From HVAC Technician to Blue Collar King: Scaling to Eight-Figure Success | Matt Murray

Unlock the secrets to transforming a small blue-collar business into an eight-figure powerhouse with insights from Matt Murray, famously known as the Blue Collar King. From his humble beginnings as an HVAC technician in 1997 to facing the devastating closure of the company he worked for in 2003, Matt’s journey is a testament to resilience and innovation. Learn how a side job turned into a booming enterprise and discover the pivotal role that coaching played in his meteoric rise.

Starting a business often feels like organized chaos. Matt Murray shares his experiences navigating this turbulence and emphasizes the necessity of having robust systems and processes in place. We delve into the critical aspects of self-awareness and personal development, exploring how deeply ingrained beliefs and past traumas can hinder success. Gain actionable insights on the profound benefits of working with a mindset coach, and understand the importance of challenging existing beliefs to foster continuous growth both personally and professionally.

Finally, Matt sheds light on the concept of borrowing intellect through coaches and peer advisory groups, which can be instrumental in avoiding pitfalls like complacency and arrogance. By sharing his own blue-collar roots, Matt emphasizes the value of personalized coaching and offers practical advice on how to find the right mentor. Tune in to learn how Boss’s business coaching services at businessownershipsimplified.com can help small business owners overcome obstacles and achieve entrepreneurial excellence. Don’t miss Matt’s invaluable tips on creating a business that operates independently, and reach out for a free consultation to take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey.

Matt Murray: Blue Collar King

Company Website: https://bluecollarking.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100093525267696

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealbluecollarking/

Book: hhttps://www.amazon.com/Blue-Collar-Kings-Blueprint-Success/dp/B0CMY2GC95/


BOSS Links:
Business Coaches: https://www.businessownershipsimplified.com/coaching


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Chapters

• 0:00 Small Business Success With Coaches
• 5:12 Business Challenges With Mindset and Coaching
• 16:45 Essential Tips for Small Business Coaching
• 28:24 Borrowing Intellect for Business Success
• 34:05 Business Coaching for Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Matt Murray: 0:00

And in your business, when you have someone like a coach that knows about all these moves or things that are opportunity for you or things that might hurt you, you're you're borrowing consciousness if you will having a coach. It's not about the system, it's not about the tactic yes, it is, but more so it's about having someone that's walked the path before you that can tell you don't go that way.

Michael D Morrison: 0:24

Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified for success, so that you can create a business that runs without you. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and be sure to hang out until the end of this episode for my recap and coach's corner, where I coach you with actionable items to execute in your business that will help you grow faster. Our guest today is Matt Murray. Matt began his journey 22 years ago as a commercial HVAC and refrigeration technician. Through dedication, hard work and a relentless pursuit of excellence, he has evolved into the Blue Collar King, running an eight-figure HVAC and refrigeration business and living an abundantly fulfilled lifestyle.

Michael D Morrison: 1:15

As the founder and CEO of Blue Collar King Coaching and Consulting, matt leverages his extensive experience to help owners and aspiring owners of service-based businesses in the blue collar trades achieve success, both personally and professionally. He is also an accomplished author, having pinned the blue collar king's blueprint for success how to create an abundantly fulfilled lifestyle and turn your service business into a cash flow machine. A guide that shares his proven strategies for transforming service businesses into a cash flow machine. A guide that shares his proven strategies for transforming service businesses into lucrative enterprises. Beyond his technical expertise in HVAC and refrigeration, matt is a seasoned expert in leadership, business development, business systems and strategy operations, strategic planning and sales. His holistic approach to business and life is grounded in strong core values and he is passionate about helping others live happy, successful and fulfilling lives. Join us as we dive into the remarkable journey of Matt, the Blue Collar King, and discover the secrets to his success and fulfillment. All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots. Today we have a guest from around this beautiful world. Introduce yourself and where you're from.

Matt Murray: 2:37

Yes, hey everybody, my name is Matt Murray, born in Southern California, but I'm a traveler. I love to go all over the country. I know, mike, you're from Oklahoma City we were just talking about before the show about Texas. So I have a special little place in my heart for North Dallas. I'm sure I'll end up buying some property there, but I'm originally a California boy, a beach boy Fantastic.

Michael D Morrison: 2:54

Well, I know what you do, but our audience doesn't. So tell us just a brief about it, and then we'll get going.

