Matthew:
You can only really serve people at the level that you're filled up, right? So when you fill your own cup first, you get to serve everybody else from a full cup.
Greg :
This is Secrets for Success. Welcome to the Secret for Success podcast. I'm your host, Greg Todd. I am so honored and thankful, and you guys are going to get so many gems from talking with Matt Stafford. Matt, thank you so much for being here.
Matthew:
Glad to be here.
Greg :
So we have been talking off camera a little bit, and you have told me a little bit about your story. Can you just give our guests a little bit of your background? Tell them a little about yourself and the audience that you're serving?
Matthew:
Yeah. So I had a unique start. I was actually in the service business. So we did commercial concrete, started with smaller concrete, built it up to commercial concrete, where we were reporting about a million square feet of concrete per year. And I went to a Tony Robbins event and he was selling a DVD series. Kind of dates me a little bit, selling a DVD series called Money Masters. And the first DVD I got was Frank Kern on how to sell ebooks that would teach your parent how to talk. And I thought, wow, you can make money online.
Matthew:
I had done millions of dollars in concrete, and all we had used the Internet for was to blueprints and billing and stuff like that. Nothing. I started looking at that, I thought, wow. And I set a goal. I said, in five years, I'm going to be 100% online. Because in the concrete business, I was in Michigan, there was a few months of the year that you couldn't pour because the weather and then it's just a rough industry. And then also you could be ready to go work and it could be raining. We don't work today.
Matthew:
And so I just thought, man, it's crazy to see what these people are doing online and they can scale it without having all the people and equipment and all the other things. And so I had set that goal. And it was almost five years to the month that I actually had sold the concrete business, sold my two brick and mortar stores, and was 100% online. And the way that I did that was I started selling T shirts on a site called Teespring. And so we would put designs on there and then run ads to them and sell them. And, yeah, I had some pretty good success right off the bat with it. And I invited four or five other of my friends on Facebook and we created this little group. And my thought process was a rising tide raises all ships.
Matthew:
And so if I help him get better and he helps me get better, we'll grow faster than the rest of these people. And that's what we did. There was two of us that were self employed when we started the group out of the six. And within 30 days, the other four had made more money in 30 days than they had made from their job in a year.
Greg :
Wow.
Matthew:
And so all of them quit their job and the six of us started selling shirts and we slaughtered it for a while.
Greg :
Even though you are in a totally different industry than myself, there are so many similarities. You had a brick and mortar service based business with concrete. It was a business that was seasonal, to say the least. It was a business that was predicated on generating money at only certain times of the year, and you had to.
Matthew:
Be there to do it.
Greg :
And you had to be there to do it. And so you were using physical finite resources in order to generate money. And you find this thing online, frank Kern's teaching people how to make a parrot speaker. By the way, wasn't he the first million Dollar Day guy?
Matthew:
Yeah, right.
Greg :
It's amazing. And I actually remember I remember there was a video with Frank Kern and some other dude, and it was with Tony Robbins. This is when Frank Kern had the long hair and all the other stuff, and it's like, dude made a million.
Matthew:
Bucks in a was. So that was that series.
Greg :
Was that series.
Matthew:
Yeah. And so he also had like Mike Koenigs, Brendan Bouchard, Russell Brunson. And the funny thing was about two months ago yeah, about two months ago. It's on my instagram. I just put it's really funny because when I was learning what I was doing, I saw all those people and was like, oh my God, that would be amazing. And now I was at Mike Phil same's house with John Benson, rich Sheffron Glenn Ledwell, the owner of the yeah, they're my great friends now. They're just good friends. And it's funny, even though they're amazing at Direct, like a lot of the stuff that we did in ecommerce, I've been able to go over there and help them with their stuff, and it's helped them a lot, too.
Matthew:
And so we just become friends through that.
Greg :
I think it's just fascinating. One of the things that I try to teach my clients is you have to understand the current era of wealth, that you can make money. So as a physical therapist, I was trained to be able to make money through me having my hands on somebody and fixing them.
Matthew:
Right?
