The Builders

In this solo episode, Matt shares his personal experiences with self-doubt, past failures, and the transformative power of visualization in driving business success. He opens up about his own struggles with thoughts like "things are going too well" and how he's learned to conquer those fears doing something similar to meditation and letting go of negative thoughts. Matt discusses his journey through past business failures and the challenges of managing a growing agency. He reveals how he's overcome old negative habits and quieted the negative thoughts by embracing positive visualization. Learn the concept of counter-visualizing, a skill Matt uses to replace self-sabotaging thoughts with positive, goal-oriented imagery. From breaking down goals by quarter, month, week, and day, to the powerful skiing analogy, you'll gain valuable insights into Matt's personal journey and how visualization has played a crucial role in his business growth. Finally, Matt shares the importance of daily routines, self-discipline, and habits in maintaining momentum and achieving success. He emphasizes how knowing his numbers, staying focused, and finding motivation from simply getting started has helped him propel his business to new heights. This podcast is an essential listen for anyone looking to learn from Matt's experiences and harness the power of visualization for exceptional business growth.

In this solo episode I share a number of changes I’ve recently made in my agency to help streamline, simplify things that will help us focus our energy on those things that have a greater impact, fit our vision, strategy and have the most potential. In any business, decisions have to be made. Sometimes that means phasing initiatives out. Sometimes that’s consolidating or eliminating something completely. You always have to be conscious of your time and how you spend your time; opportunity cost. And you have to be brave and make tough decisions for the sake of your entire business, your team and those you care about. It’s easy to get wrapped up in something.. but you can’t be selfish and do something just because you ‘want it’. You have to think about it’s impact; the bigger picture. These are the things I talk about today. I talk about how I’ve phased out one of our products.. a number of them. How I consolidated them into one. I talk about changes to my blogs focus and why those decisions were made. I even talk about how ChatGPT is changing a lot .. new ways I’m using it. Why things like this we need to embrace to stay competitive and DO MORE. And I end by challenging you to go out into the world, spend some time thinking about your business as a whole.. what decisions might be beneficial to you or your business? And encouraging you to take action!

In this episode, we are joined by Edwin Carrion, a self-proclaimed God-made millionaire and successful entrepreneur who started his journey by washing cars to make money for what he wanted at the time. Edwin shares a couple life-changing events that influenced and shaped him as a person and brought him closer to God. He shares his experience building a 20 million dollar company and what he did when he lost all of it. How did he pick himself up?  What profound lesson did he learn that has him running multiple multi-million dollar companies today? Edwin emphasizes the importance of finding balance in all areas of life, taking care of oneself and personal life, and not ignoring our relationship with God. He talks about the impact of working too many hours on relationships and the dangers of spending all your time building a business and neglecting other parts of your life.  And the importance of having your why and urgency for your pursuits. Throughout the episode, Edwin shares his insights on investing in oneself, having gratitude for what you have today, and the power of finding purpose and fulfillment.  And the importance of investing in yourself.  The difference between getting free coaching vs investing 1000s of dollars. Join us as we learn from the journey of a God-made millionaire who shares his insights and experiences in life and business, and who’s on a mission to leave a legacy through his business consulting and mentoring.

In this episode, John Mendez shares his story of how he discovered the power of entrepreneurship and the impact of books in shaping his life. Growing up, John did not have a lot of role models, but he was fortunate to be surrounded by successful entrepreneurs who inspired him to take control of his life. He found college easy, but he quickly realized that the traditional education system was not going to teach him the skills he needed to succeed in life. One book that had a profound impact on John's life was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which helped him to shift his perspective on money and finances. He became obsessed with learning more about personal finance and entrepreneurship and eventually dropped out of college to pursue his dreams. John shares his journey of how he got into real estate, started his own podcast, and began to share his story to inspire others. John's podcast, "Walk to Wealth," is all about helping young people transform their mindset, develop self-confidence, and build wealth through entrepreneurship and personal finance. He discusses his Dream 100 List of guests and how he strategically reaches out to big-name guests to feature on his show. John believes that sharing your story is one of the most powerful things you can do to help others, and his podcast is his way of making a positive impact on the world. If you're interested in entrepreneurship, personal finance, or simply want to be inspired by a young entrepreneur who is changing lives through his podcast, then this episode is for you. John's passion for helping others and sharing his story is contagious, and his insights and lessons learned along the way are both informative and inspiring. Tune in to learn more about John's journey and the pillars that form the foundation of his podcast.

In episode 109, I speak with Alex Fink, the creator of a groundbreaking app that helps users filter out the junk on the internet. Alex shares his journey and explains why he left his previous work building perception systems and cameras to tackle the problem of information overload. He tells us how his wife inspired him to build a content filter. He used crowdfunding to raise the necessary funds for this project. Our conversation takes an interesting detour as Alex discusses the different types of crowdfunding and the benefits and drawbacks of each, and shares tips on how to build a successful campaign. We explore the evolution of crowdfunding over the past few years and how it's changed the way startups raise funds. Alex talks about the challenges of finding the right investors and why he chose to avoid institutional money. He shares insights on how to build a strong team and how to manage outsourcing. Alex also provides advice on how to test potential team members and what to look for when hiring. We then delve into the mechanics of the app and how it uses a built-in search engine and AI to filter out clickbait and rewrite headlines. Alex explains how the app generates bullet-point summaries, creates nutrition labels for content, and penalizes articles without external references. He also discusses the importance of customization and transparency in the app and how it scrubs content from both sides of the political spectrum without any bias. Overall, this episode is an enlightening exploration of how technology can help us navigate the web and make sense of the deluge of information available to us. Alex's app is a game-changer, and his insights on crowdfunding and team-building are invaluable for anyone looking to launch a startup or build a better world.