Matt Murray: 3:00

Yeah, so a little bit about me. I was born and raised blue collar, blue collar mom, blue collar dad, multi-generation, uh, blue collar kind of family, and I got into the trade uh, the HVAC trade in 1997 as a technician in downtown LA, working on all the hospitals and the the high rise buildings and the hotels down there. And then, unfortunately, in 2003, our company had some financial struggles and they had to close the doors. So we were all brought in and laid off and I was kind of off on my own. I went and did a residential side job. And then that one job I think it was for a family member or friend or something and then that job turned into another one and another one and well, the rest is history.

Matt Murray: 3:46

My little summer side job to just make ends meet is still going. And here I am, I tell people I'm 21 years later on my summer side job with almost 50 employees and a whole operation. And now I do coaching and I help other business owners in the blue collar space HVAC electricians, plumbers. I help them. Business owners in the blue collar space HVAC electricians, plumbers. I help them grow and move quicker. I spent a lot of time doing things the hard way. And then I finally got some help from coaches and the right coaches, if you will, and didn't want to try to do a trial and error approach to growing my business anymore and got some help and now I help others do the same.

Michael D Morrison: 4:23

Very cool, very cool, very cool. So you know people should probably buckle up because there's two coaches on the show here. So we're going to be yeah, we're going to be shooting from a fire hose, I'm sure. So let's get started on some of your ventures. You know 20 years ago that you learned. I know a lot of our listeners are business owners that are stuck, can't get over the hump, or they just want a business that runs without them. You know those types of things. So what were kind of some of your early stages learnings that you discovered?

Matt Murray: 4:57

Yeah, at first it's probably. For me it's like everyone. You know what I mean. You're just running and gunning. You're probably running on a lot of ego fuel and a lot of fear fuel which for several years has the ability to propel you and keep you going.

Matt Murray: 5:12

But it's as the saying goes, it's pretty much organized chaos. You don't really know what you're, which way you're going, but your default mode is to just go right. So you think that go, go, go, go, go, go go is the answer and you're going in all different directions. But I think it's a fight or flight kind of mode and you're just go get work, go do work. Then you kind of go do work and then you, oh man, we're out of work. So let me go back to doing work.

Matt Murray: 5:37

Right, you don't really see at that conscious level, when you're starting off your business, like you've got to get all these energies, kind of like a V8 engine. You've got to get all these cylinders and fuel injectors and spark plug wires and the timing. Everything's got to kind of click and get into sync to get the business to grow. And it takes business systems and tools and tactics and operations and SOPs and processes and metrics and all this stuff. But it takes the business owner to be able to have a conscious awareness, to be able to first see.

Matt Murray: 6:12

You can't see the forest through the trees, as the saying goes. And me, starting off, I was in the forest just chopping down trees for like 10 years but it wouldn't grow. Like my Peter principle was about 5 million. Like I, no matter what I did, I couldn't get past that five $6 million mark and I would bump that for years and years and I'm like what is going on? And it would grow and and then it would shrink and I would make some money, lose some money. So it was just absolute chaos for me for the first decade.

Michael D Morrison: 6:40

Yeah, I think we can all relate. So I know we talked about this earlier a little bit. A lot of times we grew up with trials, tribulations, something stuck in our head. Sometimes it's getting over the mindset. What do you have some insights on that?

Matt Murray: 7:05

hardcore. His dad was pretty hardcore. There was leather belts and I didn't have switches or whips off the tree but my dad did. There was a lot of alcohol, there was a lot of abuse verbal, physical and what.

Matt Murray: 7:12

I didn't know until later on, when I actually got a mindset coach, a peak performance coach, someone that understood the psychology side of the game, that I had some baggage. I had some stuff inside me where I had some limiting beliefs. I had some identity issues, I had some self-worth issues, I had some self-sabotage issues and that was actually my problem. My ceiling was not that I needed another seminar or another business strategist or another structural SOP, but I had to look inward and I had no idea what any of this meant. And Nikki, my coach, who I worked with for five years, like he just slowly started unraveling all this stuff for me. What I didn't realize is I had PTSD and I had self-sabotaging behaviors going on. So when things get good, when your identity, your thermostat, if you will, if your thermostat set for 70 degrees, with your self-worth, your identity and some of these other limiting beliefs, when you warm things up right, when things start getting good, you warm up your bank account, you warm up your revenue, the business starts getting good. You literally like your thermostat kicks on and you start throwing landmines in front of yourself.

