From Limiting Beliefs to Limitless Success: Self-Worth, Mindset, Scaling $400M+ | Matthew Stafford

In this episode of Small Business Pivots, Michael sits down with Matthew Stafford—former concrete contractor turned e-commerce strategist whose businesses have generated over $400 million in revenue. But the real story isn’t just about scaling brands—it's about scaling beliefs.

Matthew reveals how deeply your self-worth and mindset impact your bottom line. For years, his business growth plateaued at the level of his internal success thermostat—a psychological set point defined by what he subconsciously believed he deserved. Sound familiar?

Only after embracing full personal integrity, identifying blind spots, and working with mentors did he break through those mental barriers. The result? Not just exponential growth for himself, but for his coaching clients—like one who went from $10K per month to a $50 million run rate in three years.

If you’ve ever felt stuck despite doing “all the right things,” this conversation is for you. You’ll learn:

• How mindset coaching can be the hidden key to revenue breakthroughs
• The role of self-esteem in business success
• Why most business problems are actually mindset problems
• A powerful question to uncover what's really holding you back: “What am I avoiding or not seeing?”

Plus, we dive into Matthew’s data-driven approach to website conversion optimization through his Build Grow Scale methodology, which flips the script on traditional e-commerce strategy. You’ll also hear how simple tweaks—like asking “what almost made you not buy?”—can uncover millions in missed revenue.

He also shares why now is the best time to be an entrepreneur. With AI tools like ChatGPT and automation technology becoming more accessible, you don’t need a big team—you need the right mindset and 30 minutes a day to learn.

Whether you're an e-commerce brand, a coach, or a service provider, this episode will challenge your beliefs, inspire action, and help you align your inner story with your business goals.

Matthew Stafford: Build Grow Scale, Managing Partner

Website: https://buildgrowscale.com/book-a-call 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewstafforddotcom/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuildGrowScaleEcommEducation

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/windowsuccess

Email: matthew@buildgrowscale.com

#MatthewStafford #BuildGrowScale  #Mindset #SelfWorth #MindsetMatters #BusinessCoaching #SelfEsteem #SuccessMindset #SmallBusinessGrowth #EcommerceStrategy #OvercomingLimitingBeliefs #PersonalDevelopment #DigitalEntrepreneur #ScalingYourBusiness #MindsetShift #AIForBusiness #ConversionOptimization #LeadershipMindset #BusinessTransformation   #SmallBusiness

Chapters

• 0:00 Matthew's Entrepreneurial Journey
• 5:30 Business as the Ultimate Inner Game
• 18:17 Breaking Through Your Success Thermostat
• 23:10 The Website Optimization Revolution
• 30:44 Data-Driven Growth Strategies
• 37:16 Leveraging AI for Business Transformation
• 41:30 Final Wisdom and Key Takeaways

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, welcome to another Small Business Pivots, and today we have another special guest from around the world, and I know that only business owners can introduce themselves and their business like they want it, so I will let you introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about you.

Speaker 2: 0:19

So I've got man. It sounds funny to even say my age, but I've got 35 years of business experience. I started my first business when I was 18. Built that to about 10, 12 employees and sold it to the employees and then started what became a commercial, concrete business and I grew that to about five, six million a year and about 20 employees and went through the economic disaster in 2008. And at that point we were doing commercial, concrete, concrete.

Speaker 2: 1:07

And so we were on a couple of Walmarts where the general contractor we had worked with them about three years ended up going through some financial difficulties and didn't pay us. So that ended up going taking in about three years and cost about $500,000. And I was like, yeah, I don't like the risk versus reward in this business anymore. And I had just went to a Tony Robbins event and he was selling a program called Money Masters. It was a monthly program where you buy it, you get a DVD and a booklet and it was talking about people that were making money online. And the first one was Frank Kern and he's talking about how he's making like 50 grand a month selling eBooks to how to teach your pair to talk and with my country.

Speaker 2: 1:53

It seems like yesterday, almost, doesn't it. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it was about 10 years ago now, 12 years ago. Remember thinking I had used my computer to do blueprints and proposals and things like that. But e-commerce was not really a thing back then yet and I thought, wow, that's amazing. And I was on the road about 200 days a year. So I thought if I could work from my computer, I could do that anywhere.

