Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> Dom Goucher: Hi, and welcome to this week's edition of PreneurCast. This is Dom Goucher,
and Pete Williams is not with us in person again this week. But he has provided us with
another one of his fantastic interviews. As we come towards the end of the year, Pete
has got some great people to talk to. And this week, it's no different. He's talking
to a chap called Matthew Michalewicz. Now, I take full responsibility for getting that
one wrong. As you'll notice, Pete dodges mentioning his name at all in the interview.
Matthew is a serial entrepreneur and author of Life in Half a Second. Now this book is
a particular interest to me, to Pete, and to I would say anybody listening to the PreneurCast
podcast -- anybody in the Preneur Community at all. Because this book is absolutely about
the one true skill that we all need to master, and that is taking action. It's about deciding
what you want to do, and doing it. Just getting on and doing it.
That's what Pete's going to talk about, and that's what I want you to listen to. At the
end of this, well, if you even make it to the end of this before you start taking action,
then take action. See you at the end. [Pete's conversation with Matthew Michalewicz
starts] >> Pete Williams: Michael, thank you for your
time. >> Matthew Michalewicz: A pleasure, Pete.
Thanks for having me. >> Pete: Awesome. So new book's out, which
is very exciting. We'll definitely jump into that at some point. But I thought, like everything,
we should probably give it some context. I guess that context for you is going to be
quite deep with your success, with businesses you've had, and all that fun stuff. Let's
dive into the start. Now, obviously, you're Polish by birth. Is that correct?
>> Matthew: Yes, yes. >> Pete: And kind of moved around quite a
bit and ended up here in Australia. >> Matthew: Yeah, absolutely. So before I
became a serial entrepreneur, I was a serial immigrant. We escaped communism when I was
a kid, I was about 6, moved to New Zealand of all places. I think my parents wanted to
get as far from the communists as humanly possible. They couldn't get further than New
Zealand, which they are very happy about. Then I was about 11 when we moved to the US,
and I spent most of my adult life growing up there, got married. And then about nine
years ago, we moved to Australia with my wife. That's definitely a journey from Poland, to
New Zealand, to the United States, to Australia. >> Pete: Beautiful. Why Australia? Why did
you end up here? >> Matthew: Accidental tourist. My wife and
I visited the country back in 2000, and just fell in love with it. We believed at that
time that it was just the best place on earth. We've lived here nine years, had a couple
of kids in that time, and nothing could change our view.
We just think Australia is just amazing. Love every second of being in the country. So it
was nothing more than just being here and feeling fantastic. Loving the experience and
thinking towards that. We want to experience that every day, "let's move here."
>> Pete: Beautiful. Fantastic, couldn't agree more. I spent a lot of time in the US and
still love coming back home to Australia. It is definitely, I agree, the best place
on earth. >> Matthew: Absolutely. There's nothing better
than coming home to a place you're really excited about coming home to, and that for
me is definitely Australia. >> Pete: Love it, very exciting. So throughout
the journey in the US, particularly and in Australia now, you've had a couple of different
companies overtime. So what's that journey been like? Why the entrepreneurial bug? Is
that something that comes from your parents at all, or is it something that's just been
going with you? >> Matthew: Yeah, great question. My parents
were both at academics. And communistic Poland, you couldn't really own anything. So being
an entrepreneur isn't really feasible or possible under a communistic regime. That's not the
family or something that my parents did. It really happened when I wanted to do something
in college that I enjoyed doing and be paid well for. And I think that's one of the secrets
of happiness. If you do something you love, and you're able
to make a good earning from it, you're going to be happy. And when you're young, there
are very few, if any, opportunities. And I mean by young. I mean you are 18, 19, the
end of high school, the beginning of college. No one is going to pay you any significant
amount of money to do anything that might closely resemble to what you enjoy doing.
Most of the jobs are very menial. They're boring. They're repetitive. They're low paid,
and they're usually not enjoyable jobs. So really, my decision to become an entrepreneur
stems from I want to make more than I'm making now in a job that I hate doing. And the only
way I can do that is becoming an entrepreneur. That's what I did, and that was the beginning
of the journey. >> Pete: I know you're a huge fan of Arnold
Schwarzenegger. Something that I don't think a lot of people understand is how entrepreneurial
he actually was when he first immigrated to LA -- with his mail-order business and the
real estate business. Was there any of that at the time for you, or did your love of Arnold
come after? >> Matthew: No, no, it actually came before.