Matt Murray: 8:27

And Nikki explained this concept to me and at first I didn't believe him again ego, immature, dumb. Right, this is a guy that's been in the game for 30, almost 40 years. He coached Shaquille O'Neal. They do work with Google, they do work with Apple, microsoft. And here's Mr Matt Murray, like guy, trying to say what? That makes no sense. I don't believe it.

Matt Murray: 8:48

Right, and that's the other problem that I learned too is about these deep rooted, deep seated beliefs. We only believe what we can confirm inside of ourself. Right, confirmation, bias, self-fulfilling prophecy that's a great thing to keep you safe when you're out in the wilderness, like back in the olden days, if there's tigers and stuff, if you know going that way is safe and your beliefs, that tells you that that's a good thing. But in today's society, some of those latent operating systems, if you will, of the mindset, of the brain, they're no longer serving us because we're not. The saber-toothed tiger is more revenue or a better employee, or this or that right.

Matt Murray: 9:27

So I learned a lot about all these different components, but at first I was like this makes no sense and I don't believe any of it. I didn't believe any of it because I wasn't educated yet and I didn't have that level of awareness, that level of consciousness. And I learned about that confirmation bias thing and Nikki really opened me up to stand in the possibility that the way I currently see the world and my current belief set is not accurate and there's more possibility, like stand in the possibility of other ways of seeing and being, and that was kind of a segue into my journey of my expansion and my, my personal development. Wow.

Michael D Morrison: 10:07

That's powerful, right there for sure. I've kind of been in the same space myself, and so for our listeners, I want them to hear that it's not always about the strategy. I often say that until I change, nothing around me changes. So working on yourself first, so first of all your. Your first golden piece of advice here is be open, get rid of the ego, be humble and understand that we don't know what we don't know. So seek others that do, and that's probably the first wisest coaching advice I've ever heard. So I appreciate that. So, yeah, so what you said, sorry, go ahead. No, well, I was, uh, go ahead, cause I think you were going to expand on that comment.

Matt Murray: 10:52

Oh yeah. So what you said, mike, is very important and I want to. I want to put quotations on this for everybody listening to.

Matt Murray: 11:01

You don't know what you don't know, and humans have a very strong tendency to believe what they know. The magic of growth and expansion as a business leader, in the context of business, or even just life in general, the magic is in the unknowing. The magic is in the stuff that you don't know, that you don't know Now. The devils are also in those too. So there's magic opportunity there. But those things that you don't know, that you don't know, those are the things too that are hiding in the dark. That, as a business owner, as a leader, those are the things that knock you out right. It's like the Mike Tyson uppercut that you don't know. If you get in the ring with Mike Tyson and you think all he does is throw jabs and hooks and you only know about jabs and hooks, and you get in the ring with Mike Tyson and he throws a jab, throws a hook and then comes with that big right-hand uppercut, what happens? You didn't know about that and that can hurt you. If you did know those things were there, you would have a better likelihood to succeed and dodge those things.

Matt Murray: 12:05

And in your business, when you have someone like a coach, that knows about all these moves or things that are opportunity for you or things that might hurt you, you're borrowing consciousness. If you will, having a coach, it's not about the system, it's not about the tactic yes, it is, but more so it's about having someone that's walked the path before you that can tell you don't go that way. But why I think I should go that way. Just trust me, I'll show you in a little bit right. But you just got to believe me. We're at this fork in the road. I know your body wants you to turn right, but no, I'm going to advise you as your coach, as your business guide, as your Sherpa, go left here. I strongly recommend it.

Michael D Morrison: 12:49

I'm sure we have plenty of stories. I've got one that is pretty profound, that I've owned a business with a partnership before and it imploded and led us to filing bankruptcy for the business and personal. And I was coaching a client not too long ago and I said here's a red flag. Yeah, what I hear you saying is a red flag. Is it related back to my story? She is like oh, that would never happen. We've known each other for years. That would never happen.