Speaker 2: 2:25

And that became the dream for me and so I set a goal that within five years I would sell my businesses I had the concrete business and a couple of salons and be a hundred percent online.

Speaker 2: 2:37

And almost to the month, it was five years later that I was a hundred percent online, that I was 100% online, and that's brought its own set of challenges.

Speaker 2: 2:51

Just, I knew and we kind of talked about it a little bit before we started recording how our mindset or our belief systems affects our business so much.

Speaker 2: 2:59

And what I'll tell you is I had no problem charging people to go pour concrete or sell them goods, but as soon as I started teaching people how to do stuff online and I'm selling, talking to them or basically mentoring them I didn't see my value and so I really struggled for a long time to understand how to bill and charge and to feel okay about that, because so many people that you help end up wanting your services and then doing nothing with it, and so it was really difficult for me to put my head around that. So that's kind of been my journey. I've got past that now, but for sure it's something that comes up regularly, and so I think every business owner is going to have their own set of problems. Really, business is the ultimate inner game. It's going to show you where you don't feel good enough, it's going to show you where you're not showing up in the way that you need to, and it's going to stretch and expand you in ways that you will never expect.

Speaker 1: 4:10

Yeah, that's very powerful and so, for our listeners, you need to buckle up on this one, because we're not only talking about e-comm. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. We're talking about quick successes based on your coaching and some things that you do, how you've scaled businesses, but then also the most important thing, mindset. So let's introduce the show real quick and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, founder and CEO of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support, apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom.

Speaker 1: 5:08

All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. I know you have quite the journey we've talked about. Let's kind of start with the trials and tribulations of mindset things that you went through. You kind of addressed some of it, but we didn't get into the details. So let's talk about that, because you said something very important it's not always a business problem, it's a people problem. So let's kind of start with some of those areas of challenges that you were thinking of earlier.

Speaker 2: 5:35

Yeah, so my backstory is I grew up in a family that was very abusive, and so in that life I developed some really unhealthy self-esteem or beliefs about what I was deserving of, and so I definitely was a really hard worker and I've been blessed that. You know, my parents were both very smart, so I was born with, you know, some common sense and smarts. But the issue was, every time that I built the business up to more than what I thought I was worth, I would find a way to sabotage it or get it back to where I was comfortable. And I always.

Speaker 2: 6:20

The way that I explain that to the to the business owners that I help is we all have a set point, kind of like a thermostat, and when we do better than that, it's like turning the heat up, and what does the thermostat do? It automatically kicks the air on and brings it back down. So when we're doing better than what we think we deserve and it doesn't make sense logically because our brain would say more is better, but if our self-esteem doesn't match what we're doing, we'll find a way to get rid of it. And then same in reverse if we drop below what we think we're valued at, we usually kick it in and work a little harder and get it back up to where we're comfortable, and so, for me, understanding that and learning how to raise that set point consistently has been the biggest driver in creating businesses that are sustainable, that are predictable and that obviously help you build the life of whatever success you consider to be.

Speaker 1: 7:27

What are some tips that you could share that helped you keep moving that thermometer higher and higher?

Speaker 2: 7:36

Yeah, I will tell you what I think is the only one that does that is having 100% personal integrity with yourself. So most of the time we say, oh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to start exercising, I'm going to get in shape, and we do it to hit a goal rather than to create a lifestyle change. And so when we hit the goal, a lot of times you end up rewarding yourself with the exact opposite of what it took to hit the goal and you go back to where you were. And so I think it requires to raise that set point is that you create 100 percent personal integrity with yourself, and when you do that, you can continue to raise the thermometer, expand your capacity of what you think you deserve and can handle. Did you do that with a coach books? How did you?

Speaker 1: 8:30

work on that.

Speaker 2: 8:31

A combination of both, but it was certainly. It was a coach that helped me understand it to a deeper level. Like you and I talked about before, we started recording Our brain, our brain's objective is to keep us alive, not happy, and so it doesn't matter, uh, if we know that. You know, achieving these things and creating better habits is going to make us happier. Its job is what you've done so far hasn't killed you, so that's safe. We're just going to keep. We're going to keep trying to. It's like the um, the lobsters that pull the other ones back down into the, into the water. Our brain's doing that to us all the time until we break that chain and actually raise our set point.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Anything else you want to share about that before we dig into the business side, cause I know mindset is probably one of the biggest challengers for business owners that we work with as business coaches.

