Simplifying start-ups in this crazy time with Matt Knee

President/Founder of MyCompanyWorks, Inc – Matt Knee

Matt Knee is the founder of My Company Works and the author of Startups Made Simple. Matt started his company out of his apartment in 2001 and it has grown into one of America’s largest startup and incorporation services. He is passionate about entrepreneurship and self-development.

“Don’t be afraid to share your idea. A lot of people are afraid of having their idea stolen. It really doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna steal your idea. It’s all about execution.” – Matt Knee

Episode Highlights:

When is the right time to build a startup
Tips on what to do with your business to thrive and survive during the coronavirus pandemic
How to simplify start-ups during this crazy time
Tips in choosing the best, most solid idea for a start-up
Tips in creating your “most valuable product” (testing, marketing, scaling, etc.)
The difference between incorporate and LLC (What’s the best to use in a start-up)

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jamie: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters and today on the show we have Matt Knee. You can check him out at mycompanyworks.com. He helps businesses incorporate, start LLCs, and he's also got an amazing book called Startups Made Simple. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Matt: Thanks for having me, Jamie. Happy to be here.

Jamie: Yeah. So, now the time is very, very interesting. So, when we're looking at starting something up, is now a good time to do a start-up or is it not?

Matt: Geez, that's kind of a hard question. This is unprecedented. For those that are listening, it's just have been about a month since the shutdown... the quarantine... so really rough time for all businesses, pretty much. I think a lot of people are not going to have an option to not start a company. There's gonna be a lot of uncertainty going on, but to answer your question, anytime's a good time to start.

There's so many stories of all these great companies that started in the worst recessions, the worst depressions, etc. Listen, strike while the iron is hot. There's gonna be a lot of opportunities in here. We don't like to take advantage of bad times, but there's opportunities, and there's definitely ways to thrive. So, yeah, it's a good time as any. There's really never the perfect time, frankly.

Jamie: No kidding, right? It's like having children. You're like, Well... You can't predict or plan for some of the things that happen in business anyway, so you might as well start now...

Matt: Right.

Jamie: and get used to some of it. So, how do you say that people should really start trying to thrive during the crazy crisis that, again, is so unpredictable. But, there are ways that we can actually thrive through this. What do you suggest?

Matt: Well, if you're an existing business owner, probably definitely try to get the government funding that's coming down the line. They've had a lot of problems with that, but if you just need to survive, definitely the government funding to thrive. Now, again, we don't wanna take advantage of misery but your competitors are going to be hurting right now. So, if you can lean up... if you can survive... just survive the next couple of months, hopefully, and you actually have a real opportunity to actually take market share from them, to get your start-up going if you don't have a company. Really start working on it now and perfect it, because a lot of us are gonna have a lot of time at home to work on such things. You know what I'm saying?

And, then, the other half of us are very busy working and I'm very proud of those people that are working at Amazon, and the truckers, and especially the healthcare workers and whatnot. But, if you're not already working right now and you've been laid off geez I couldn't think of a better time to now start focusing on: Geez, what am I really passionate about? What do I really wanna do? I don't wanna... I think this flu or this virus has put a lot of things in perspective. It's like, "Geez, I don't wanna work for a soulless company anymore that will just lay me off for no reason and doesn't really care about me." And, life is precious and we're finding out that... "Geez, what am I doing with myself if I could die any day?" You don't wanna go out like that.

So, I think it's a really good opportunity to now know what you're passionate about, organize your ideas, and get that start-up going if you haven't. And, then, if you have an existing business, let's make it how you want it. Maybe you have a lot of downtime now, maybe you're just trying to survive. Get those loans, if you can, to survive. But, let's pivot towards making it a company that you love.

Jamie: See, that's the other piece that I wanted to say too. "Cause even with existing businesses, some of them can find that their heart is no longer in it anymore, and trying to bail out a ship that's sinking, and you're like, I don't actually like this ship. I totally wanna swim over there and not be on this ship ... is really important too. So, how do we make start-ups actually simple, especially during this crazy time?