Michael D Morrison: 13:16

Came back in less than 45 days and they were already in court. So, those words of wisdom you know just be be open and be humble and but I want to hit you, hit a. You said you kind of got stuck at the five million dollar mark and I know that a lot of business owners do some of its mindset. Once we get past that, I hear business owners say I just don't have any time to do that stuff you're talking about. How did you find time to do that stuff?

Matt Murray: 13:46

Yeah, I just had to carve it out. And that is something I hear even today, right? Like if I do a sales call with a business owner and I talk to him about the stuff we're going to work on, that's exactly what they say. I just had this happen a couple of days ago. The guy's running a $25 million, $30 million operation and he's literally at critical mass right, splitting at the seams, and he's like I don't even know how I'm going to work with you. How do I even squeeze in 30 minutes a week? I don't know how to do it.

Matt Murray: 14:18

You just have to let some little fires burn, right that? You just have to understand that if you're fighting all these little fires, you're going to have to go back to base camp. You're going to have to go get a fire engine truck that has several thousand gallons of water and then you're going to go back out into the forest and you're going to be able to save 80% of the forest, but 10 or 20% might die. But if you continue to try and fight these fires with a squirt gun or you're trying to beat out all these fires with a shovel, how effective you're going to be? The whole forest is going to burn to the ground, right. It's just a simple strategy and it's simple to say.

Matt Murray: 14:57

When you've been to the top of the mountain, you can look down. Right. I know what it feels like when you're just firefighting everywhere and you're like I don't even know a way out. You just have to select the right coach and you just have to trust. And you're going to jump off a cliff, right, but you have to hold hands together and you have to trust that the coach has multiple parachute packs on them and you're going to have to do some things that are scary as hell. I get it. I've been there many times where I've had multiple coaches and they're like we just got to go and I'm like no, I don't, I can't, I don't want to, I'm too busy, I'm this, I'm that Right, and a lot of that's excuses. It is fear, but it could also be that little thing called self-sab. It's given you a visceral response to not change, aka your thermostats turning on. So it's given you anxiety. But that anxiety is actually what you need, because on the other side of that, anxiety is a promised land.

Michael D Morrison: 16:02

You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is sponsored by Boss, where business ownership is simplified for success. Boss helps business owners create a business that runs without them with business consulting from business coaches who have actually owned businesses before. Business loans fast some within 24 to 48 hours. Online courses, workbooks, classes and much, much more. Go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom to learn why small business success starts with Boss. And if you're enjoying the podcast and want to stay up to date with all of our episodes, make sure to hit that subscribe button, give us a thumbs up or leave a positive review. Let's get back to our guest. So, speaking of coaches, you and I both know, as coaches, there's a plethora of options out there, but there's not a plethora of good options. So what are some tips of advice that you would give to small business owners looking for a good coach, like you and I have had in the past?

Matt Murray: 17:06

Sure. So what I learned along the way is that there's training, there's teaching and then there's coaching. Okay, right now, social media has kind of got these all mushed together and social media has instilled a lot of fear in the minds of entrepreneurs, because everyone has claimed to be a coach and teaching and training is not coaching. There's a lot of these big, cool guys with millions of followers that stand up on stage with each other and they pour Kool-Aid on everybody and they put 100 or 500 or 1,000 people in the room and they were a $5 million operation and then they got bought out by private equity and the collective of all the private equities companies is 200 million. Then they go on social media and they say I built a $200 million operation. No, you didn't. You were $5 million. You probably crashed. You got bought out by private equity. Private equity the sum of all their roll-up companies is $200 million. You didn't build a $200 million company, right?

Matt Murray: 18:10

So what people see is the little guy. All of a sudden, he's the cool guy. But what these people don't tell is this is really what happened, right? So there's a lot of fake out there. There's a lot of clowns and dog and pony show and they've got this and they all call themselves coaches, but they're not. Coaching is an interactive game, okay, coaching is yes, I train you, yes, I teach you, I give you some new information and then I help you along the way, just like a football coach. The football coach doesn't bring the football team into the arena and teach everybody at once and then leave for six months or a year and they go win Super Bowls.

Matt Murray: 18:49

No no one ever learned how to win a Super Bowl at a training seminar, right? No one ever learned how to ride a bike at a training seminar. You get, you need information and that's taught to you, and then you need to practice that. And if you want to learn quickly, you need a coach. That's right there. Seeing what you don't see, like, okay, that's good. I need you to continue to do that. Tweak it a little bit, but that move right there. That's not good. Let's not do that anymore. Get back in the ring swing again, right? This is coaching.