Greg :
And I call that the distribution era of wealth. And there was a time where brick and mortar stores or the Walmarts, they made tons of money and obviously it became very wealthy. But we've moved into different eras of wealth now and we have technology ecom partnership. And I'm listening to your story and here's this guy who starts this ecom gig, right, says, I'm just going to see if I can make some money online and then find these other guys who are self employed dudes and say, hey, let's see if we can work together and help each other. And then you guys go on to help so many people and do some amazing things. And a lot of it is just being in the right era of the opportunity that presents itself for you at that time.
Matthew:
Yeah. So if you think about it, before COVID only about 10% of sales were done online. During COVID it got all the way up to about 33, I think 33%. Now it's dropped back a little to like 27%. But so many of us, we've been online for so long. I mean, for so long in Internet years, like ten years is forever.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
But we've been online. We just assume that everybody else is proficient and efficient at it. And what I realized when I saw those numbers was we're still early adopters. And when you look at how fast we can change the store metrics by cleaning it up, simplifying it, I always say clarity trumps persuasion. And so just making your site very easy. Homer Simpson. It like, if Homer Simpson doesn't understand what to do next, then it's not going to work. And so that's what we're always trying to do, is figure out, how do we basically not look at our store from the point of view of how do I sell something, but look at it as your customer, how do I find what I want to buy?
Greg :
Okay.
Matthew:
And by changing that little shift, now, your store works better for them, and they'll shop a lot more.
Greg :
Okay. So a couple of things. We're going to dive into this quite a bit. You own a company called Bill Grow Scale, and you're basically helping ecom brands learn how to truly monetize and make their business profitable. So you're a pretty humble guy. I'm going to give some of your numbers because I stalk to quite a bit.
Matthew:
Okay.
Greg :
It looks like over 200 businesses, you've helped create six figure brands, multi six figure brands. Here's a staggering number. I thought I did well with creating some seven figure earners. You've created over 160 businesses to hit seven figures, and it's like 28 figure businesses.
Matthew:
Yeah. 1718.
Greg :
1718. Okay. That's nuts, bro. And you said you had, like, 1000 members or what?
Matthew:
Yeah, roughly. That was with 1000 members.
Greg :
I mean, most guys, if you can have 3% 2% of your audience hitting those numbers, that's pretty respectable numbers. Right, and you're doing, like, 20%, 20 plus percent. So you obviously got something figured out here. You talked about simplicity. So can we go back to this Homer Simpson thing? Because even though my audience is healthcare professionals, and they're not primarily doing e comm, doesn't this apply to us as well?
Matthew:
Yeah.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
So if they use a website, it applies to them because your website is your conversation with your customer.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
And so if your website is not good at communicating, just like if we weren't good at communicating, the conversation wouldn't go very far.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
And so that's typically what happens. What I see the biggest mistake is that people do their own customer service, and because this person had a question, they go, oh, I need to fix that on the website. And then this person had a question, oh, I need to fix that on the website. And what happens is only a few people had trouble with that. But now everybody has to go through this journey of all those extra things that you put on there just to get to the point of buying. And so what we do is we really look at we reverse engineer the numbers. We start from the back of the store and move forward. And the reason why we do that is because if your cart is not working good or if whatever, your sales mechanism isn't working, coming over here and fixing your home page isn't going to make you more money because this is still broken.
Matthew:
So if we fix this first, then every other step that we clean up makes money.
Greg :
Wow, that's the first time I've heard that. Yeah, you always hear, start with the home page, fix the home page. Because 70% of the people are only going to go to the home page. It'll never go to any other part of the site. I've never heard going backwards.
Matthew:
If my home page, only 70% of people are going there, and only 20% are making it to a category page. That didn't make me any more money, right. So if I come here and I fix the things that are here right away, I've already made more money. That makes it more profitable for me to work on the other stuff. And then now I'm going to fix my cart. Okay. Now my cart performs better. That means I'm making more money.
Matthew:
Now my product page now my product page is putting more people into my cart. My cart is putting more people I'm making more money.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
And so we actually work backwards.
Greg :
That's amazing. Okay, I just have to make that sink in. That's fantastic. So is there a certain amount of products, offerings that you recommend to be on your site? Because so many of us, we have so many things. Even for me, up until a year and a half ago, I had all these different things. You can do this, you can do that, you can opt in for this, you can opt in for that. And we've really simplified it. But after talking with you off camera, I'm like, I could simplify this even more.