Matt: Well, as you know, I'm a big systems person. I like talking about making... well, first of all, make your idea as clear as possible. If you want it to be simple, then you have to focus. You have to focus dramatically on what you wanna do, how you wanna do it... as I write in the book, "focus" is the No. 1 superpower of most millionaires. They will answer that question. They will say: "It's my focus." They have a hundred ideas. They focused on one. Steve Jobs could've done all these other things. He said, "Nope. We're just doing iPhone this year. We're just focusing on that." That kind of thing. So, the No. 1 thing to make it simple is to focus dramatically either on your existing business and just where you want it to go, or on your new business idea and what you want it to be and how you're gonna get it going. Get it very simple.

We talk about minimum viable product in my book. Just get something out there and start getting some customer feedback and some ideas. Don't spend millions going to try to build the new amazon.com. You wanna get a little, tiny Shopify website out, throw your product up there in two days, start pushing out there. See if you're gonna get it going, and then, after it we can talk a lot about making it simple after that. The main part in being simple is don't let it get complex after that. So, if you have a complex business, start simplifying it now while you have downtime. If you're starting out, don't let it get complex in the first place. That's one of my big rules.

Jamie: How do you take those a hundred ideas and actually boil them down? Cause I think the problem is, is... I do have ADD and I know focus is important. It comes up over, and over, and over in all of these interviews, and yet, we're looking at a hundred and going, I know, but this one... and then I'll go down this path for a week, or two weeks, or three weeks and then go, "Ah, there was a roadblock. I don't know. Maybe I'll go over here. Maybe it's the wrong idea." Right? So, we bop around like crazy people. What are your recommendations for people that actually pick one that they feel solid about?

Matt: So, definitely go with the most exciting one to you. So, you could get a great idea and you can be like, "Geez, I can make millions doing this," but if it doesn't excite you... if it doesn't get you out of bed, at least initially... then I would keep moving on. At least until you get something launched. But, one of the things that I think a lot of people... actually, the first whole step of my book is about this. It's called "Step One: Imagine It." Well, you want to imagine your thing.

There's a concept called "ikigai." You've probably seen it before where it's what you're good at, what's needed, what you can do, what you can make money... those kinda cross section of all that. It's gotta have those other components. People have to actually want it.

The example I give in my book is that it could be one thing to be really into World War I flamethrowers, but I don't know what your market is there. I don't know how much you're gonna be able to sell. Maybe you could sell them. $10,000.00 a pop on eBay, but I'm not sure if World War... passionate about that particular thing. So, make sure there's a cross section of what you're good at, what you actually like, but make sure that what's needed is also in there. So....

Jamie: How do you determine that? "Cause I completely agree with you, 'cause a lot of people are like, 'Find your passion." It's like, "Well, I'm passionate about that." Yet not that many people are all that passionate about that. So, how do you figure out where is that number that actually tips the scales of actually having enough potential customers?

Matt: Well, again, I have a thing in the book. A little exercise. I just do back of the napkin math if you're looking at ideas. Just do back of the napkin math. Say, "Oh, okay. Well, if I made this product, is there a existing thing like it... or service? Is there existing like this? What do they charge for that and how many customers would I need to cover my basics just to get me going?" You can scale it later and do advertising and stuff, but you need to do just a little bit of very simple math.

Say you're selling a product for $50.00, say $3,000.00 a month on your basic living expenses. So, you just split that up. You do the math. You say, "How many units I need?" Get it done. Do the math part and then you know exactly how many I need to sell per day, per week, etc. And, then, you extrapolate from there and it's like, "Okay. Now I can start researching and see: Can I buy Facebook ads on this? And, how big is the market for people like this?"

Going back to the flamethrower thing, there's probably a flamethrower group on Facebook. It wouldn't actually surprise me if there was. So, you can find these people and then target them at a very granular level with Facebook ads and other targeting kind of things, Google ads and whatnot... and just go from there. Just try to get your basic livable income just so you have some breathing room to create more marketing and better product later, would be my...