Speaker 2: 9:32

Yeah, I would say for sure. Most businesses don't have a business problem. They have a people problem, and so I think the number one thing that business people can do to actually improve their business is to find a way to have a coach or a mentor, and the reason why I believe that is because it worked for me and everyone that I've worked with at you know, once I started realizing the value of it. The results are, the results speak for themselves. The other thing is our brain naturally won't see the things that we don't believe are true, and so we need that other perspective to get us to see something besides what we already believe. And if we don't do that, leave. And if we don't do that, you're going to be, you're going to end up at best getting slow, very incremental results, not not the big changes that most of us are you know, excited about and want to accomplish Fixing, to mention the number on your website.

Speaker 1: 10:38

But before we go on, I'm not going to speak for every business owner listening, but most business owners that we've pulled or spoken to are probably doing less than 5 million and the majority of those are probably less than a million, and yet on your website it says we stopped counting at 400 million. I can't for some of these listeners they probably can't even fathom what that looks like. So let's kind of start with the journey of where you started and how you worked yourself up to that point.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Yeah, yeah, we stopped counting about six years ago, cause to me it was like, okay, if we say a bigger number, does that really matter? Um, and then then it's about us and I really don't think that, uh, when you're teaching other people that it should be selling online, uh, my first uh thing that I did was put marketing sayings and different designs on t-shirts and then I ran Facebook ads to those t-shirts and sold them and I did really really well at it. I probably did a little over 15 million in three years, and so I thought I'm amazing at this online stuff. It's so easy. And I ended up building a software platform where we could have other marketers put designs up and run ads and sell t-shirts and do all that. And it did really well and we sold it. And then I decided to start a Shopify site in the kitchen industry, in the kitchen niche, and again, I was really good at running Facebook ads, and so within a couple months, we were making two to 300 sales a day and had our own little fulfillment warehouse in the back of our building and I continued to like watch marketing and do a bunch of other things and add apps and put stuff on the store and, over a period of about three to four months, we went from three 400 sales a day down to less than a hundred, and my ads were not working and I could not figure it out. And, uh, I really didn't know, um, what I was going to do, Cause we had we had 30 days worth of kitchen appliances being built for us in China. We had 30 days on the water and then 30 days in the warehouse, so we had months worth of goods at the high volume that we were selling, not at the low volume that we had kind of petered out to.

Speaker 2: 13:30

And I, by chance, I saw on Facebook a guy said hey, we will, I'll do six calls with you for a thousand dollars and we'll look at your Google analytics and in your Google Analytics we can optimize your store. And I'm like, well, let me try that. And so I got on there and started learning about websites and what was happening to make my business do better, and what I didn't realize is I was looking at my website through my own browser and so it would load fast for me, but everyone else that I was sending to it it was loading between 10 and 13 seconds. So the stuff that I had added to the site had broke it and slowed it all down, and so everything had basically barely worked, and within about two weeks we were able to turn it back around and start watching the sales go back up as we used that analytics to fix the site. And so really my thought process went from traffic's not the problem, it's really the website that makes a huge difference, because on average, people's websites convert 2%, 3% max, and that means a hundred people raise their hand, said they're interested in what you're selling, came to your site, and only two or three took an action, and everybody's mentality was oh just, we need more traffic, we need more traffic. And I thought, wow, if I can get two to three more of those 97 people that left to buy, I can double my business. And that became my basically like heat seeking mission that, like, I'm going to figure out how to make this thing convert at 10%.

Speaker 2: 15:25

And as we started working on that, uh, the site did really really well, much better than it did in the beginning, and I had a couple of friends that had websites who I had sold t-shirts with for several years, and we developed some pretty good friendships. I said, hey guys, I think I've figured something out. I would like to work with you on your site. You don't even have to pay me. If it works, you can pay me, and if it doesn't work, you don't have to give me anything.

Speaker 2: 15:53

And uh, my first, uh one they were doing about 400,000 a month on their site and within six months, we had him at 2.7 million A month yeah, per month. Wow. Another one my friend was selling supplements and he had done 2.75 million the year before and within 90 days, we had him at a $9.1 million run rate. He ended up doing 16 million that year. And so I'm like, okay, I didn't just get struck by lightning this works in that year. And so I'm like, okay, I didn't just get struck by lightning this works. And, and we, we got busy um, not talking about ads. Uh, I had a partner at the time. Uh, he started teaching what we were figuring out in the optimization of the UX and the UI of the website, and that's really how BGS became what it did. And uh, yeah, where we're at now.

