Richard Matthews is an expert webinar builder and instructional designer who’s helped his clients drive more than 2,000,000 in online sales… and he does it while traveling full-time across the USA with his family in an RV! How cool is that? In this episode we learn about automation. Richard develops automated systems for his clients; to help them focus on what they do best. He feels strongly about focusing on one’s zone of genius to be successful and effective. He strategically positions his VAs so that they’re only working on things they enjoy doing and are very good at, while automating the mundane and repetitive assignments. Topics discussed:
- Building Powerful Business Systems – Becoming a super entrepreneur by automating the mundane tasks so that you and your team can focus on the creative aspects of your business; and documenting all your processes to ensure that your services and products are delivered consistently every time.
- Push Button Podcasts – Bringing the joy back to podcasting by taking care of the nitty-gritty of production and publication so that podcasters can focus on what they love most: being the host of their show!
- The Story Born Hero podcast – Harnessing the power of your personal story to create a heroic brand
- How his real estate training increased a company’s profits from $1,200pm to $250kpm!
- How he helped a client run their first webinar and take in $250k in 2 weeks
- How a director of a marketing solar company multiplied their lead flow by 10x
Links:
- PushButtonPodcasts.com | Helping you bring the joy back to podcasting.
- RichardMatthews.me
- The HERO Show on Apple Podcasts
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Transcript:(Transcriptions are done using www.otter.ai through a system of artificial intelligence; so every episode contains a few mistakes as AI is not yet perfect for transcribing the human voice. However, it is a very time-consuming process to go through each transcript and correct all the errors. So please accept my apologies for the number of errors, but I hope that these transcripts are useful to you.)
Tony Winyard 0:00
Exceeding expectations Episode 76. In today’s episode, we learn a lot more about automation and entrepreneurship with a man called Richard Matthews who has some amazing stories that we’re about to find out very soon when we go into the episode. This is the podcast where we aim to give you ideas on how to exceed your customers expectations and also to exceed your own expectations. So you enjoy what you do more, so it’s not just a job, and hopefully this will get you better referrals and testimonials and so on. If you do like this podcast, please do leave a review for us on iTunes. Why not subscribe and Share the episode with anyone who you feel may get some benefit from it. Right now. This week’s episode. Exceeding expectations today’s guest Richard Matthews How are you Richard?
Richard Matthews 0:57
I am doing excellent. How are you?
Tony Winyard 1:00
I’m pretty good. Thanks. And you seem to be a bit of a wanderer from our conversation just now.
Richard Matthews 1:09
My wife and I moved on to the road and an RV two and a half years ago, we had three kids at the time, we have since had a fourth child. So we got four kids and a big 40 foot RV. We’ve been travelling the USA for the better part of two and a half years. And when we got about 26 states down, so we’re only about halfway through it. So we got another couple of years of travelling and us and, you know, homeschooling the kids and really been enjoying that lifestyle and growing our business on the road that way.
Tony Winyard 1:39
How did that all come about in the first place?
Richard Matthews 1:42
Well, it was kind of an interesting thing. I wanted to travel since I was young. And when my wife and I got married, I mentioned to her that’s one of the things I wanted to do was travel full time at some point. And, you know, it took me four or five years convince her that that was a thing that she might want to do with me. So about five years into our marriage, she was like, like, I’m down for that we could, we could totally travel full time. And she actually had a little journal that she had written down, like, you know, goals five years from now. And like, I’d like to be travelling the country full time with my husband. And that was, you know, 2012 timeframe. And it’s funny, because almost exactly five years to the day later, we moved into an RV. And it the way that it actually happened was we had been, I’ve been spending a couple of years practising with like, Can I actually run a business? Not at my home office, right? Could I, you know, go to the beach and get worked out? And could I, you know, live in someplace else and actually get worked out? Do I have to have access to an office all the time. So it’s sort of been like testing it and seeing if I can do it with like, hot spots and internet things. And it finally got to a point where was like, yeah, we totally could do this. And as we were thinking about it, our landlord informed us that the owner of the house we lived, decided they were going to sell it and we couldn’t renew our lease. So we had had approximately 35 days to move out of our space when we had, you know, three kids and whatnot and my wife and I were like, Oh, no, we got to find a house. We’re looking for a bigger house and then just sort of in the midst of that conversation, we were like, hey, what if we, you know, we’re like, unencumbered. We don’t have a lease to worry about when I have anything like holding us here. I don’t have a job here. Businesses is movable. What about that RV trip we’ve been talking about for the last five years. And she was like, Yeah, let’s do it. So we went out and bought an RV Two days later, travelled halfway across the country to find it and brought it back home, renovated it in 14 days and sold everything we owned, put the rest of it into the into the RV, and within 28 days of the landlord telling us we didn’t have a house anymore. We were full time living in an RV and I’ve been travelling ever since.
Tony Winyard 3:47
Cool. And how old were your kids when you first started on that kind of adventure?
Richard Matthews 3:53
Yeah, so my oldest was seven and and then I had a three year old a six month old baby. And today they are 10 and six and three and we have a newborn while she’s not new anymore. She’s 10 months. She just started walking last week. She’s very, very excited about that and as cute as can be.