Jamie: So, when we're looking at, sort of, the trajectory... right... so, it's like, "Okay, I picked something." How do we create the MVP, or if it is a product that you have to get manufactured, where is that line of going, "Okay, I can actually test this and know that we can sort of move on to step two, which is having more marketing behind it or trying new things to try and get it out there to scale?"

Matt: MVP really depends on what you're going to do, but for most of the stuff and probably your listeners... probably pretty tech savvy crew... getting a website up... back in the day, when I started my company in 2001... that was 19 years ago, so...

Jamie: Wow.

Matt: So, getting a website up was a major thing. You had to hire a developer and you had to know HTML, and Dreamweaver, and Photoshop, and all these things, especially if you wanted to do it yourself. Oh my god, you can go on Wix or a hundred other... Weebly... all these ones. You can have a website up tonight if you want. So, buy the domain name, get the website up tonight, and this could work for anything. Product or service. Get it up there.

Shopify I mentioned earlier. Geez, they give you a whole store with merchant account with e-commerce capabilities, SSL... all those things you need... order management for like. I think their entry level is free or $9.00 a month or something, and then they just take a little percentage of sales. So, the way to get an MVP... these days, there's really not an excuse not to at least get an informational website up so you can send it around and get feedback from others and then promote that.

And, then, if you wanted the actual product... say you're building products... lot of great resources like that. Alibaba.com will have places that can build all these little things, or can create your supplement, or build your awesome little... these gift box things are really popular now where they send you a monthly box. They actually have a company that will actually make the box for you and put the stuff that you want in it, and you just have to come up with a name and get orders. So, it's very easy now to get an MVP going.

Jamie: I'm so glad we live in the world that we do now. So, seriously. I was in Texans back 1999 and you said "Dreamware", I haven't heard "Dreamweaver" in I don't know how long, but yes, it's...

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, that really ages me.

Jamie: It's so easy and unfortunately... or fortunately... because it's so easy, we also think that the rest of it is easy. Like getting customers to say 'yes' without having sales skills and there's so many layers, right? I remember when I first started I was like, "Oh! I just have to go out there and hang my sign and we just see how this goes," and it's more... I call it 'pounding the pavement' now.

You need to get in front of a lot of people in order to get anything statistically significant for you can feel like, "Okay, now I can refine it a little bit better." So, what are you suggesting to try and get the people in front of the MVP? How many do we need to get in front of it to know whether it's a good product or not? How do we do it?

Matt: Well, it will vary depending on your thing. So, if you wanted to start a local business or whatever, obviously you would want to get local feedback to that. So, friends and family. Send the idea. I talk about this a lot: Don't be afraid to share your idea. A lot of people are afraid of having their idea stolen. It really doesn't matter. No one's gonna steal your idea. It's all about execution. If they could, they're not gonna be passionate about it like you are. So, there's very little downside to sharing your ideas with whoever will listen.

So, to start up, I would just start having conversations with anyone that could be a potential customer and... again... if that's local to you, that's fine. Again, on Facebook, right now you can place ads and you can target paralegals in the 89183 zip code that have two children and... you can target at a granular level, that is amazing now, and get feedback. You can even create surveys and stuff like that... send around. "Would you buy this? How much would you spend?" SurveyMonkey is a free tool for that, Google Forms has stuff like that. So, there's a lot of ways to ramp it up.

Getting out there via other ways I would say is search engine optimization, but that takes three to six months. So, it's not as fast as getting just immediate... buying some ads, friends and family, networking, just sharing your link, sharing your document... your idea... or having a survey is much faster.

Jamie: So, do you think that... especially on the ads side, right? And, there's a million Udemy courses on Facebook ads, but there's also a million things of information about ads. So, if they wanted to go out and learn ads, do you learn it internally or do you have a team member that does that? It can be complicated for a handful of people. It takes a skill set.