Speaker 1: 16:46

Very cool, very cool. What were some lessons you learned along the way?

Speaker 2: 16:51

with people. Money changes people, for sure I'll say. That Was that in the partnership Cause we would partner with different brands for RevShare and we could grow some. We grew some really big brands and did very well.

Speaker 2: 17:17

Other people had much better opportunities to grow a lot more, but as soon as they hit their you know they were making a couple of million dollars a year they weren't excited to go beyond that. They just literally didn't have any more motivation and I think that goes back to now. I know a lot more because of the last four or five years of going through the healing journey of, you know, dealing with the trauma and stuff like that, just understanding the mindset of people. Yeah, I think that they hit their value or what their idea of success was, and we could have scaled it a lot farther, but they just weren't interested in that. And so I learned one you know, to pay attention to who you're partnering with and understand that there's some opportunities are going to be A opportunities and not to be tied up with a bunch of B opportunities, because when the A comes along you don't have time to do it. Yeah, yeah, that's that's solid.

Speaker 1: 18:17

I know some listeners are probably wondering, just like I am, because we're business coaches. We're the type of coaches that work on infrastructure, organization, systemization. But I'm sure someone out there is wondering what type of coach did you find or use, or what type of coach should they look for to help them get over their mindset, like you did?

Speaker 2: 18:39

Yeah, so mine was not, um, was not about business, it was about uh, healing. You know that I needed to do in order to get over, or to uh. I think there's a saying by Carl Jung. He says until you make the unconscious conscious, you'll go through life and call it fate. And so there was. Like I had said, I built several very successful businesses and I found ways to always take them back down to what matched my internal self-worth. And so he was. He definitely deals with high you know, high velocity entrepreneurs, but it's really not about the business. It's about the six inches between the ears, and when you get that correct, the business can explode.

Speaker 2: 19:31

I was sharing with you before we got started. I have a client right now that I've coached for three years and he came to a workshop and was making less than $10,000 a month. But his whole goal was if I make $10,000 a month with this business, then I can start a real business. And I told him no, you have a real business. This thing could be as big as you want it to be. And so we started doing some work. He got up to about 10 grand a month and then he literally said to me he goes. I don't understand, Like I, like I'm not motivated to get out of bed, I'm not doing the things I was doing to get it to 10 grand a month. I just don't understand. And I said well, is that the goal that you thought you were going to hit? He goes yeah. I said then you probably have a belief that that's what your value is. And I said I've struggled with that myself. I'll coach you, we'll do a call every two weeks and we'll kind of work through it.

Speaker 2: 20:33

Well, after about three months he had kind of worked through, it started growing again and he got up to about $30,000, $40,000 a month. And he came to another workshop and he's like, yeah, I don't think we can do any more with the business. I'm already doing so much as I can. And I said, well, how many of your people, when they uh email in, do you call them? He's like, uh, we don't do that at all. And I said, okay, well, how about you leave the workshop? Um, make a commitment that you're going to call the five people that emailed in questions and let's see what you get when you talk to your client or customers. And so he went out and he came back about 40 minutes later and he had sold four out of five and his average order value is a little over $2,000. So he made about 10 grand in 40 minutes.

Speaker 2: 21:25

I said, well, I think you know what your next avenue is is to start creating a sales team to get back with these clients. Um, he ended up doing a million dollars in the first 13 months that, uh, he had this business. And then he's like, hey, this is working so well. Will you coach my brother and my sales manager? And I said, sure, and so, um, now for the last three years or two and a half years, I've coached all three of them and they went from they did a million the first 13 months, they did 13 million the next 12 months, they did 36.8 last year and they're on pace to do 50 this year. So it really isn't. I just don't think that a business problem is actually a business problem. I think, when you get your mind right or you have the right people in the right place, that businesses are very scalable. It's just a matter of you know figuring that out. It's pretty replicatable and duplicatable.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Well, kudos to them if they are listening. Great job and great job for you. So I'm sure we're probably wondering build grow skills. You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is produced by my company, boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. So I'm sure we're probably wondering special guest. So I'm sure we're probably wondering Build Grow Scale.