Tony Winyard 4:16
And how did the kids adapt to living in an RV
Richard Matthews 4:21
they have loved it. I was I was worried about that when we started but they have really loved travelling and seeing things and they’ve like my kids have had food from all over the country. They got friends all over the country now we with technology and whatnot. Every time we meet a new family on the road, which happens quite frequently. We get the kids hooked up on Facebook Messenger kids and they like they play you know, I guess the game that everyone plays nowadays is Minecraft and fortnight so they like they set up games and play fortnight over and Facebook Messenger and you know, with with kids, they’ve met all over the country. So they’ve made some really great friendships and I like our kids really enjoy it. And we asked them regularly if you know if they’re enjoying travelling For something if left, they’re ready to stop anything like that, and so far, our kids have regularly told us like, nope, we want to keep travelling, keep going, we’re not done. So it’s been fun.
Tony Winyard 5:10
And so business wise how has it affected your business- for better or worse. How has that been?
Richard Matthews 5:17
It’s affected my business significantly in a couple of ways. The first one is that my business has grown leaps and bounds. Like we for our business the first year we were on the road. And since then, I have hired three staff members and working on hiring more and we’re have hopefully some big growth this year, like if actually hit our numbers this year will hit a 10 x growth rate. And I’ll have a dispersed staff probably have 10 to 15 people by the end of the year or more. Which is is really cool. And I think the most interesting bit about that is the reason why I think it’s happened and it’s it’s because Like if you if you live in one place, you have sort of like a set routine that you follow all the time, right? Like I don’t know if you were like this but like when we were living in you know in RV we’re really called it a sticks and bricks house right when we were living in our sticks and bricks. We had a very regular routine, like Wednesday night at eight o’clock, we were at my mom’s house for dinner. Right? And you know, Tuesdays at two o’clock, we were at my son’s house for you know, my son’s gymnastic class and like, every day was like that, and every hour, right? It’s like, Hey, you know, for Saturday afternoon, we would take the day off and go explore something, do something fun like it was. It was a very regular thing. Like Tuesday afternoon we are at allegoric details which is our favourite, you know, Mexican restaurant for Taco Tuesday. Right? It was like we had a very routine life and there’s nothing wrong with having routine life. It was like we were having a good time and, and doing good work. But one of the things that I noticed happened when we got on the road is because we don’t have a regular routine anymore. Your mind is always always sort of in this state of creativity, right? You’re thinking about, like, we have to plan our next week for where we’re going to stay and like what restaurant Are we going to eat at and we’re trying new foods and meeting new people and doing new things all the time. So your mind is sort of in its in a different place, right? Like you’re not in a routine place you’re in sort of a creative space all the time. And I noticed I’ve been like my ability to ideate went through the roof and our ability to to like get things done like productivity went through the roof for a really odd reason. Right? Like if you’re parked outside of Yosemite Canyon right in California, and you’re like, I want to get on there and go do a hike with the kids are playing the river go jump off the cliffs or whatever, you know, the cliff diving the stuff that we’ve done, like but I can’t do that until I get my work done today. Right? Like you. You know, at home, I was like I got my eight hour work day I get my work done. Like I got two hours to do it. And when we’re done, we’re going to like watch TV and go to a restaurant or whatever. Like it. There’s not as much motivation Right. So you You let things take longer than they need to. And I’ve noticed my actual time doing work has dropped to two to four hours a day we get it done in the, you know, I get it done a lot faster and a lot more efficiently because I have motivation. I want to go do things and explore things and stuff like that. So it’s had it’s had a tremendous positive impact my business. I don’t know, that would be that way for everyone, but it certainly has been for me.
Tony Winyard 8:25
The thing now is I guess, there’s probably gonna be a few listeners wondering well what is your business? Richard will you explain that to us.
Richard Matthews 8:33
Yeah, so I actually I have two businesses at this current point in time and I am in the process of spinning down one to spin up the other one. So I’ll give you the 32nd lowdown on on the first one in the last 10 years or so what I’ve been working with as I’ve worked with expert brands, right so people who have a skill set up some sort, right, just like an easy example someone who’s like hey, I do wholesaling real estate and I would like to teach other people how to do that. And what I would help them do is I would help them develop their brand, develop their brand identity, develop their course material. And we have a very specific way of how we develop course material is very persuasion oriented, we got most of our clients would end up with, you know, 60 70 80% consumption rates of their courses, and then 60 70 80% of those people would actually succeed and accomplish the thing that they were teaching. Alright, so we have very unique teaching methods for that. And then we’ve helped them do all the, you know, all of the backend setup of their business, the tech stuff, and the advertising and all that. And that’s what I’ve spent the last many years of doing. And just recently started to work on spinning that business down to spin up a new business called push button podcasts. And push button podcast is sort of a business that came out of my own need. I have a I have a podcast like you exceeding expectations, called the heroes show. That was just a message I really, really wanted to get out there and the problem I was having with it is you know You know, as much as I do, right, you record an hour’s worth of content, you create a bunch of work for yourself, right? You’ve got editing to do and you’ve got, you know, you’ve got to create graphics and create things and maybe you create audiograms maybe you’re creating video versions of your podcast like for me, we were creating, I was creating like eight to 10 hours of work for every hour of episode I created. And I was having a hard time like actually getting my podcast published, right, I had a bunch of episodes recorded and was never getting them out because I had too much other work to do. So sat down and developed all the processes and hired the staff and a team and everything to just make it something that happens. So all I do now is like I show up for my podcast interviews, do the do the recording, and when I hit the stop, record, everything else happens. Right? So all of my guest booking happens all of the editing happens, everything happens and I’ve turned that into a service and now we work with business development style podcasts. So for you know, everything from like local chiropractors to businesses who are are using podcasts. As a medium to drive business to another, to their main business, we help them not have to be expert podcasters, right and do all the work that goes into it. So they can just show up and record their content and we literally handle everything else for them. And that’s the business we’re working on really spinning up this year, and growing and expanding, and we’re just about ready to start doing some big growth there and, and go primetime with it. So that’s, that’s where the focus is for the next year.