Matt Murray: 19:20

A coach sees your blind spots that you don't see as humans. We don't see ourselves swinging the golf club. We don't see ourselves shooting the free throw. We don't see ourselves making the kick or the punch in the octagon. You need a coach.

Matt Murray: 19:35

A coach is with you in the trenches. The coach knows you personally, knows your family, knows what your strengths are, has an idea of what your self-sabotaging behaviors are, knows what you need and gives you a customized plan, one little bite-sized piece at a time. These trainer people they pour and vomit information all over you. They give you books and books and playbooks and 400 speakers of this and that and they fill up your brain with what I call Kool-Aid or Cool Whip and you get a little emotional high. But then you go back to your business and you're by yourself and you don't know what to do with all these 400 different ideas from all these speakers and you're just one in the same. You're just on a hamster wheel, going rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. But now you're probably even more stressed and more confused, because before you went to the seminar you had 50 ideas and you came back and you have 450 ideas. So now you're now you're actually in worse, you're in a worse place. So that's the difference between coaching, teaching and training.

Michael D Morrison: 20:42

Yeah, I'm going to have to go back and listen to this myself, cause you said it very well. I love the types of coaches that don't tell me what to do, because I have coaches myself. Sure. I love the ones that are interactive and I love the ones that don't follow a playbook, they're open. You know there's a lot of good tools out there. I know a lot of small business owners try to read the popular frameworks of how to scale a business and I'm like that's all great and grand. Sure, scale of business, and I'm like that's all great and grand. But if they're coaching from chapter two and you need to be in chapter 13 and you had a divorce or somebody died in your family, what do you do now? You know life happens and so that's. That's the difference between a coach. What you're talking about is we can help, guide you, give suggestions. You know your historical patterns. I had a business owner just last week that was really burnt out.

Michael D Morrison: 21:29

And so I been working with them for about eight years and I said when's the last time you exercised, like not just taking a walk around the block, I'm like ran a couple of miles or whatever. He said oh, it's been a couple of months, he did it and he was like man. I feel all energized and you know so, just being able to recognize just those simple patterns that we can't as humans, like you said, being able to recognize just those simple patterns that we can't as humans.

Matt Murray: 21:53

Like you said, yep, a hundred percent. Another way I look at that, just to give another metaphor, like yes, I'm a pilot, so I became a. I became a pilot in 2010 and I explain it this way. So imagine you read a book on how to fly an airplane, right, would you go, get in that airplane? Would you put you and your family in that airplane because you read a book? Or you bought this cool, whip, kool-aid guys, awesome online courses program on how to fly an airplane.

Matt Murray: 22:20

So I read the book, I read several books. I went to the seminars. I watched the courses on how to fly the Cessna. Honey, let's jump in the Cessna, grab the kids. I took the courses. I took the courses. I read the book. I went to the seminars. I got the raw, raw, raw swag bag. Let's jump in the Cessna and fly to Mexico. We're good to go.

Matt Murray: 22:41

Would you do that? I don't think so. Hell, no, you wouldn't do that. But getting into a business, that's what we all do, and I did the same thing, right? So if you look at your business like an airplane, it's absolutely as deadly as an airplane, because it will financially and emotionally and spiritually destroy you if you don't have the proper flight training and if you don't have a flight instructor.

Matt Murray: 23:07

Right, like when I became a pilot, it was six months of, yes, we did some training. We would read the books, I would watch a little video course on that particular instrument or thing, and then, guess what we did? We walked out on the tarmac there, we jumped in the Cessna and we went up to 10,000 feet and the flight instructor, the coach, was right there and he would let. I was flying the plane, the yoke, the power, everything the flaps, with all in my control, but he was right there to grab me, right when I was about to kill us.

Matt Murray: 23:40

He was right there to coach me and say, hey, yo, that's good, but if you turn a little bit more, we're going to stall the plane and it's going to drop out of the sky like an anchor. Going to stall the plane and it's going to drop out of the sky like a, like a, you know, like an anchor. So he was right there with me along the way, letting me do a little bit, coaching me, optimizing me and also protecting me. And this is the way I see real coaching. Real coaching is you have a flight instructor that's in the cockpit with you.