In this episode I’m joined by Jono Petrohilo.  Jono has a VERY interesting story.  He has a background in fitness and share’s his story of running bootcamps in Australia.  His journey from being ranked #75 to #1 within a year is truly inspiring! What led him to courses?  It starts by him leveraging courses himself to find greater success in what he was doing in fitness.  Eventually he starts creating his own courses in this space and achieving great success. Today he generates over a million dollars a year selling courses and has won the “Australia Fitness Educator of the Year” award twice for what he provides. Today Jono is branching out and helping anyone that is interested in creating and promoting courses in their niche or vertical.  So he’s going outside of fitness to share his experience from the trenches.  He provides some great insights, advice and tips for anyone that wants to get started.  There’s so many benefits to creating courses.. I know you’ll walk away from this episode inspired to do more courses or get started!

In this episode I'm joined by Darrell Evans.  Darrel is the Founder of MindShift Business Coaching.  He's serial entrepreneur and investor with a proven track record of helping companies achieve real results.  We start the episode giving him the room to talk about his story and share his journey as an entrepreneur.  He takes us from his childhood where he caught the bug.. to selling sports wear.. to working at Taco Bell (from Fry cook to General Manager).. real estate.. to the mortgage industry where he discovered marketing online.   Until we land on what he's doing today running an agency and consulting.   In these conversations we don't plan where we land.  In this case, we circled back to 2003 where he started marketing online and his experience with email marketing.  Learn how he approaches email and stays 'top of mind'.  What are his secrets to building out content.  How does he save time?  How does he create his follow ups (drips)?  How does he write? We have a nice discussion about how anyone can start writing their emails.  He shared a simple 3 step process to creating emails that provide value.  And we share our experience with conversational writing.  So much to learn from Darrell.  Enjoy the episode!

In this solo episode I share a couple of stories from my own web design agency.  2 distinct, fresh experiences that illustrate how an agency can work with other company's teams or other experts.  Cross-functional, agile teams are amazing when they are implemented in organizations.  This is first hand experience from the trenches. First I share the story about a new initiative between my agency and another companies team.  On my side there are two resources we've committed to the project.  One is a web developer that's already been doing work for this company for the past 2+ years.  And another is a more recent addition (to this project) on the design side.  On the other end we are working mostly with their copywriter, but also 2 founders and their back-end web development team. Second I share a simpler situation where our client hired a conversion export to help them with their eCommerce store.  I'm analyzing, working on the wireframe, copy and helping redesign those pages.  In the process I may also bring in a specialized copywriter to help with the sites copy. Once this is done, my development team will translate the new designs onto the WooCommerce pages/templates. One of the huge benefits of agencies and companies working together like this is the ability to achieve goals one couldn't do alone.  Bringing in other teams and experts into a project can not only help deliver more quality results, but spur more innovation, creativity and productivity.  It's a beautiful thing to behold.  Enjoy the episode!

In this solo episode I talk about ChatGPT and other AI solutions.  Solutions we have been using way before ChatGPT and where I'm seeing the future in the context of our web design agency.  While there are two sides to this conversation and many are only seeing the negative aspects.. I focus more on the positive.  The understanding that we aren't fighting this and we need to adapt.  That if I help and encourage my team to use these tools, it only benefits our clients with greater results and efficiency. There's so many great opportunities to use solutions like this already.  We've been using other AI solutions to help with content that I'll discuss.  We've used it to help with content, presentations and more.  There are things specific to our design process where ChatGPT is going to be used.  And we're looking at other solutions where we can leverage these tools.  Do these technologies change a lot?  Yes!  But that doesn't mean the 'human' is removed from the process and our clients will only want to deal with bots.  How does this affect our team?  Should they be worried that an AI bot will replace them?  I answer this question and more in this episode.  

In this solo episode I talk more about the new vertical my agency is launching into -- insurance.  Having an insurance background, this was probably always going to be a thing at some point.  But the way we've positioned ourselves as an agency, the team we built, the processes etc, is optimized to meet this new challenge with true confidence.   In true 'The Builders' fashion, I break it all down from the trenches.  What got us here?  Why are we so confident?  And why define a vertical in the first place?  It's probably obvious, but it provides a lot of benefits.  We can sculpt our offerings and what we build to a very specific use-case; specializing.  But also, it now allows us to execute on the marketing and sales side of things on a completely new level.  We can better target this market and, because of Matt's background, communicate with them in a way that should close more sales! I also dive into the numbers game.  What sales experience in the past did I attain (hint, I was an insurance agent for a decade) and how does that apply to what we are doing now to help insurance agencies?  Packed with lessons from the trenches.. enjoy!