Matt: Oh, yeah. No, I'm actually totally unqualified for it 'cause I have other people that run it. But, here's the thing, right now the economy has basically crashed right now. Every Facebook expert is available right now for about as cheap as it ever gets. So, you wanna talk about a good opportunity in chaos? This is actually one of those. The marketing firms are hurting badly right now. So, if you actually need professional help getting this going, I think there's some very, very good deals right now. I don't manage them at all. I haven't managed ads in probably a decade. I have dedicated people to do that now.

Jamie: And, ads are so much cheaper right now also, which...

Matt: Right. There we go. Yet another thing.

Jamie: my clients that are running ads are like, "This is amazing!"

Yes!

Matt: Yeah.

Jamie: So, yeah. Now is the time, people. So, when they start moving forward... this process... and they're like, Okay, I might have something... I know your website is all about this... so, when do we incorporate or do we incorporate? Do we do an LLC? Do we have to have a certain number of cash? Can you tell the difference between the two? I know when you're a new business owner, it's very complex and we don't want it to be complicated. We want it to be simple.

Matt: Well, I of course being more cautious now that I'm older, I would say probably incorporate or form the LLC and I'll go over the difference between the two but incorporate or form the LLC sooner than later. Probably about as soon as you're ready to start taking any kind of money, because you wanna protect yourself and you also wanna separate yourself off for legal liability reasons. But, also for simplicity and financial reasons, and then also for credit building reasons. You're actually creating a separate entity that is now going to be its own thing. Its own kind of living thing. So, you wanna do that sooner than later.

I usually recommend people about the time they're about to make their first sale, or if they're getting investors or stuff like that, you absolutely have to. And, even if it's friends and family, set up the company now and get documentation about who owns what and what percentage, and especially if you have partners too. You wanna get something in writing and we provide all that... operating agreements and stuff.

So, the LLC is very popular now. Probably 80% of our customers. They just choose it. It's so simple. Basically, it's a limited liability company. It protects you, it protects your assets that are in the company... your personal assets from being taken if your company gets sued... they can only go after your company. Not you. You don't wanna lose your house and cars and you don't wanna lose your savings accounts because you experimented on a little business, right? So, you set up the LLC, which is very simple and the taxation is very simple. You basically just tack it onto your annual tax return on 1040.

So, corporations... a little bit more complicated. They have a different structure. LLCs are basically just... they have owners. Corporations have shareholders, directors, and officers. You can be all three of those but what's the point of being that complex, frankly, if you're starting out... is usually my recommendation unless you have specific investment from venture capitalist who will require you to be a C corporation. Probably a Delaware one. If you don't have that, then I always go with the LLC. But, that's the difference between the two.

Jamie: Yeah. I really appreciate that too. I know. At the very beginning, it's like swimming underwater going, "I don't know which way is up right now," right? So, LLC definitely at the beginning, but then once you're in it... so, for all the existing business owners right now... S corp, C corp... like I just switched over and it was also for me... not that I didn't know, sort of, the logistics behind it, it's just a little complicated. So, how does somebody choose that or who, on the professional side, should tell them what they should be doing?

Matt: Well, definitely talk to your financial advisor. Usually your accountant or your CPA. They're gonna have their opinion. The problem is, the CPA is always to recommend the most complex structure because they make money by preparing your tax return, right? I'm a big simplicity guy. Literally wrote a book called Startups Made Simple. I like to keep it with the LLC. The taxation is simple. The new tax law has passed recently. You get a bunch of deductions. I don't really see a lot of sense in the S corporation and the C corporation.

Personally, that changes when you start making a pretty good chunk of change. C corps taxed much lower than usually your personal rate and S corps there's a really good strategy, you may be aware of this. You pay yourself a kind of low-ish salary about as low as the IRS will tolerate and then you don't have to pay FICA taxes, your social security, Medicare stuff on any income past that. So, to make that simple, if you made $100,000.00 a year, you're only gonna pay those income taxes on whatever you pay yourself as a salary. Say it's 50. The other 50 will be, kind of, not taxed on that. You'll save a chunk of change. It could be worth it, but it's more complex.