Tony Winyard 11:33
Am I writing in thinking that you’ve helped a lot of people start from from scratch, creating podcasts and so on?
Richard Matthews 11:39
We have so interesting thing about that one of the things that was that in the expert brand space, one of the things that we would help our clients do is get a podcast going and was sort of the impetus for making the push button podcast service even a thing because I like I had realised when I was doing it was I was like hey, you should start a podcast. I would give them like an outline of like, here’s the things you should do to start your podcast. And then they would, you know, record a few episodes and then never do any of the stuff that went with it and realised like, hey, if they were actually going to do this, we needed to have a service to help them deliver it. So that’s sort of where where the push button podcast service became a thing. So yes, we have helped a number of people start podcast and again, it’s it’s definitely in the biz dev space, as opposed to the podcasts that exist for the growth of an audience and to you know, create, to create advertisement revenue or create revenue in and of itself, which is like, I think that’s a different model than the market we help. So we generally help the people who are like me, I have a business that drives revenue. And I want to podcast as another method of driving audience to that business, if that makes sense.
Tony Winyard 12:47
Are you mainly dealing with people you meet face to face or is it people or you know just in America or internationally as well; how’s that working?
Richard Matthews 12:56
So most of my clients now are in the US. They are all over the US. You know, just because of the way business works nowadays it’s really easy to work with people all over the country. So I’ve got clients in in Louisiana and in Florida and Tahoe and Malibu, California and New York and LA so like we got clients all over the place and one of the fun things about travelling has been that I’ve gotten I’ve gotten the chance to sit down and have lunch or dinner or like I haven’t had Thanksgiving dinner with one of our clients in in Florida last year or the year before last I guess so it’s really cool that we get to sort of meet some of your clients in person where you know nowadays with tools like with like zoom and Skype and even this this platforms and caster, you can talk to people like your face to face so it’s it’s fun to actually get to meet some of them in person when you get the chance.
Tony Winyard 13:50
I guess you’ve made the process a lot easier for these people who wanted to start up a podcast, but just find that it’s so difficult so you’ve just streamlined it for them?
Richard Matthews 14:02
Yeah, so for our clients that if they don’t have a podcast we’ll help them come up with the concepts and all the things for it but the the big win is for someone who has a podcast already and they’re putting all the effort into doing it realising that, hey, this takes a lot of effort, right like one of our clients had I had their one of their staff members that was running all of the backend effort that goes into getting their podcast done, they realised that like, I’ve got a high end employee who’s spending 1520 hours a week just to get our single episode out every week. And and I can’t use her resources and other places and they’re like, I need to just get that off of our plate because it doesn’t make any sense for them to build all of the processes themselves and become you know, Master podcasters so to speak. So what we help them do is essentially as like hey, you just do you do you write you do the interviews, do that and will literally handle everything else for your podcast. So it turned it from being A 15 hour 20 hour a week thing into, they do four interviews at the beginning of the month because they batch them. And everything else happens like our service steps and it takes over all the other work for them. And now their business development podcast is something that, you know, they can very easily put foot four hours a weekend to or a month into. And it’s continuing to work for them. And the same thing for clients, we help them start their podcast from scratch is will walk them through some of those, like the when is when you do it consistency over the long term right where you have, you know, if you’re doing a weekly show, you’re doing a weekly show for 1234 years and you have a whole body of content that you create. It’s really hard to keep that up over the long term. If it’s not, especially for business development. The podcast doesn’t generally directly drive revenue, right? Let not like your main services do. So we can help them come in and be like, Hey, we will take all the burden of running the podcasts you can consistently get it going. Right and it’s an investment for them right They’re, they’re investing in that audience building over the long term. But once you get, you know, a year into running a podcast, you start to have an audience and it starts to pay off. And, anyway, so we help them get that done and actually, you know, have that body of content and have the audiences built from it and you know, not get overwhelmed by it. So it’s, it’s really cool.
Tony Winyard 16:24
And so how do these people find out about you in the first place?
Richard Matthews 16:29
So at this point in my business, so if we go all the way back to like, my first client was a friend that had some ideas in in the space and I had just been, you know, we applied some teaching and decided to do some experiments together. And you know, we got some tremendous results from him. And every client since has been referrals of some sorts, right? As you sort of grow in business your network grows and people start to see the you know, find out that hey, the the people that they really Like the content from or like the funnels or like the the courses and training materials they find out from like hey who, you know people they get asked right who helped you do all of this and you know my name comes up and you start moving up in in the ranks I guess so to speak of of of the space and gotten to the point where I’m you know, I’m working now with like the number one econ trainers in the world one of the number one copywriters in the world helped make one of one of our clients the number one wholesale real estate trainers in the world. And when you start having results like that for your clients, you get noticed and you get referred a lot and because of because like in the expert brand business I can only ever work with like four or five clients at a time. So I don’t really have to do a lot of outbound marketing to fill up those slots. It’s generally like by the time I’m I’ve wrapping up a project with one client, I’ve got two or three others who are like when you have an open space, let me know I’ve got work for you, right. I want to do the same kind of thing. So it’s almost all referrals, and to the point of your podcast is because we exceed expectations with our clients, right? We do good work for them and help them drive drive really big numbers for that. but on the same token, that’s also why we’re building the push button podcast service, because it’s not limited by my bandwidth, right? Where I have to bring my expertise to the table to deliver that service. So we can actually scale that a bit beyond my time limitations, if that makes sense. So that’s where where some of our business growth is going to come over the next couple of years is by developing a service that’s not tied directly to my expertise in my time.