Greg :
Is there a sweet spot the amount of things you should be presenting or offering so that it doesn't overcomplicate things?
Matthew:
I don't think there's a certain number because we certainly have products or stores that have thousands of SKUs, and then we have some that just have a few.
Greg :
Okay.
Matthew:
And so it's not that again. Most people are looking at their store, how do I make more sales? Instead of just flipping that paradigm, going, okay, if I'm a customer and I come here, what do I need to buy? What do I need to know in order to know, like and trust them, want to buy from them, right? And then when you switch that, you go from the salesy salesperson to now the person that you're trying to help. And when you do that, you'll look at your products different. So the other thing is, your homepage is not meant to sell. And if you think about what I always say, has two purposes. One, to build trust, and then two should just be easy navigation to what they're looking for. So if you have a bunch of products on the home page, you would break it down into categories like, okay, this is hats, this is shirts, this is shoes, pants. I'm just using those as an example.
Matthew:
And then they can go, okay, well, I'm interested in their shoes. When I click on shoes, then it goes to a category page that has filters, right?
Greg :
Got you.
Matthew:
And so looking at hundreds of millions of dollars worth of data, your two most valuable sources or the two most valuable pieces of traffic, are the people that use your search bar and people that use your filters. And so if you think about that, why would they be the most valuable? Because they were able to find what they were looking for, right? And so if you have too many things and they can't find it, it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I'm busy. Everybody's looking on their desktop. But when you look at mobile, because now about 80% of your traffic is mobile, and you have 200 new arrivals two at a time, you would have to scroll through. You had to scroll 100 times to see all their products. And that's how a lot of people offer their products. But if you have a set of filters, I only want to see the blue ones, and I only want to see the ones in my size.
Matthew:
Whatever your size is, then all of a sudden, there's only eight. Oh, I can look at those eight and buy, right? And so it really is. Your home page is for trust and easy navigation. Your category page is just a filter. Your product page can be very specific, and there's a bunch of things that we teach how to make your product page better. And then obviously, if they sell, you should have about 10%, I think about 10% add to cart or more. Otherwise it's not clear enough.
Greg :
Okay, wow. That's amazing. Thank you. You just helped me. Okay. This is wonderful. I'll give you the check later. Okay.
Greg :
You have not only crushed it in the ecom space, but you've had one of the biggest ecom events with BGS Live, right. So I guess my question is as someone that does live events as well, and I do coaching. Have you found that there is a similarity to having success in both of those mean? Because I know putting together a live event is hard to do. Have you noticed certain things where you're like, man, if you do this, you can truly build this thing to be a powerhouse. Events ecom.
Matthew:
Yeah. So what I would say the cool thing about events for us is we would get our members would come, and maybe there would be 150 members, and then the other 200, 300 people are not members. During the event, we would talk about, oh, well, if you're an ecom insider, then you get this, because we're teaching. And then we would just keep saying and all the ecom insiders would make noise. So then essentially what it did was, oh, well, we want to be one of those. And that was really how we grew our group. But that atmosphere of them supporting the new members that would come in, it's kind of like a big family. And so I think I know that's why we've had such good success in there.
Matthew:
Because typically in ecommerce, people are like, oh, I'm not going to show you what I'm doing, because then you'll copy it. In our group, we're very strong to make sure that that doesn't happen, or we would just remove the person. And so through that, what happens is you get a bunch of really smart entrepreneurs working together, helping each other. And that's why I think I'm positive that's why the percentage of success is so much greater.
Greg :
Do you find that that was also happening with how you're building these successful ecom stores as well? Because when I think ecom, I think transactional is there a lot of, I guess when I say relational customers that are coming back to you over and over and over again.
Matthew:
That's the goal. Yeah, for sure. So we're very specific too. We don't teach any drop shipping stuff. We have a beginner program, but we basically don't want to take your money when you're a beginner because the chances of success are so much smaller. We have a program that teaches everything that we do to get started. And then once you get started, then you can join the membership.
Greg :
Got you.