Michael D Morrison: 24:08

Wow, very, very well said. Going back to the business ownership part, what would you say are some non-negotiable, some essentials that every business owner must have to be successful as they're trying to get past that stuckness?

Matt Murray: 24:23

Hire a coach, day one that you start your business. The right coach yes, agreed, that's the thing, right? I would hope by now we've kind of checked that box that getting the right coach is an absolutely very smart thing to do to start a business. I would say, you know, going back in time, I should have learned more about how to manage like metrics and a little bit more about productivity management in terms you know of, of like on the jobs and stuff like that. I think marketing too, I could have done a better job. I didn't really know anything about marketing. I didn't really know too much about sales. And then, on the financial side too, I had to learn the you know how to read a P and L.

Matt Murray: 25:08

I worked in the business for for a couple couple years, two or three years, and then I finally got a CPA because everything was a mess and I started getting these letters from the IRS. Right, I'm like what's that? And they were like knocking on the door. I'm like, oh gosh, yeah, that makes sense. I've been collecting all this money but I haven't done anything about taxes for a while. So then I found a CPA and they're like well, send us your QuickBooks and your income statement and your P&L and your balance sheet and I'm like, I'm like como Can you say that in English please? And I was like whoa, okay, so that was a couple year journey figuring all that mess and then cleaning up the taxes of the IRS.

Matt Murray: 25:50

So I think there's several components Get your marketing right. Learn how to do marketing. Learn how to do sales. Okay, most people that start a business, they know how to do the thing, like my thing. My technical thing was HVAC. I didn't need someone to teach me how to do HVAC. I had already done that for six years. What I needed to learn was how to run a business sales, marketing, operations. You know the financial components to keep track of the money and to be able to tell if we're making money or losing money. You might have 150 grand in the bank and for a new entrepreneur you think, oh, I'm rich, I've made it right, but you don't realize you owe 300,000.

Matt Murray: 26:26

Yeah, and then the final piece for me, kind of on the on the come up on the ramp up, was I really didn't ever learn anything about leadership. I didn't learn anything about emotional intelligence. I was a hothead. I was raised by hotheads, the guys that brought me up in the union. They were hardcore union dues, they were hotheads, so I thought that was normal.

Matt Murray: 26:46

Again, it's the the we talked about earlier, the things that you don't know, that you don't know. I didn't know how to communicate, um with an empowering spirit and with vision and with motivation, and to show people like my job as a leader is to get you to where you want to go, not you to get me to where I want to go. Right, I didn't know anything about, about leadership and communication and motivation and, um, hiring the right people, right, you, you think that's another thing too. I think, uh, very new entrepreneurs are like, oh, I'll just hire somebody for that, right, we just got bigger. Like, oh, you need someone for dispatch.

Matt Murray: 27:20

Okay, put an ad for dispatcher. Cool, 30 dispatchers applied. Surely they all know how to do dispatch. Plug them in right, and you go, oh no, that didn't work, that didn't work, that didn't work. So, people, they're metrics, sales, marketing, finances. I think those five things you got to get those dialed in right off the bat, or be like Matt Murray and have a big ego and spend 10 or 12 years doing it the hard way and burn hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's always, there's always that route too.

Michael D Morrison: 27:49

Yeah, there's options, right, there's options.

Matt Murray: 27:51

Yeah, what do you want to do?

Michael D Morrison: 27:52

Yeah, I like the, I like the other option that we're talking about. Like you said, once you've been to the top it's easy to look down, but looking up it's you know you can have a hard time trusting it or seeing seeing past it. So on your businesses. So what would you say is a significant pivot? Because that's the name of the show? Small business pivots and I know that kind of got overused during COVID. Everybody was pivoting, Everything was pivoting. But in business, what does a pivot look like to you?

Matt Murray: 28:23

Good question. So borrowing intellect, borrowing consciousness, is the way that you make the right pivots. Okay, when you are at a point in your business and you're not sure which way to go, you may get a coach, you may join a peer advisory board or group. The best, sweetest, most magical, amazing thing as an entrepreneur and Napoleon Hill wrote the book on this right, the mastermind you know and thinking, grow rich is to borrow intelligence, borrow consciousness and what you want. When you're growing a business, there are going to be pivotal moments. Right, there's these evolutions and revolutions, and when things start to smooth out as you grow, there's going to be a metamorphosis in your leadership and you as a human, but also in the organization. And at those critical moments you need the right amount of intellect at the right pivot points at the right time so you navigate correctly. If not, and especially as the business gets bigger and bigger, one decision could be catastrophic or could be magical. So the bigger you get, you will play much safer and it'd be much smarter to have some people that help you to make decisions, especially if you're in what I call no man's land.