Speaker 2: 23:14

so BGS what does that look like to work with you and how does the process work?

Speaker 2: 23:28

Yeah, so our main thing is data and analytics. We do split testing and scaling literally every day, and without the proper data and analytics on the website, uh, our guess is just as good as yours and you were going to have a set of best practices, but every site is contextual to the demographic that you serve and the audience that you attract, and if we just make assumptions, um, we're typically going to be wrong. Just that's the way it is, and so, yeah, we're very data analytics driven. That would be the very first thing that I encourage people to do is get that set up on their website, and then, once you do that, it's pretty easy to start reverse engineering what people are doing and get them to take the actions that you want. And so there's a couple of different ways. We have like an eight-week program where we go through and put all the best practices on your site, or there's like a partner program where we partner with them. We do all of that and take a percentage of revenue to help you grow it and scale it.

Speaker 1: 24:29

You mentioned coaching. Do you do that, or is that kind of a favor to some of your clients?

Speaker 2: 24:34

Yeah, I would. It's not something that I advertise. It's typically for me. I really enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 24:43

But I want them to be coachable, and a lot of people you'll find very quickly are not actually coachable.

Speaker 2: 24:50

They want to tell you the reason why what you're telling them won't work, when the truth of the matter is. My mentor said it to me. I'm trying to think of exactly how he said it. He said are we going to do this your way or my way? Because if we're going to do it your way, I'm not going to promise you my result. And I was like very true. So, yeah, I definitely do.

Speaker 2: 25:20

But I want them to be open minded enough to be coachable and just understand that typically, the reason why you want one is somebody that's going to show you what you don't see or help you reveal what you don't see. I don't believe that coaching someone is giving them answers, because if you're only dealing with them one hour or two hours a week, you just have such a small sliver of their life to actually understand what's true for them. My coaching that I do with them is way more asking questions and getting them to discover what's true for them than it is me trying to give them advice on what they should or shouldn't do I love your coaching because that's how it should be.

Speaker 1: 26:10

Yeah, but I know there's a lot of coaches out there that like to give their peace's how it should be, yeah, yeah, but I know there's a lot of coaches out there that like to give their peace of mind, but anyways, yeah, uh. So what, ideally, the people that are in the e-comm space? What size of business do they kind of need to work with a business like yours, cause you mentioned different?

Speaker 2: 26:30

Yeah, yep, the the eight week program. We've helped a lot of people with that um that are. They've got something that's working. Uh, they can run paid media. It makes sense for them because it's a $15,000, um price point and uh, I w I want them to be able to pay for it by the end of the eight weeks.

Speaker 2: 26:51

That's the goal from what we've gained them not from their existing business, we feel and so we're very selective, as, like, we look at the site and go, hey, we think that we can make a difference. If we don't, there's all kinds of free resources that we'll give them on our website you can just go to our blog, or there's just a ton of things that we do so that you can get to the point where you could grow and we could help you. And then the ones where we partner with them or do all of the split testing and the developer work and that for them they typically have to be doing about 150 grand a month or more because we put one full-time and four part-time people on it to you know, basically, grow and scale the operation.

Speaker 1: 27:43

For those that aren't quite ready to invest in a company, what are some tips that an e-comm person starting out could utilize to get to that point?

Speaker 2: 27:55

Yeah, I would say, going through the blog and looking at what we've taught in the years past, we did that with the intention of we had like a membership. We don't at the moment where we would teach what we did, but the free resources are literally there to help give people the best practices in order to understand the the principles that we use, and the one thing that I will say is that we've never taught like tricks and hacks and things that have went out of date. We really use user behavior and buyer psychology, and so those are principles that don't change and they can be applied to any website. So the principle that I'm on the site selling a $50 widget we use those same principles on the site that's selling a $2,000 welding table, because people are people and so the product is very agnostic and doesn't really matter.

Speaker 1: 29:01

I think a lot of people forget that too, because when you're on Amazon and you buy something, you just kind of think this is a digital transaction and it's like, no, it's not. There's still people involved, right.

Speaker 2: 29:12

And Amazon. You don't go to Amazon to shop, right, you go to Amazon to buy. So how many people get on there and go, oh, I'm going to browse and see what Amazon has available. Their conversion rate's like 80%, so like we don't have the same luxury that they do and we have to do a better job. So I would tell you, 90% of the time, probably 99% of the time, less is more.

