot of your content development, start to develop your blog article concepts, start to organize your podcast, maybe framework or concept. Notion's really cool because you can do more again kind of no code like data sets and stuff like that and can kind of get nerdy about it. But even if you just go to Google because Google has amazing suite or you could pay like, what is it, five bucks a month for like Google Workspace, right? If you want to kind of pay for that more kind of businessy version, just start using those sorts of like very simple, you know, platforms to start getting a lot of your ideas and a lot of your knowledge organized. You don't need to go anything to anything super complicated. The next thing would be is sort of a combination of yes, absolutely, your email list. Because if you're going to, you know, be online, even if you're a merchant selling, you know, T shirts, right, and you're going to end up maybe on Shopify one day with your, your E commerce store, you don't necessarily need to jump to E commerce first. Maybe you want to again build your audience first. So you know, look to build your email list and increasingly there are platforms that allow you to have like a very easy one page landing page so you can put sort of your domain against it. But ostensibly it's still, you know, an email marketing system behind the scenes.

Right.

ConvertKit's a great example for that, especially for creators. Mailchimp has something very similar. Just sort of explore the ESP space, the email service platform space and there's a range of options out there. But from my own experience, convertkit mailchimp are two really good creator friendly, either inexpensive or they have a free tier option for folks that are kind of just stepping into it. And the third thing I would say is to at least start researching. Not necessarily like jumping right into it, but start researching where you may want to build your foundation as a creator. If you have a vision in mind to be a course creator and have a lot of, you know, information products like courses, start researching those just to kind of have an understanding of where you're going to build. Because down the road, and Terry, I'm sure you've heard this from other folks you speak with is when we talk about tech stacks, it gets really, really tricky and difficult and potentially expensive to re platform. So if you start to put your home base somewhere and you spend a lot of time there on that platform and you invest a lot in there, potentially re platforming from like, you know, option A to option B later, it's going to be difficult. So you want to be really thoughtful about kind of where you're going to put down your roots, whether that's, you know, teachable for online courses. Podia is another option that's out there that has a lot of different elements for like content creators, for like how you might build a digital business. If you have membership community as a part of your interest, to sell membership subscriptions, Circle's a great option. There's also, oh heavens, I just blanked on the second one. But the general point being is I do some research first because your switching costs are going to be profound later if you were to ever make that choice.

Your point about the switching cost is brilliant because I think sometimes you'll know something's better out there. But you're like, I don't even feel like doing this. I'm so busy trying to work now I have to like change my email service provider or like my website, so on and so forth, so people will stick with things they know are subpar just because like now you're busy, you know, you're in the trenches and it's like, don't want to make money today? Or do I want to like go from wix to Squarespace? It's like, what, you know, what's your option?

Yeah, and yeah, website builders. I mean, those are some great examples. Email service providers, again, are a great example. And you know, not to throw shade at any brand here, but, you know, I know a number of friends with very significant audiences that are on really legacy, if you will, like old school email systems from the early 2000s that haven't caught up with the times. But it's a risk, especially if you're dealing with your key asset for a lot of us is the email list to be able to migrate that and have that go well and not have potentially churn or drops or you burn your list or horrible things can happen. So yeah, being really, really thoughtful is a key almost strategy to being successful online with, you know, being an online entrepreneur and building audience.

Notice the first tool that Matt mentioned was storage and organization, right? How do we actually organize our thoughts and jot them down in one place so we can better plan how to scale our business? And this can be free through a tool like Google Drive or pay like five bucks a month to get some additional features. But speaking of pricing, how much do we pay all in for all these tools on a monthly basis? Let's get that answer right now. So Matt, admittedly this might be hard to answer, but. But how much should an entrepreneur invest in their tech stack? Especially initially where they're making no money whatsoever in every penny counts.

I love the question. Finance is a big part of my life. I run finance in addition to a lot of things for all of my companies. But you may not like my initial answer, which is that it's flexible but it should be consistent with your budget. So the first thing I would really recommend for any entrepreneur kind of heading into this space is to build a budget and then have that budget inform really which tools should I or could I potentially and responsibly invest in using and going with potentially some more premium options or a higher tier with more capability, more integration options, something like that. What I find to be problematic, especially for folks just starting, is they're making choices without a compass, that they're making choices, financial decisions without any sort of guideline. So something that I have done certainly as a part of my company's sbi being one of them, and then have tried to teach a little bit, even though sbi is largely about audience building and what we teach there, I have some content actually on sbi that helps teach like cash flow management and pricing and how to build budgets. And it's through that lens, I think then that can really help creative entrepreneurs, even with very, very small budgets, understand what should my tech stacks be in the early days? And then if I can perform well and I can start to get some affiliate revenue or some coaching revenue or a composite set of different things, then where can I potentially reinvest some of those earnings right back into my tech stack and potentially grow that? So I really would encourage a lot of folks to think about their budget pretty early on in the process not just for the tech piece, but including of the tech piece for how they want to kind of get their business up and running. But beyond that, you really don't need to spend a lot, right? For Dropbox or any sort of file hosting system. It's been a race to the bottom for years in terms of cost. So things are really, really cheap now for storage. So you don't need to spend a lot for data storage. You can use the whole Google suite for free or for cheap. At a certain point in being mature business owner, probably go buy a domain and have like a business email address and probably get on like Google Workspace and spend five bucks a month or whatever it is for that, but still pretty cheap. And then a lot of these audience building tools again have entry level pricing or basic options where you don't have to spend a lot more than $5, $10 a month. So trying to say under $100 a month is I think a good initial barometer. But I would again absolutely say use your overall budget to inform a number.