You gotta do all these, big tax return. Your tax return with an LLC, you could do with TurboTax. With S corps and C corps, you almost certainly need a professional. The instructions are 50 pages, I think, from the IRS for both of those. I might be even undershooting that. So, I like to go towards simplicity. Until you really, really start cranking some money, maybe, I would say, after six figures in income, then you can look into the S corp and C corp complexities and see if it works for you.

Jamie: That was gonna be the next question. Where are the levels of that? Cause, yeah, we switched to S corp because that's exactly what we're doing also. And, yes, now I have to file my personal taxes and my corporate taxes and of course that's two different to have somebody else do it, which is a pain in the butt, but...

Matt: Right.

Jamie: I'm saving a lot of money and that's what I care about most.

Matt: Yeah. And, you can save a significant amount. I'm not gonna undercut that, but just one quick thing I wanted to tack on: You don't actually have to convert your entity if you have an LLC into an S corp. You could just file a form with the IRS, very simple one page form, I think it's two pages, actually... that just taxes it as an S corporation. So, it doesn't involve a very complex...

Jamie: Of course my accountant did not tell me that.

Matt: You may have not known that. You may have [inaudible ? crosstalk] [00:20:23].

Jamie: Exactly.

Matt: Maybe someone didn't tell you that and maybe they should've, but...

Jamie: That's funny.

Matt: that is a very simple way to do that.

Jamie: That's awesome. I appreciate it. And, it does feel like the amount of loopholes and the amount of paperwork that comes with this and that's why a lot of people, especially at the business start-up there's so many other things to learn. Like how to get customers and marketing and sales, which are your No. 1 things as a start-up. All this extra stuff just feels like more what I call 'passive actions,' which are not sort of aligned to your goal of making more money, but still need to be done.

And, so, do you highly recommend just having the person that owns the business just use your site and try and figure out how to do it or is it simple? There's just so many questions I feel like that people don't know the answers to.

Matt: You mean like forming the actual entity?

Jamie: Yes.

Matt: Yeah. Oh, geez. It's fairly simple. Most of the states are online now or at least the forms are, but geez, it's one thing to file the company and we talk about this on our website. It's one thing to file the company and that's just the first part. That's like getting a birth certificate. You actually need the bylaws. You actually need if you're a corporation you actually need the operating agreement for an LLC, or else a lot of that protection goes out the window.

In states like California, they're gonna be like, "Okay. Well, you have an LLC. Show me your operating agreement." And, it's like, "Oh, geez. No, no. I just filed online." It's like, "Okay. Well, you've got almost zero of the benefits. We're gonna actually take your house and cars now." So, you really need to do the whole thing and we provide the whole thing.

A lawyer would, but they would charge $1,000.00. So, our packages start at $79.00 plus states fees. That includes the operating agreement. That includes bylaws. We give it to you editable. So, if you wanna go and go over advanced provisions with your lawyer, just edit them. He or she doesn't have to make $1,000.00 worth of legal edits to it. Have a one-hour conversation. Make some quick edits if you really need it. Most people don't. Most entrepreneurs don't even need to touch it. You just need to sign it and have it for when, well, geez when things go bad, 'cause basically...

Jamie: Not 'if' but 'when.' Yes.

Matt: Right, right. And, just FYI, we also can do things like grab your tax ID from the IRS. We can get that on your behalf, and then, also, we can assist with business licensing as well.

Jamie: How cool. Yeah, that's the thing. When somebody says... especially when somebody's brand new... they're like, "I don't wanna mess this up." Because they don't know what they're doing anyway and then they could, like you said, be running an LLC for years and not even have the protection that they think they have in their mind, and that's not cool. So, that's scary for people. So, don't be scared. Go with his company. I think that's awesome.

So, what do you suggest for right now during the times that we're in to manage the survival side? Because, like you said, it's kind of tough. You're like, "I'm kind of in survival mode!" What can we do, as a business whether it be systems or not that can really set us up so we're not killing ourselves over the next three to four months?