Speaker 2: 29:43

Having too many things on your website creates confusion or overwhelm and people just will come back later or go find someone. That's made it simpler. A really, really good trick that anybody on this podcast can do immediately that will help them increase the effectiveness of their website is on the thank you page I have a little pop up that asks the question what was the one thing that almost made you not buy? And those people will tell you and or, if it's a lead submission, you know what was the one thing that almost made you not opt in. You can change the question, but you want them to give you one thing that they didn't understand, that was hard for them to figure out, that caused friction or that they didn't like, and when those people start answering that, you can take their information and go back through the website and make changes. And I will tell you, in the last four or five years, probably six of our 10 biggest wins came from information from someone who had just went through the website and bought and then told us what they didn't understand.

Speaker 2: 30:58

Because, going back to our brain, our brain puts our website on autopilot. Our brain puts our website on autopilot, just as like when you drive to the office every day, you literally don't remember if you stopped at the red light or if it was green or whatever, because your brain says, oh, I know this path and you do it automatically. Well, when you look at your website every day, it does that same thing. It stops looking at it with a critical thing, and so your website has some glaring issues that you'll never see. And it's not because you don't care or you're not trying to do a good job. It's literally because your brain's doing its job and so by getting that information from them, it's absolutely gold, and I mean it's worth many, many millions of dollars in revenue for a company.

Speaker 1: 31:46

That's a great tip on that particular area of business, but it's also a great tip or reminder for any business owner. When you're wondering about something and people will ask us all the time I've got these employees and I've got this, and I'm like have you asked them? And they're like who? And I'm like the employees, they'll give you the answer, like you don't have to figure this out yourself, right, yeah, you know, same with customers. You know why did you buy? Why didn't you buy? Why did you almost not buy?

Speaker 2: 32:15

You know, yeah, they'll tell you, we're very specific about that one, because and where we put it? Because they've just got the dopamine hit and so they actually have a feeling of reciprocity. They want you to do better, and what we found is that those people that answer that actually end up being a lot more valuable than a regular customer, because now they feel invested in your success and so they come back and buy again and again and again Great great points, any pivots that you made along the way that you'd like to share?

Speaker 1: 32:48

I know a lot of our listeners have read the popular business books. They've invested in courses, this, that and other A lot of them. They tell us that those things just didn't move the needle, didn't do anything for them, that they liked listening to people like yourself Like these are real people, real businesses. Any pivots you made?

Speaker 2: 33:10

Yeah, we had kind of pigeonholed ourselves into just the physical product round and what I realized is, you know, if I increase your sales 100 grand a month, and 50,000 of that is products and you need extra team members, so you have labor uh, in the end the piece of the pie is maybe 20 grand, and so the amount that you can pay me out of that cause you still have all the other parts of your business you have to run is much smaller than if we work with sites that also do digital and also do like lead gen et cetera and sell that, because as they scale up, their revenue scales up without having to have more physical products and team et cetera. And so, yeah, I would say that we certainly pivoted into not just doing e-commerce physical products but also now digital and lead gen stuff like that, because the principles still apply across all.

Speaker 1: 34:14

Well, I encourage our listeners to go to the blog. It's at buildgrowscalecom and the blog section. I'm just kind of reviewing some of these and those are. Those are high end. That's some some good information, basically to get you started. Are there any other places where somebody can follow you if they want to learn more about you and the company?

Speaker 2: 34:35

Yeah, my name is Matthew Stafford and so, yeah, I'm on the social that I use as Facebook and I actually share pretty vulnerably there a lot of the more difficult parts of my journey. I think that you can learn more from the losses than the wins, and typically, if all I did was talk about the wins, nobody could relate. Um, nobody could relate. But, uh, and most of those wins wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the lessons that I learned during the losses or the the struggle, and so I, yeah, I'm pretty open there. Uh, where on the business, uh, on the business pages, uh, it's more of you know different things that we do to optimize sites, so you can kind of follow both journeys, but it's easy enough to find me.