Matthew:
And so we really want people that are already turning over money so that we can help. It's harder to get traction than it is to take someone that's already moving and give them movement.
Greg :
Right. Got you. That's awesome. Okay. So as I was researching you a bit more, I was finding a few things that was saying that you had achieved a lot of success. But then it seems like something happened where you're like, you know what? I started to realize that success wasn't just about the external things. It was about certain things that were happening internally. Can you dive? Something happened, and I want to know what happened.
Matthew:
Yeah. So I had a very traumatic childhood. My dad was abusive, and I always thought that was kind of what my driver was and why I struggled to build something sustainable. And what I realized was it wasn't that, it was actually that my mom was emotionally disconnected. And so essentially what I realized was I was chasing success and making money, thinking that that was going to make me feel better. And it didn't matter how much success we had. I still hurt inside.
Greg :
Were you trying to prove your dad or your mom wrong?
Matthew:
No. There is a good ending to it. My dad eventually stopped, and then I have three younger siblings. So there's three older ones and three younger ones. The three younger ones don't even know that that ever existed.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
So he was able to break the cycle and stop doing it. But yeah, when you are using something externally to feel better inside, that's just never gonna be part of the equation.
Greg :
When did it click for you?
Matthew:
About four years ago. Yeah. I went to an emotional intelligence experience and I had to reenact my dad and my mom.
Greg :
Wow.
Matthew:
And in the reenactment of my dad, I was angry and had the emotions like that. And then when I got to my mom, I turned around, walked over to the wall and was looking at the wall and I was like, wow, this is really weird. My mom never heard us, but my mom never went anywhere with us. My mom never played with us. I was like and so that was like my AHA moment as soon as I started doing inner work. Funny thing is, then the business started doing much better because it was no longer I'm trying to fill something to build success. Now I'm just like being all of me.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
And in that, you create much better connections, lots better friends.
Greg :
Wow. That's amazing. I've heard so many entrepreneurs say that when they finally did the inner work, whether it's therapy intensives, so many doors open up for them.
Matthew:
My belief is this a lot of entrepreneurs have went through that they just don't want to talk about it because they're ashamed of it. What I noticed, the more that I talked about it, the more common that I realize it is in the entrepreneurial community.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
And what I think is the reason for that? If you think trauma is a feeling of loss, of control, well, let me ask you, in your business, when do you feel like you're in control?
Greg :
For me?
Matthew:
Do you really feel like you control anything?
Greg :
Not really anything.
Matthew:
Right. What I realized was most of us came from some sort of traumatic past, and we developed a coping mechanism that allows us to operate inside of trauma.
Greg :
Wow.
Matthew:
And it doesn't mean that we operate healthily.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
Some of us are workaholic, some of us are all the different things. But a normal person looks at us and goes, no way. I don't want to do what the owner does because it's too much. But for us, we have a coping mechanism that worked for us to learn how to live inside of a traumatic relationship, and now we just thrive in chaos.
Greg :
Yeah, we do.
Matthew:
Yeah.
Greg :
So how have you been able to work? How does that look differently for you day to day now versus what it was prior to four years ago?
Matthew:
I have a very strict morning routine.
Greg :
Okay.
Matthew:
So I journal, I meditate, I exercise, and do all of that stuff first to start my day, and then my day starts before I just get up and start working and work as much as I could.
Greg :
Right? Wow. That's amazing. I have a pretty good morning routine as well. That's my thing. I feel as though, at least for me, I'll tell you, I told you in 2020, I took that break for about five to six months, and I was bitter and resentful. I felt like I was giving so much to everyone. And then when I started getting some pushback from clients or this or that or even just taking off the time, and I felt like people were resenting me for putting myself first. I decided that if I was going to come back, I was going to make sure that I took care of me first.
Greg :
And so for me, I kind of have my morning routine as well. So why don't you share yours and I'll share mine?