Tony Winyard 18:38
Something you just touched upon a couple of minutes ago, you mentioned about the real estate person that you helped to transform their income. I know there’s a good story behind it. Tell us that story.
Richard Matthews 18:49
Yeah, I’ve got I’ve actually got a couple of the real estate space there one of them they’re actually both good stories. So I’m gonna start with the second one first because cuz he’s still a client of mine and a good friend and I He came to me as a result of actually the first real estate client and he was like, hey, I want to develop a course. And I want to become one of the number one coaches in the real estate space like Grant Cardone level you know, coaches and hired me helped him develop his course help them develop this first webinar and then help them develop the navigation of you know, big media buys with like the Cartoon Network and over the you know, helped him develop his funnels and develop all the backend stuff helped him hire his first sales guy and like all the the you know, how you do to call closes and like we just walked him through all of those things. We’re doing high ticket stuff and helped him sort of arrange his programmes so he knows exactly how to sell them and you know, set up a recurring mastermind thing that he does once people are done with the programmes and all of that kind of stuff and over the course of the first year, after his his big media by which we spent 100 grand in in ADS With the graddic Grant Cardone network in the first year and we brought in $698,000 in sales for his coaching programme, and I remember I actually have a picture of the first high ticket programme that he sold was a $25,000 programme for you know, because we had we had a couple of tiers and one of them was a was a high end coaching programme where he would actually come to your city and help you set up your wholesaling business everything from finding your office space to hiring your, your acquisitions manager to like, you know, setting up your advertising for you and like it was, you know, a full on like, almost like a franchise model for real estate wholesaling. And then basically, you’d walk away from your work with him having your wholesaling business, you know, running like a machine, which was super cool. And I remember when he sent me that picture of the check, he got his first $25,000 check. And that was a really cool moment for me to have that you know, in a couple weeks after we got everything, so started. And then over the course of the next year he had, he had a $5,000 programme then he had a cheaper programme, I came up with the prices on the lower one. And then his mastermind. And he now has, I think, almost $20,000 a month and recurring mastermind fees coming from a, you know, a 297 recurring mastermind thing that he’s got going and it does, you know, close to three quarters a million dollars a year in coaching sales, and has become one of the top wholesaling coaches in the US and everyone who does real estate work in that space knows his name. And he had his first live event this last year, and was able to secure some of the best speakers in the industry on on the space because they all know who he was. So it was a it was a really cool experience to have someone grow that much as a result of the work that we were doing for them.
Tony Winyard 21:54
Man, that is pretty cool. And so you say that was on the back of the first real estate guy that you helped?
Richard Matthews 22:00
Yeah, that was on that. So he was a referral from the first real estate guy. So the first real estate guy was actually just a friend of mine. And like I had gone to one of his events and started, you know, ask him some questions and we sort of became friends. And he was like, I could really use your help selling some of our programme, and his programme was, he was doing something really fancy in real estate, I’m not sure how much you know about real estate investing, but he was buying, buying houses wholesale from Fannie and Freddie. And then turning around and selling those houses, we’d buy them in bulk by like sets of 10 or 15 houses that didn’t fit their criteria, right. And he would buy a bulk set of houses and turn around and sell them into the local investment market. Right. And he was doing that rapidly, like he was in and out of deals within 28 days. And so he we he was teaching all of that. And the biggest problem was his his teaching methodology, like I went through his training course and it was just all over the place, right because he was an expert at doing this, but he wasn’t an expert teacher and I Like I think we, you know, some people who are buying his programme were like, this is great information, but I don’t really know what to do, if that makes sense. Yeah, so I sat down with them and we spent a good two or three weeks. And I, you know, we helped them change the hook and helped him change the structure of the training so that the training was designed to help someone who didn’t know much about real estate investing to actually get their first deal accomplished. And so we teach the hook on the on the course to you know, from being like learn how to wholesale real estate and where he just like literally laid out his entire plan for wholesaling real estate and everything that goes into it to a very specific like, go through this course and in 30 to 60 days you will have your first deal closed, right so it was a very specific outcome. And when we did that, he immediately started having students who were going through it started getting results faster because we had we restructured the course and he went from selling 1200 dollars a month of the course to Selling multiple thousands of dollars of the course, as a snowball effect of people getting results and posting pictures and you know, success stories and like success stories really snowball the results of a training material course like that. So, we did his first year, he said he did about $15,000 in sales in the second. The second year that he brought me in to help him he did a $250,000 in sales and we had helped I helped him develop a couple other aspects of the training course we so we started doing some live live in person masterminds and started doing some other things. So we had some higher ticket sale option opportunities available. And I said we were able to do to do a quarter million dollars in sales the second year. You know, unfortunately he had he had some issues and you know, no longer able to to to work with him. But that was you know, had some personal issues out in the business anymore. But you know, it was a it was a really cool thing to be a part of that that growth as well.
Tony Winyard 24:58
When you started working with him what were his expectations me, I guess he wasn’t expecting to get anywhere near those kind of figures?