That'S 100 bucks a month. There you go. Shout out to Matt for giving us a direct answer there. I know how hard it is and obviously your bread is going to be north or south of that based on your unique needs. But it's a good starting point for us. But you also want to think about your return on investment, what you have to gain from using these tools. And I'll tell you one thing, you'll get zero back if you don't actually use them. So right now Matt's going to tell us how we can actually make sure we're applying these tools to reach our business goals. So Matt, I'm guilty of this as well, but sometimes people buy a bunch of expensive tools because I think, okay, that's what's going to make me successful. I'm going to make so much money for it and it just sits around collecting dust. What's the best way to avoid that from happening?

Oh heavens. Well, it's a very true phenomenon. So you're not alone, Terry. I still like a lot of, I almost want to say the marquee names like in the creator space and these tools that I guess even folks like us at SPI, you know will use and recommend, such as ConvertKit, such as Circle and some other names. I think the key thing though to maybe get started with is you don't have to use those smart key names to start per se, that a lot of times the tools that are getting potentially the most exposure try to be all things to all creators and all people and have a lot of capability and complex feature sets. What I find, especially again for early stage entrepreneurs is to find tools that are very narrow, very specific and potentially even very limited, you know, in their capability that solve one very or problem very tightly.

Right.

Oftentimes the more expensive platforms are the ones that have, you know, 20 different, you know, modules to them and most people then won't use all 20.

Right.

They'll use, you know, three.

Right.

So if you can identify again, your little creative entrepreneur business model and how you want to get out there, you know, how you want to build an audience again, whether it's through video, whether it's through audio, certainly email should still be a part of the equation. You probably only need to pick, you know, a very finite amount of tools to be a part of your tech stack. You know, I'll say five is sort of an average maybe, and then be, be as narrow as you can with the tools that are, you know, kind of slotted into those needs and go from there, at least as a starting point, as a place of like, curiosity of like, okay, cool. Especially if I'm working within a limited budget. Can I make it work?

Right?

Can I make it work with these five tools that are, you know, they're not the most glorious, the most expansive in the world out there, but they're very specific, they'll meet my needs and they'll help me get this business up and running.

Hey, I've been guilty of buying fancy stuff. Think it was going to make me more successful too. Don't make that same mistake. Instead, follow Matt's advice. Develop a need, then select the most sensible option. Sensible is probably code for affordable. So now Matt's going to answer some more great questions for us. Something maybe you never thought of asking before. All right, so let's try this from a different angle. What's one tool that most entrepreneurs should invest in but for some reason never do?

The non sexy technology is the answer. So so much Terry of the conversation, and it's deservedly so, is focused on the marketing software. Right. It's things to help you build your email list or publish your podcast.

Right.

Or you know, develop your video following on YouTube. But the business systems are so incredibly important, especially if and when your business starts to gain traction.

Right.

So the one that I highlight the most is Gusto, because we use it and we love it and there's other platforms out there, but it's essentially for, you know, a digital based business or as you start to scale if you're sort of a remote based, you know, company and you have, you know, staff, it's sort of your digital office. So Gusto has payroll, it facilitates benefits at any point in time where you may want that for yourself and your family. Or again, if you get to a point where you can hire people onto your team and provide them benefits, there's integrations there. To have that sort of a platform in place as a part of the business infrastructure for an online small business is of paramount importance to help with finances, to help with regulations, to help with even taxes and these things that like a lot of creative people will kind of, you know, maybe real at a little bit, but you know, get ahead of it now so that you don't have a spooky tax bill, you know, next year sort of a thing. Really helpful for contractors. You know, we use Gusto to pay most, not all, but most of our like 1099 based contracts. So if I do hire a freelancer to offload a little bit of a project, Gusto makes the onboarding easy. Helps to again with like year end tax prep. They do it automatically kicks out their, you know, their 1099. It's glorious for, you know, business people like us.

Using a tool like Gusto or any kind of financial planning system is essential to your success as an entrepreneur. You're always going to have some kind of ups and downs. That's natural. What's not natural is having no idea where your next paycheck's coming from because you don't have a good handle on your cash flow. It causes anxiety, stress and as a result of that, you might just go out of business. So if you want to grow your business, if you want to move from being a freelancer to become an entrepreneur, it's vital for you to use use these apps, tools and routines. This is how you scale your business while still having time for the people and opportunities that matter most to you.