Matt Murray: 29:49

No man's land is I've grown the business to 5 million. Now I'm like 6, seven, 8 million. There's something that's going to bite you in the booty, and I know this. Take it from the guy that's been there. It's called complacency, arrogance, cockiness. I figured it out. I'm running to 10 million now. No, no, no, you're in no man's land and that tyson uppercut is just waiting right around the corner for you.

Matt Murray: 30:17

oh, yeah yes, it is from experience I know uh-huh.

Michael D Morrison: 30:22

I always, I always, uh say go slow to go fast yeah, adaptable and uh, you don't know what you don't know, so we're all talking the same language here.

Matt Murray: 30:32

So folks, you that are listening.

Michael D Morrison: 30:35

I assure you. Listen up for more. How can someone follow you best Are you? What social media platforms are you on that people can find more information about you?

Matt Murray: 30:46

Yeah, a couple of ways. You can just look up blue collar King on Facebook Matt Murray, blue collar King. My handle on Instagram is at the real blue collar King, and then my website's very simple bluecollarkingcom. So one of those three ways is the best way to get in touch with me.

Michael D Morrison: 31:02

Very cool. Well, you've been full of gospel truth here. And if we were in front of an audience of small business owners? We're all in different seasons of business and life, but what is one thing that you would say would be applicable to all? In a tent, all that we're attending?

Matt Murray: 31:18

Um, embrace a struggle, don't run from struggle when things get uncomfortable. Let that be a light for you, an indicator like okay, it's probably, I probably am, am bumping up on a, on a ceiling or a level Right, and it's a time to reflect. I think people run from discomfort, run from anxiety, run from stress, and then they start making quick moves. Right. So slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I think this is the army rangers or the Navy SEALs mantra. It is amazing. In business and when you're feeling some tension, that's a good thing. But go borrow some intellect, go borrow some consciousness, go talk to somebody. Do not ever make knee-jerk decisions when you're growing a business. It's no bueno, trust me.

Michael D Morrison: 32:04

Discomfort means we're growing right. Yes, Absolutely, Matt. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much. We'll see you around.

Matt Murray: 32:12

Yep, thank you.

Michael D Morrison: 32:12

Welcome to the Recap and Coach's Corner, thank you welcome to the recap and coach's corner, where I recap the episode and share actionable coaching advice to help you create a business that runs without you. In this episode, matt dives into his life journey, from his blue collar roots to his ascent as a successful entrepreneur. He shares how a business coach played a pivotal role in his journey, steering him away from the trial and error approach that entraps many new business owners. Matt discusses his battle-tested strategies for overcoming business obstacles, using the metaphor of fine-tuning a V8 engine to illustrate the need for harmony in business operations. Matt underscores the importance of humility and the willingness to accept guidance for personal and professional growth. The episode also debunks common myths surrounding business coaching. Matt stresses the importance of personalized, interactive coaching over generic seminars and training programs. He draws intriguing parallels between learning to fly a plane and starting a business, emphasizing the necessity of hands-on guidance from an expert coach, which leads us into our coach's corner. Here is one actionable item you can implement based on Matt's insights Identify and hire a business coach.

Michael D Morrison: 33:30

Take the time this week to identify potential business coaches who specialize in your industry. Look for those who offer personalized, hands-on coaching rather than generic training programs. Reach out to at least three potential coaches and one of those choices being my company boss, I hope. Schedule consultations and ask them about their approach to coaching, their success stories and how they can help you achieve your business goals. By taking this step, you'll be investing in your growth and setting your business on the path to harmony and success, much like Matt did.

Michael D Morrison: 34:05

Remember the right guidance can make all the difference in overcoming obstacles and achieving your entrepreneurial dreams. And don't forget to check out Boss's business coaching services at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots and please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck or you need help creating your business to run without you, go to our website, businessownershipsimplifiedcom, and schedule a free consultation to learn why small business success starts with Boss. If you want to talk anything small business related, email me personally at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.