Richard Matthews 25:08
This is actually a really interesting thing about setting expectations. It’s, it’s something I believe really strongly about expectations is that you have to, like, I see this a lot in entrepreneur circles is, is people sell beyond their skill, right? Because they’re worried that people won’t buy if you don’t do that. And I’ve always been sort of staunchly the opposite where I will come in. And like for him, he was my first client 10 years ago, and I was like, I have some ideas about things we can do to help you. Right, here’s what some of those ideas are. I was doing some hype. I was doing a lot of really good marketing work for a big solar company, but I wasn’t in the expert brand space. Right. And I he was like, I really love the ideas that you have. Right? So I came in and I sort of set the expectations with them. I was like, Hey, here’s what what I think we can do. Right and I think We can do this, I think we can do the other thing. I think we could do this with your masterminds, I have some really cool ideas that I’m seeing other people use. But honestly, what I’m going to do with you all of this is, is experiments, right? Because I don’t really know this market, you’ll be my first client in this market. And I want you to understand sort of where I’m coming out from it. And he was like, I’m totally cool with that. And we set our business relationship up with those expectations in mind, right, whereas like, so, I we set up a, a very small retainer, just to cover some of my time, and the bulk of the income I made from him was as a result of a percentage of profits that I helped create in his business. Right. So to the point of setting expectations, I didn’t have I didn’t know what the expectations were right. So I had a very flexible deal with him, and was very clear with him about what I expected, and what I was thinking and where that was going. And he was like Okay, I understand. We’re excited. ending with this stuff. And we grew a lot together over the course of the next few years. And that’s what sort of led into the other clients now 10 years down the road, right? I guess in that 10 years, we’re in 2020 is only eight years down the road from that one. The, when I take on new clients in that space, like I have, I have a, you know, a 25 to $50,000 retainer, right. And I can come in and I talked to them about very specifics like, hey, when we put a webinar together, we’re expecting to see, you know, 45% registration rates on the page, we’re expecting to see 30% show up rates on the webinar, we’re expecting to see one to 3% sales rate on the first one, you know, 4% sales on the replay and 6% on the first set of follow up, like I have numbers now because we’ve been doing it for so long that we know what our benchmarks are, for all of the things that we’re doing everything from you know how long it takes us to build a website, how long it takes to build a webinar, how many people should convert into a mastermind to, you know, what kind of expectations you can have for a close rate. If your product prices over We’re $2,000, and you’re doing phone sales, or if it’s under $1,000, and you’re doing sales direct on a webinar, like we know what all those numbers are. So we can go in with really clear expectations. And then the discussions very different, where we’ll come in and say, Hey, this is what we’re going to be targeting. And right, these targets are low, we’d like to beat them. And if we’re not beating them, this is where like, you know, if we can’t hit these numbers on a regular basis, this is where the clauses on our contracts that hey, if you can’t regularly hit these numbers, you can fire us, right, because we know when our numbers are now, but that does. That’s not the way it started. That makes sense.
Tony Winyard 28:31
Yeah, absolutely. So when you’re giving people these sort of metrics that you are now; the numbers that you say you’re going to be able to do for them, what’s the reaction?
Richard Matthews 28:41
So generally speaking, the numbers that I give people are very low ball. And it’s a very, I believe highly in the under under promise and over deliver more managing expectations and so on. Generally speaking, where were the reaction is like, I want to find out from them, what excites them? And I want to find out from them what, what they can live with. Right? What would make them satisfied, right? Then there’s a difference there. It’s a subtle difference. And we try to I try to set the expectations and help them be like, hey, what we’re going to target for all of these is satisfaction, right? And then me and my team, our goal is to hit the exciting numbers. And, and so generally the reaction is i is i know i need to have these things in place and I need to get this done. So you know, and I’ve got a reputation now. So most of the time, they’re, they are excited to be working with me. And because I’m really honest about where all of our numbers are and what we’re looking for, generally the expect the response to what I lay out is like, thank you for being so honest about what your numbers are and why they are where they are and And so I, you know, I tell them all the things that we go into and like, Hey, here’s where the dangers are, here’s where things are going to be hard, here’s some of the robots we’re going to run into. And I, like I try to i, i generally try to get people to buy from me, if that makes sense. So like, I try to let them know where all the problems are what we’re going to run into, because we’re not looking generally for short term projects that we’re going to make a bunch of money from and leave. Most of my clients end up being clients for years and years. And you have long term relationships. And I’ve just found that if we set up the expectations up front be like, Hey, this is you know, I want to look at this sort of as a non legal partnership where like, you know, we win together and we lose together and that kind of stuff. People are really appreciative of that. We get the excitement and the stuff when like, we actually really start hitting our stride and, you know, really growing your business.
Tony Winyard 30:55
The first couple of people you mentioned were both in real estate, is that mostly what you concentrate on or is it in many different sectors?
Richard Matthews 31:03
So the expert space definitely expands beyond real estate. But the interesting thing happens when you have success in a space, you get lots of more, lots more referrals in that space. So I do have a number of people in real estate I think it’s like five or six at this point that I’ve helped in the real estate space. But I’ve also got clients who are like I had a lady who I worked with for a number of years that did trauma recovery for women, and I currently working with a an organisation that does eecom training. I have a company that has an econ business, right they actually sell sell seals and candles and Amazon and I’ve got I you know, I’ve got clients that do any number of things, right. So like it definitely spans industries. But for whatever reason, I tend to get into the real estate space is pretty frequently. One of my newest clients actually is in PR Um, they do high level PR for like, how do you get in front of, you know, Entrepreneur Magazine, and like and get a regular featured column in their magazine, stuff like that. So like really high level PR. And so anyways it and the same kind of stuff works across industries. So
Tony Winyard 32:19
When we were talking before we started recording you were telling me about a marketing director of a solar company?