Speaker 1: 35:29

For those that don't maybe have a mentor or coach. I encourage you to take that advice to heart, because when I first reached out to mentors three decades ago, when I started my first business, I'll never forget what one of them said. He was the most successful business person I'd ever met or known. And he said I said can you kind of show me the ropes? I'm new to this entrepreneur thing. And he said I'll do better than that. I'm not going to tell you what to do, I'm going to tell you what not to do, which is kind of what you're saying. You know it's like you'll learn more from that. There's plenty of the other stuff is just you, you know, just a win that many people can't duplicate. But correct, correct, yeah. So anything that we haven't talked about, I know sometimes when I'm on a podcast, I'll go. Man, I wish I would have said this or that, anything you can think of that you really like to share.

Speaker 2: 36:23

I just would encourage people to not find reasons why it won't work. Figure it out Like we really. We literally are in the greatest time ever to be building businesses and to be able to do it efficiently. Because now, with AI I know a lot of people talk about it, but very, very few people are using it and if you spend some time with it like just spend 30 minutes a day and learn how to have conversations, it can be your coach, it can be your mentor, it's the smartest assistant that you'll ever have, and I'm seeing several people build really, really profitable businesses with very small teams by leveraging that. So I would just say like, yeah, it's the greatest time ever to be self-employed and it's worth putting in the extra effort. Choose the struggle, because in that you're going to build resilience.

Speaker 1: 37:28

That is so powerful and to think about, for one of the only times in history, all of the solopreneurs, small business owners. We have access to the exact same technology that the big corporations have.

Speaker 2: 37:43

Yeah For $20, $30 a month. That's unbelievable, and I'm very fortunate to have a decent-sized team of really smart individuals all figuring out how to use it and then sharing that amongst ourselves. And yeah, the stuff like every single day right now I'm just like, oh my goodness, I can't fathom where we will be in a year from now.

Speaker 1: 38:09

Yeah, that's amazing. Well, for those that aren't familiar with AI quite yet, where would you suggest they start? You mentioned spending about 30 minutes a day. There's so many tools, AIs out there, different platforms.

Speaker 2: 38:23

How do they learn it? I would for sure say the language models are the easiest way, and so ChatGPT, or even Google's Gemini. I think Gemini will have a huge impact on e-commerce because of Google shopping and Google's deep integration with the websites, so I think it will be a lot more effective than ChatGPT in the long run. And a couple of the things and I'll just share this One of the alleys that we've been going down is loading all of the Google Analytics data that we have collected from a shopping site and then all the shopping behaviors, all the reviews, et cetera.

Speaker 2: 39:14

We'll load that all into Gemini and then start asking it to let us know what we wouldn't be able to figure out on our own to, hey, our average order value is $100 order and we want our average order value to be $125. Our conversion rate is one and a half. We want it to be two and a half. Can you tell me what I would need to do over the next 90 days to get it to two and a half conversion at $125? To get it to two and a half conversion at $125. And it's starting to get really good at giving us amazing advice on how we can increase different things on the website.

Speaker 1: 39:54

I highly encourage every listener to start, if you haven't already with AI, you're just going to get further and further behind. And I do want to just share my subjective opinion on AI because many business owners ask me. It's like, is it really going to put me out of business? Well, I don't know that it'll put someone literally out of business, but what it will do is make you to where you can't even afford to compete to those business owners that are using it.

Speaker 1: 40:24

I have business owners in the same industry, two different business owners. One is using it a lot, the other one not at all, and their workforce is so far behind times. The ones that's not using it. They have more employees. It's just you won't be able to compete and so streamlining operations and things like that. So just for those that are wondering, I thought I'd throw that out there from my discovery. So if you were in a room as we sign off here, if you were in a room full of business owners, different industries, any insights that are applicable to all of them, it could be a quote, a book that says, hey, every business owner needs to know this. Or here's something I learned.

Speaker 2: 41:04

Yeah, everyone has to go through self-reflection for transformation, and so taking the time to really ask yourself the question what am I avoiding or what am I not seeing? And not distracting yourself while you're doing it will give you the ability to actually make the transformation into doing a better job.

Speaker 1: 41:29

Wow, matthew, this was very powerful. You've been a wealth of information. I appreciate you and I wish you the best of luck, and I encourage our listeners to go follow you, not just for business advice, but mindset and everything else. So appreciate you and wish you continued success. Thank you, I had a good time having the conversation my pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, boss. Our business is growing. Yours, boss, offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at businessownershipsimplifiedcom. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on small business pivots.