Matt: Well, I actually just wrote on our blog what I call our small business action plan on this and I think, right now, the No. 1 is you gotta do a quick very quick it sounds complicated it's called a "break-even analysis." All you need to do is crank up a spreadsheet, put your sources of income now, what you expect them to be next month 'cause it's probably down if you're a small business owner, it's probably way down you need to put your fixed expenses in a separate area.

What can you not change right now? You can't change your rent. You can't change probably at least immediately some payroll and there's some complexities to that about the new programs. You may not wanna layoff people right away 'cause you could probably get some funds to keep them and that will be forgivable later. I go into that on our blog post as well. But, definitely do a break-even analysis 'cause you wanna know: "How much money do I need to come up with every month?" And, then, you can start going down the line.

I think a lot of us have those things that have crawled onto our credit cards or to our payable stack and we're just like, "Ah, it's $20.00 a month, $40.00 a month, $100.00 a month. Ah, I'll get it later." Now is the time to go through I did that even at our company, which does several million in revenue, and I found $6,000.00 of just basic bullshit that we weren't even trying. So, that's one or two people that we could keep for the really bad time. So, maybe your business may not have that much but geez if it saves you $1,000.00 or $2,000.00 that's rent for another month. So, that's a survival thing.

I think a second point that I talked about was you really have to reassure your customers right now, if you can be open, and then pivot if you can. So, 'pivoting' meaning if you're a restaurant that was dine-in only, you need to be pivoting right now to, obviously, curbside pickup whatever is legal in your jurisdiction right now delivery, those kind of things. If you weren't an e-commerce retail shop before, you better be now. Again, get that Shopify up. Get your products on there. Get a website going because that's a definite way to get out of the current mess. If you weren't doing that before, now is a really good time to start doing stuff like that.

Jamie: I think the hard thing is too, especially when you're going through all this, is to be creative enough to come up with new solutions when you're feeling like crap or like, "Oh, shoot. Things are going down and now what?" So, like restaurant that example makes perfect sense 'cause of course people are calling in. That's the only method that they can do. But, if it's a company that doesn't seem like they can switch that easy or they can be creative, what would you suggest? 'Cause it's kind of like a start-up on its own. You're going, "Hey, I have to ask my customers what they actually need right now and sort of pivot to where the market is." But, it's hard to know where the market is 'cause it's so unknown right now.

Matt: Geez, it's really tough to not knowing a specific industry but I know some industries that ?

Jamie: Let's make one up. Yeah, make one up.

Matt: Yeah. There's some that are just obliterated, right? Say it's travel. Travel's obliterated right now. I would deeply, deeply examine my business model and see if there's any absolute way, but you know what I would do? I would have a lot of conversations for about a week. I would talk to bankers, landlords, employees, and try to make a plan if possible. If you cannot pivot quickly, I would say get out faster. Sooner than later. And, I know that sounds kind of like Oh, we're just throwing in the towel? but geez it's gonna be really rough for several months.

If you don't have several months of cash in your existing business to weather this storm and I think it will be a few months. I don't know. Nobody knows, but I think we'll be fine in a few months. This problem may come back around in the winter from what I'm hearing but listen if you don't have the cash to weather it, I would just let's just cut our losses and get on something better or new, and then reexamine what you've done.

And, you mentioned before, a lot of people actually I've seen this a lot. I would say half of small business owners kinda hate their business. It's become an anchor on their soul. They haven't had a real vacation in years. So, maybe this is a time to actually reflect. I know there's not a lot of maybe you don't have the funds, but there is federal funds coming. See what the federal comes up with in the next couple of weeks, but yeah, it's really tough. I would like to provide better than that, but there are options. But, especially if you're not incredibly in love with the business at this point, this is a really good opportunity to get out of it.