Richard Matthews 32:25
Yeah, so that’s actually earlier in my career, I was the director of marketing for a solar company. So like if we if we back all the way up in my life, I started my first business when I was 13. So I was like, I’ve always been into into business and you know, I got shut down by the powers that be at 13 because, you weren’t allowed to sell on campus without a business licence. But, be that as it may, I actually I had three businesses and after college, I was running a marketing company, a little local agency helping local businesses do things. And I was really, really struggling with that business because I didn’t have the belief in myself at that time to actually charge prices that allowed me to serve well, and still have money for marketing, and also feed my kids. So I was I was killing that business because of pricing and confidence issues. So I decided I needed to get a job. But what I wanted was I wanted a job that would help me solve the confidence issue, while really developing my skills in the marketing space, right, and like, you know, putting food on the table. So I was like, I was like, I want to have a C level marketing position. And that was actually was December of 2012. I remember really clearly I was like, I’m going to, I’m going to shut down my local agency business, and take a job as a director of marketing and by February 4, The following year 2013, I had I had secured that position and was making a six figure salary. I was in control of a $25,000 a month marketing budget with this company, and like said over the course of 15 or 18 months working with them, we text their lead flow. And really, really helped grow their business. And for me, learned a whole bunch about like, what my skills actually were right and how capable I was and was able to step back out. And actually I gave them like three months notice when I, when I quit, because I was like, I want to hire and train someone to take my position to be able to do all the things that we’re doing. So I really liked working for them and still like them as a company and we still have a good relationship and they occasionally hire me for contract work and things like that. But I, you know, stepped out of that position and went back to my marketing career and that’s where I was like so I got halfway into that. Career I was doing the work with the first real estate company, the first real estate expert and I was like I was able to step full time into that position because I started having other people that wanted to work with me. And I now had I had the confidence in myself to actually charge what I was worth. That makes sense. And actually a real business
Tony Winyard 35:26
You started saying about when you were I think it was 14 and you were selling things at school and whatever. How did that come about in the first place?
Richard Matthews 35:37
How that happened? I was nine, I can’t exactly remember clearly so nine is a fudge number from my brain. I think I was nine my dad comes home from work one day after school and he puts the Rich Dad Poor Dad book in my hand. One of his friends at work had had got it and said hey, I think your son would like this because you know, I was nerdy about business things,
Tony Winyard 36:02
You read, Rich Dad, Poor Dad at nine years old?
Richard Matthews 36:05
I did. So my dad brought it home, I read the whole book, right? And then I read it the next day. And I read it again the day after that. So I read it five times in a week, covering over and I was sort of obsessed. And I had over the course of the next couple of years into, you know, my middle school career, I managed to convince my parents to let me out of going to daycare, right, I had, I had to go to what is it Boys and Girls Club or something after school, and I convinced them that I should, instead of going to Boys and Girls Club, I should get to go to Barnes and Noble. And so I would go to Barnes and Noble after school, and I would sit there in the business and marketing section and I would read all the books that I couldn’t afford. So I read like everything that had ever been printed on business and marketing and real estate, investing and like it like and I just read all of it and like I would go to Barnes and Noble and I’d stack a set of books up next to their comfortable chairs and I would read until My mom, my mom, or my dad got working came and picked me up.
Tony Winyard 37:02
What was the reaction from the staff in the store?
Richard Matthews 37:06
I think the staff in the stores thought I was nuts. But I started to become, I always had, like, you know, you’d have the older gentleman who sit down next to me, like, what are you doing with all these books? And like I got, I got all sorts of compliments from people as a kid, they’re like, I can’t believe you’re reading this kind of stuff. Like, you know, essentially, it’s really cool, or you’re insane, like by either one of those, those kind of responses. But you know, if I was a kid, right, so, so no one was ever mean to me about it. It’s just, you know, it was, I think people were just surprised to see someone so young interested in that kind of stuff.
Tony Winyard 37:41
I can imagine.
Richard Matthews 37:42
Yeah, so my, my first business idea that I got from, from sort of all of my reading, and it was like, because I was always asking myself, like, how can I create an income that’s not tied to a job, right? Because that’s how everyone else earns income. And I knew from all my reading that like there was this thing called business that I didn’t have much experience with. Like my family weren’t business owners, I didn’t have any entrepreneurs to look up to or ask questions too. So I was just experimenting, right? I didn’t really know what was going on. And all I had was the mentors of my books. So I, you know, I’ve since learned how important learning to ask really good questions is. And I just lucked into the ability to sort of I was asking myself smart questions as a child, right. And I’m asking myself, how can I create an income as a high school student, right, I was 13 at the time, and what came to me as like, is like, we have crappy candy in the vending machines at school. Right? And I was like, all the kids love candy. I love candy. Everyone loves candy. But we don’t have any of the good stuff like the big Snickers bars, or those big nerd ropes or other things like that. So I convinced my dad to give me a loan for 50 bucks. And, and he was like, I don’t, I like I could just give you 50 bucks. And I was like, specifically I was like, I don’t I don’t want you to give me $50 I want you to loan me $50 right. And so my dad left my I thought I was nuts to. Still does, actually. But at least at this point, he’s proud of me for all the stuff we’ve done, but I was like, I want to get a loan for it, because I was like, that’s the way it would happen in business, right? A bank wouldn’t just give me $50 right. So I’m like, I convinced my dad that he should loan me 50 bucks. And I and I had been given to me at like, a 10% interest for a month or whatever. So I owed him you know, 51 bucks when we were done. And, and so, you know, my dad’s laughing at me, right? Because you know, what, 13 year old asks his dad to give him a loan instead of giving him 50 bucks at with an interest rate, right? Like, that was me. And I, I took that $50 and then I had to, you know, beg him to take me down to the store. I didn’t pay him for gas money or anything like that, because I wasn’t that cool. But we went to smart and final and I spent all $50 and all the big candies and I brought them to school. And I was like the proverbial kid out, you know, kid on New York’s, you know, New York, New York with the trench coat like opening the trench coat and like Check out my wares kind of thing, except it was my backpack. I was on campus with, you know, with fancy candies. And I was selling them. You know, I bought them all for about 50 cents a pop and I was selling for two bucks a pop. And I sort of became known on campus as a kid with all the good candy. And over the course of six weeks or so, I sold about 1500 dollars worth of candy. Wow. Which was really cool. And I remember two really important lessons I got from that was the first time I sold all $50 for the candy I had, I had money, right I had money and I was like I owed my dad money. So I gave him back to $50. And then I had to go and buy inventory, right? I had to buy more inventory to refill my stores. So I could go back and sell more and like so I made like 100 bucks on the 50 bucks that I bought. So I gave bad back his 50 bucks and I bought $50 worth more candy. And I was like I just did all this work and got all this sales experience did all these things and I have no money. Right? Like I have nothing to show for it right except my bags, candy, right I had my inventory. And so like I didn’t understand what profit and Revenue and cost of goods sold and all that stuff was. So I was like, I don’t understand how I sold $100 with candy and I have zero dollars. And I hadn’t actually like sit down and figure that out and learn the words for profit and revenue and cost of goods sold and things like that. That’s 13. And we’ll get tickets.