Matthew:
Yeah. So I think that that's a very smart thing, because you can only really serve people at the level that you're filled up.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
So when you fill your own cup first, you get to serve everybody else from a full cup.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
And so for me, I get up, the very first thing I do is I pray, and then I do what's called inner child work. So I literally just have a conversation with my inner child. It's basically reparenting.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
So the trauma or the traumatic things that I went through, I developed coping mechanisms, and so now I'm just reparenting that child and having a loving relationship with it, and I do that every morning. Then I get up and I exercise. Then I take a cold shower, then I journal, and I do what's called the Stack, which is where I go through a series of questions that just centers me for my day.
Greg :
Okay.
Matthew:
And then about 830, I start my day.
Greg :
Start your day. So what are some of those questions? Because all the other things I do, but I don't do the question part.
Matthew:
Yeah, I'll actually later, I'll send you one. That it's. Done. So I went through a program with Garrett White. It was called Wake Up Warrior. And so he does the body being balanced in business. And so I look at those four areas through another set of questions that Brooke brooke castillo. Yeah.
Matthew:
Brooke Castillo the work or the model? It's called the model. So it's basically, what are your circumstances, what are your thoughts? What are your feelings? What are your actions? What are your results?
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
And so I do that in my body being balanced in business, I do it every 24 hours. So if I say I'm going to do something, and then I go through those set of questions and I didn't do it, I'm like, oh, I said I was going to do it. I didn't do it the next day. Oh, I said I was going to do it, man. I'm still not doing it. I have a 24 hours feedback loop. So I'll catch myself off. After a couple of days, I'll start doing it.
Matthew:
Or if I fall off, what I've realized that it does is it shows up patterns.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
So your patterns start getting exposed, and you could really go through four areas. You're unaware, then you're aware, then you're unconsciously competent, or you're consciously competent, then unconsciously competent.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
So what it does is it creates awareness. So oh, I realize I've said I'm going to do this, but I'm not doing it. So now I'm aware that I'm not following through. So now I get to make a conscious decision to do that. And then eventually, by doing it consciously, day after day, it becomes an unconscious this becomes who I am.
Greg :
This is the ultimate exercise in reflection every single day.
Matthew:
Yeah. So a lot of people go, oh, well, I do my goals every year.
Greg :
Right?
Matthew:
Yeah. Well, essentially, I'm looking at mine every 24 hours. If I do that every 24 hours, I'm going to have 365 cycles for year one.
Greg :
Okay. Before you leave, I have to give you my planner. So I have a planner where on the left hand side of it, it is the reignite, reflect, and rebuild. So reignite is me reigniting my body every single day through exercise.
Matthew:
Right.
Greg :
I got to do that. The rebuild is me feeding my mind, like learning something new. Right?
Matthew:
Yeah.
Greg :
And so I've got a little section for that. But the reflect usually how I've done it. I have not done it nowhere near the level that you've done it. But I am thinking of, what are the things that really pissed me off yesterday or that threw me off? And I noticed before, I would almost, like, repress it, and it would mess me up. It bothered me. And so now I'm trying to not let anything go more than 24 hours. Like, let's deal with it. Let's talk about it.
Greg :
And that's my reflect section. So I want this hack. This is fantastic.
Matthew:
Yeah. I'll give you one of them. Yeah, I'd love to look at it. And so what I would say is, when you say something that pisses you off or it triggers you, you shouldn't do anything. You could develop the habit of saying, it's always me.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
It is always you. Because if you make me mad, you can't make me mad. I'm labeling what you're doing and that's what's creating the anger. Right. Another way I could say that is if I called you a liar and a bunch of other things and you kind of had like little white lies, it would bother you. But if I said it to you in Chinese, you wouldn't get angry at all, right?
Greg :
Yeah.
Matthew:
So it's not the fact that I'm calling you a liar. It's that if you understand that now you're labeling what I'm saying as true or not true.
Greg :
Wow.
Matthew:
Really? When someone angers you, the habit that I got in is it's always me. And then I would say, oh, that person did this just like me. And when you say that and then you figure out how you're doing it just like that, you can feel your feelings, you'll let go and it won't trigger you anymore.
Greg :
This is amazing. So can you tell me how much you've done in ecom sales? I'm going somewhere with this.
Matthew:
Just a guesstimate number. Yeah, honestly, I can't. About four years ago, we stopped counting. It was like 400 million. I saw you. The reason why is, to me, if I told you that we've done 400 million, most people don't even comprehend what 400 million really is. Now it's really close to a billion, and I give you a good example. So if we gave you like a dollar a second, it would take us like twelve minutes or no, twelve days to get to a million dollars.