Jamie: Yeah, and we'll actually link to the blog post that you were talking about too. This is what I talk about also. We talk about crisis cash management, cause it's different if you're a physical business and you have rent. You're just bailing out that boat like I was saying before right and you can make your mortgage defer. There's just all of these 'crisis cash management? kind of things but, at some point, you just have to actually look at it and make a tough call but also know I've interviewed so many millionaires that have gone bankrupt before.

And, I think that's the thing that's tough, is that we assume it's the end of the world and it does feel quite crazy right now during the pandemic anyway but we're still assuming we're all healthy we're still gonna be alive at the end of this. And, if we know that, we're gonna come out as a better human even if it's not with this business. Going through crisis is something that, at the end of it, you evolve through. You become a better person emotionally, typically through.

So that way we can sort of know that it's not gonna always be like this, 'cause when we're in hard times like this, it's so heavy. It makes it difficult to be like, "Oh, sunshine and lollipops later." It's doom and gloom for a really long time, but you've been doing this for so many years and seen so many start-ups. I know a lot of them have failed and I know a lot of them have become successful from backend. Like maybe they failed three times and then they came back around. So, what do you think about that and not trying to focus on sort of how crappy it is now, but seeing the force for the trees?

Matt: Oh, definitely. In my book, I write "optimism" is actually one of the superpowers. It's worth at least 20 IQ points because your pessimist type will just give up. Not even try at the first sign of any kind of failure. And, that's why a lot of entrepreneurs are incredibly optimistic because they do see these things. They see these as obstacles. Listen, sometimes you're not gonna win. It's not gonna happen.

I know so many millionaires that like you mentioned that have gone bust so many times. In fact, a lot of millionaires are pretty freaking reckless with cash, to be honest. They take big risks, right? So, they end up taking risks and sometimes they work out but geez in a time like this, it's not gonna work out. But, yeah, they probably go through a rough month or two after that, but then they're onto the next business idea. They're onto the next thing that gets them going that gets them excited and they keep foraging forward.

I don't wanna be Tony Robbins motivational type here, but really, you can't really let these failures stop you. What are you gonna do? So, you just keep going. Work on the next thing. Like we said before, lot of opportunities even in really bad times like this. So, I think always keep that in mind. Definitely, for sure. Stay positive.

Jamie: Yeah, as best as we can during the ups and downs of what we're going through right now. I really appreciate you coming on. So, for the last question: What is one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Matt: Well, as you know, the book the subtitle: "How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business?" so: "Startups Made Simple: How to Start, Grow and Systemize Your Dream Business?", what I realized deeply into many, many years way too many years late is that I was doing all the freaking work when I did my start-up, right? So, if you ever wanna be a millionaire, you will have to need other people doing the crap that you either can't do, are not good at, or don't like. So, document that. Write it down. My book shows you literally how to do this step by step and my book is like $0.99, by the way. So, I keep it purposely low right now just for the situation that we're in.

But, definitely systemizing. Documenting how your business works, delegating that off to virtual assistants, or other people, or W-2 employees, whatever. Get it done, and then you focus on your genius zone, which is what you're good at. Maybe you're good at marketing or sales, maybe you're good at product, maybe you're good at whatever in the business. Do what you're good at. Let other people do the stuff you're not good at or don't even like and geez success is virtually guaranteed after that. You just scale that up from there.

Jamie: That's awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. Where do we find more about you, specifically the blog post that you were talking about, but also your site?

Matt: Well, it's mycompanyworks.com and then right on the top there is just a link in the header to the blog. We have a big bar up now that says about the COVID and "click here for our small business action plan." Just click that big orange button that says: "Click here for details." We have a small business action plan. We have written up something very big about these loans that are available and how to get them the PVP loan and then the small business grant. We have a lot of other content on there too. So, we just wanna keep small business owners and potential entrepreneurs very informed right now. That's our main purpose at the moment.

Jamie: Awesome. And, we will definitely link up to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it.

Matt: Thanks, Jamie. I had a good time.

Categories: All, Business, Featured Millionaire Interview, Millionaire Interviews

Millionaire Interviews

Website:

Resources:

Connect with Matt:

Leave a Reply Cancel reply