Tony Winyard 41:19
Couple of things that come to mind when you were talking about all of that. One is, how did the teachers and staff at the school react but also bullies? With that amount of cash that you’ve got were there any issues with that?
Richard Matthews 41:31
I never had any problem with bullies. I lucked out into our whole city was kind of a upper middle class, we didn’t really have a lot of we didn’t have a lot of riffraff in our school, if that makes sense. So most of the people were very cool. And because of where we lived, a lot of the kids parents were, you know, high level CEOs or executives in San Diego and LA and stuff like that. And you know, we’re We were a college prep school. So most of the kids were, were like, dedicated and you know, doing good work and stuff like that. So I did not have a problem with bullies. And I was also smart enough that like, whatever money I made that day I brought home and, you know, gave my dad to store safekeeping and stuff. So I wasn’t walking around with much cash. And the teachers didn’t have a problem with it, because it was something I never, I never did it in class. It was always, you know, during resource or breaks or something like that. And, you know, I had to keep my grades up, because my dad was like, don’t like keep your grades up, you can’t do this. So like I was, as a model student, and my teachers all loved me. The problem I ran into was with the administration, the administration on campus did not like it, and told me, I think at least twice that I that they, they didn’t like that I was selling on campus. And then you know, about like I said, six weeks in, I actually got called into the principal’s office and was informed that they had found a legal reason why I could not sell on campus and it was because I didn’t I’m a business licence. And because I was under 18, I could not get a business licence and therefore was not allowed to sell on campus. So I tell people now that I had my first government shut down when I was 13, because, you know, it was a government run school, and the administration shut me down. So the government shut me down at 13.
Tony Winyard 43:18
Well, but that gave you obviously, the taste for the whole business side of it
Richard Matthews 43:22
I was hooked, right? I created I created money from nothing, essentially, right? Because I didn’t have anything when I started, I borrowed the $50 I paid the $50 back, I created income from nothing, which is what entrepreneurship is, it’s about creating value and adding to the world, right, we add our value to the world and we create more wealth. And it was, it was it was my first taste of that and it has stuck with me ever since. And I love it.
Tony Winyard 43:52
Your podcast is called your story born hero. Is there a link between what you’ve just told me and the theme of the podcast?
Richard Matthews 43:57
Yeah, so the the podcast called the hero heroes show But yeah, the, the the idea of the podcast is, if you’ve ever read read and Ryan’s Atlas Shrugged, she talks a lot about the world is being held up by the entrepreneurs. And if the world doesn’t take care of entrepreneurs, they might just shrug their responsibility in the world would fall. Right. And if you think about it, everything in your life that you have the chair that you’re sitting in the microphone that you’re using here, the system that we’re using the record on, like literally everything, at some point was touched by an entrepreneur. Right? And there, there’s pretty much nothing that you ever have an interaction with in your daily basis that wasn’t at some point Touched by an entrepreneur from a, you know, products and services standpoint. And so there’s a there’s a lot of reality to entrepreneurs hold up the world, they make the world go round, and it’s the value that we create, to grow and make people’s lives better. And, you know, entrepreneurship and capitalism over the last, you know, 200 300 years has increased global GDP more than 15,000% And has raised more people out of poverty than anything else in the world. And my, the podcast for me is really, it’s just a way to highlight the heroes the way that I see them, right? We naturally look at policemen and firefighters and doctors and veterans as heroes in our culture. And for whatever reason, entrepreneurs are often villainized right? And you know, when you grow up looking, I grew up, you know, we watched Captain Planet, right. And Captain Planet was essentially a progressives wet dream about, you know, entrepreneurs are Satan, and they’re always looking for profit and never for value. And that’s just not the reality like reality of the world, is entrepreneurs are good people who are creating value and making other people’s lives better. And so the heroes show for me is just, it’s a give back to that community to really help raise them up and help them look at themselves. The way that I wish the world looked at entrepreneurs, which is as a hero, right, as someone who’s doing good for the world. Sony was That’s where that’s coming from.
Tony Winyard 46:02
And is it like an interview format.