Matthew:
If we did it, a billion would be like 32 years. So people don't understand a million dollars is a lot. So after 400 million.
Greg :
This is where I'm going with it. You've done extremely well for yourself. And I didn't know the podcast was going to go here, but you're just a regular guy.
Matthew:
Yeah, very much so.
Greg :
Right? Yeah, we're regular dudes that have problems, and you're just continuing to confront your problems. Some problems you maybe let go for too long or this or that or whatever. But I just want everybody to understand that you have to make a decision. You have to make a choice every single day on what story you're going to tell. You know, if people look at Matt from the outside and say, man, Matt Stafford like, this guy's life is indestructible. Everything's gone right for him. But you guys have gotten to know Matt quite a bit now over the last 45 minutes or so. It's just a regular guy is dealing with stuff just like me, but he just happened to say, no, I'm not going to stop.
Greg :
I'm going to figure this out. Whether it was how do I actually sell a T shirt online? Right. Or how do I actually start an event, or how do I move past these things that have happened in my life that are still basically being destructive. On a day to day basis for me. I hope people take that from that. So you've given us some gems. So as you know, I told you my audience is primarily healthcare providers.
Matthew:
Sure.
Greg :
95% of them feel like the website is everything and they need to have a website. And if you had to say to them one or two things that they should do for their site, what would you tell them to do that could potentially help them get more sales?
Matthew:
Yeah, the first one is look at your website as a customer and that's hard to do. Just go, all right, I'm going to put sales to the side for a minute. What is the conversation that that person's having? Why are they seeking you out? What is their problem? Okay, so if they have a problem, does your website call that out? So I've started coaching and helping business owners. What I've realized is the more that we get to the inner work, the better they do externally. So I was helping one the other day and we came up with the phrase publicly successful, privately unfulfilled. That person that they want to coach totally gets it. Hey, I've made all this money. Everybody else looks at me and thinks that my life is amazing.
Matthew:
But inside I feel empty.
Greg :
Right.
Matthew:
And so if you think through what their problem is and you can describe it better than they can, you're their answer. They know that you can fix it. So I would say do that. And then the next thing is look at your website and would Homer Simpson be able to use it? Would he be able to read this and know what it feels like? The other thing is, it doesn't matter if you're doing a million dollars or a $1,000. You're still dealing with people. And if you come across as this big corporate giant, you're not connecting with the people. And your website is your connection to your people. So just don't try to be something that you're not.
Matthew:
Just be exactly who you are. Authentic when you do, it works. It converts. We have workshops and I'll even just ask the person when we put their site up, how does your body feel when you look at that and they're just like, oh, it's like chaos. Yeah. So that's how people feel when they come to your site.
Greg :
Right. Wow, that's awesome. That's awesome. I got work to do on my site after hearing that.
Matthew:
Oh yeah, we all do.
Greg :
We all do. Okay, so this podcast is called the Secrets for Success. What would you say is one of your secrets for success that you've had in your life?
Matthew:
I would say consistency is probably the 8th wonder of the world. If you can be very consistent, it will start revealing your patterns. And the other thing that I would say is just know that you're good enough. And when you believe that you're good enough, then you'll actually show up for yourself every day.
Greg :
Awesome. All right, well, can I tell you something about you?
Matthew:
Yeah.
Greg :
Let me tell you something about you, Matt Stafford. You're even more impressive than the other Matt Stafford. It's no wonder that you've been successful. You have a massive amount of humility. You came in here, and I can tell that you just give value first. And I love the fact that as you were telling me your story, everything seemed to always go around. Partnerships, helping other people out, helping other people out. I really appreciate that about you.
Greg :
I hope this can turn into a friendship.
Matthew:
Yeah, for sure.
Greg :
And I really thank you so much for being here. Okay.
Matthew:
How can people find you buildgrowscale.com and my email is simple. It's [email protected].
Greg :
All right, thank you so much. Appreciate you, man. Yeah, thanks for being on.
Matthew:
That was easy.