Richard Matthews 46:05
It is. It’s an interview format. And I interview entrepreneurs all over the spectrum, everything from people who have just started their business and are, you know, like the, you know, the proverbial 13 year old who’s selling candy, right all the way up to you like, I’ve had Silicon Valley tech startups and companies that have, you know, they did $60 million in their first two years, or like, we just had the guys who did the, the Foursquare volleyball net that, you know, went from zero to 2 million bucks in their first year. So like all over the spectrum for entrepreneurs, just looking at things that people are creating and how they’re doing it. It’s it’s sort of my passion project.
Tony Winyard 46:41
What are your general thoughts on exceeding expectations, Richard?
Richard Matthews 46:45
so, my general thoughts and exceeding expectations are, that should be your modus operandi, right? It should be the thing that you’re known for, and you should systematically work in your business to surprise and delight the people. You Work with, right if you want to, if you want to have a great example of that, like, you know, go buy an Apple product, right? Even if you hate Apple, go buy an Apple product and just go through the process of talking to their staff in the store to getting the product packaging, even their product packaging is designed to surprise and delight, right? I don’t know, if you’ve ever opened a package from other people where, you know, like, the packaging is horrible. And you have to get the scissors out and cut things open, like Apple goes all the way down to like this stupid little details. Like you just pulled a little tab and then the whole thing opens up the way they want. And it’s always, always a really nice experience. And I always look to companies like Apple, like how do we make our experiences better? right and and so for me in the service space, we’re generally talking about it like directly to your point is like, what are you expect out of this relationship? And then how do we deliver on that? So I always try to I said this earlier to temper expectations. Right to give people a really good reality of here’s what business actually looks like and what this business looks like. So we go all the way down to like, I’ll sit down and talk like, hey, most businesses like real world, businesses are operating on a 30% margin, right, you’re going to get into the expert brand space and think to yourself, I’ve got no cost of goods sold, I have 100% margin minus ad costs. And that’s just not the way it works, right? You’re going to have staff and you’re going to have your services cost and you’re going to have like your your cost of goods sold for for digital products is really, really high compared to physical products. And so we get in and I help temper people’s expectations, like hey, if you sell $100 are the products you make 30 bucks, that’s what businesses like, Apple are the solar company that I worked at our Microsoft, right? They they operate on, you know, 28 to 35% margins, and you running a real business to look at that, right? So we really temper those expectations and bring them down. Like here’s what the reality looks like. And then we work on how do we exceed those right, how can we, you know, use automation Or use other things to help increase your increase your your stuff there. So anyways, like my, my modus operandi is like how do I help temper your expectations and then show you how you can beat them. So it makes sense.
Tony Winyard 49:13
Absolutely does. If people want to find out more about you and get in contact with you, where would they go to?
Richard Matthews 49:19
So my primary brand is www.Richardmatthews.me That’s my personal brand. And the stuff that you’ll see up on there is all geared around the expert brand business stuff. And like said, I’m in the process of spinning that stuff down, it’ll probably start getting replaced with more of the push button podcast style stuff in the future. But you can find all my contact information there and all the stuff that I do is up there, it’s a good place for it. If you are interested in the push button podcast stuff that’s up at www.pushbuttonpodcast.com and anyone who’s running the business development style podcast, we could certainly help take all the work off your plate.
Tony Winyard 49:58
Is that just for people in the US or also international?
Richard Matthews 50:01
international any, anyone who’s a like, ideal person for that someone who’s running a weekly show that is driving they’re using the audience to either build fame or drive drive audience into another business right you know, local chiropractor or online education programmes, things like that, where it’s not a business in and of itself. And so like those people who are running a weekly show, and they just don’t want to do all the work that goes into running that show, they just want to show up, do their thing, be the expert on their show, or you know, be the guest expert interviewer and have anything else happened for them? And that’s a push button podcast calm. And of course I do encourage people to listen to my show if you like. If you like to hear stories of entrepreneurs from all over the all over the world, the hero show is that it’s my passion project. So I always like to get more people listening to that when I can.
Tony Winyard 50:53
Super and Richard I believe you’ve got a quote that you like?
Richard Matthews 50:57
Yeah, my favourite quotes quote, I live by the Mark Twain quote. And he, he says 20 years from now you will regret more of the things you didn’t do than the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines sail out of the safe harbour, explore, dream and discover. And for me that’s really been a life quote. And I have always been the kind of person who I will jump off the cliff and figure out how to build a parachute on the way down and, and run my business in my life that way, my everything from like, my wife, and I got my wife and I eloped. We had our first kids, we moved into the RV in 28 days, I’ve started businesses on you know, in 48 hours and like you know, we travel the country and succeed and do cool things and I would, I would venture to guess that most people stop themselves from trying because of your you know, things not turning out and what I have what I have found time and time again is when you jump when you fail out of the safe harbour what you You find is that the experience of trying makes you ready? Right? Most people wait until they’re ready to dry. And you’ll never be ready. Right? So if you can instead, jump First, the experience of learning is going to make you ready. Right? That’s that’s, it’s how it’s how you grow your libraries as
Tony Winyard 52:23
Richard, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Some amazing stories. Thank you for sharing everything you’ve shared in the last 15 minutes with our audience.
Richard Matthews 52:33
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Tony Winyard 52:42
Next week is Episode 77 with Billy Boughey who’s a public speaker, who helps organisations improve their company culture, increase team performance and so many other areas you know, some some great stories. That’s next week with really hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Please do subscribe and leave a review share the episode and most of all, have a fantastic week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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