When I was about 14, actually when I was eight, I began to see his movies by sneaking into
the movie theater, and immediately became a fan that way. But it wasn't until I was
14 that I began reading some of his books, like The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding
or The Education of a Bodybuilder. I was struck about really, by his drive to
succeed. It was just incredible. Whether you see him speak, or you read the material, or
you watch a movie like Pumping Iron, it immediately comes from him: I want to succeed. I'm driven
to succeed, and this is what I do every day to succeed.
I was really taken by that at a young age. And obviously, he's an immigrant which I identified
with. It's a rags-to-riches story. And his journey, which many people like you pointed
out don't appreciate, is not just in the movies. He's one of the few, if not, only people in
the world that succeeded in the sport. He got to number one. He's a self-made millionaire
through, like you said, mail-order business, property investments. He went into business
classes at the university, and then he moved into show business and was the highest paid
actor in the world. And then he moved into politics and had the highest office that he
could possibly hold, though not being naturally born US citizen.
His achievement is extraordinary and there's clearly something that he's doing that's just
not luck. It's something he's following or some formula that he's following. That's why
I've always been interested in what he's doing because he succeeds across so many different
industries. >> Pete: Yeah, it's an incredible story. I'm
about halfway through Total Recall, his book, but this is the audio version. It's just surprising.
I knew some of his success or at least a little bit of understanding of his real estate stuff
and direct mail. But it's just an incredible story about determination
and work ethic, and bodybuilding, lifting four or five hours a day, going to night schools
and acting class, and running the property. It's just incredible work ethic that he had
to succeed. He just was juggling a lot of balls, but just worked his butt off.
>> Matthew: Absolutely. He wanted to have success more than anyone else, and he works
more than anyone else to achieve it. It's a great beautiful story.
>> Pete: You had a bit of a bodybuilding background, off the back of your love of Arnold. Is that
fair after you read those books you mentioned? Did you get into that world?
>> Matthew: Yes, absolutely. I think every boy growing up in the United States that is
underweight, dreams of having a better physique, having more muscles. And really, my love of
bodybuilding just came from that. Just improving the way you look, being stronger, being fitter,
and so on. And then you find that it's a very enjoyable
discipline. It's about goal setting. It's very individualistic, so success or failure
rests on your shoulders. It teaches you really to be disciplined and committed to certain
things. So there were many things that I took out
of bodybuilding that I enjoyed that were hugely applicable in the next 20 years that I did
in business. I mean, the same type of principles and philosophies in terms of being determined,
in terms of being disciplined, doing it every day. Same kinds of things were applicable.
And my first business that I had that I started when I was about 18, was a personal training
business, because the only thing I knew at the time and really enjoyed at the time was
fitness. I could take someone that was overweight,
or that had some type of issue with the body in terms of weaknesses, etcetera, and design
a training program and a nutritional program to improve their situation. So my love of
the sport and my desire to become an entrepreneur merged at that moment when I was 18, and that's
how I started. >> Pete: Very exciting. So was that in North
Carolina where that started? >> Matthew: Yes, correct, in Charlotte, North
Carolina. >> Pete: Beautiful. Was it a big business?
Or was it more like your first dip in the water, just a few clients here and there,
and got the taste of earning off your own back? Or did it grow into something substantial?
>> Matthew: No, definitely it didn't become substantial as the later businesses did. The
later businesses got to almost 200 employees. This one was still under 10 employees, but
it did have employees in it. It taught me all the basic mechanics of business -- employing
someone, contract law, having insurance, what happens if you injure a customer, creating
partnerships. I had to have a place where I could train
customers, so I had to have a partnership with the gym. Sales and marketing, how do
you attract prospective customers by making yourself visible, how do you develop credibility
that a customer would engage you to train them, how do you charge the right amount.
All of those really basic fundamental things that you have to know and do in business,
I really learned in that fitness business over a three or four-year period. But it never
got to anything like the last few businesses that I've run.
>> Pete: Now, getting to the books, because you've written quite a few since then. But
being an immigrant, son of educators, there wouldn't have been a lot of mentorship at
home, I'm guessing, to help you get through those first three or four years.
So what was it that helped you learn that and get an understanding of what it takes
to grow a business, get and hold clients, and get to the point where you can have six,
seven, eight, 10 staff? >> Matthew: Yeah, that's a really, really
good question. It comes down to just this simplistic thing -- and I call it desire.
I really wanted to do something I love doing and be paid for it, and that drove me. And
you're absolutely right. I didn't have the mentor. No one guided me.
I don't have anyone at home that said, "Hey Matt, look, this is how you set up a business.
Here's some money to do it. Go see this lawyer. Go see this accountant. This is someone to
do your web." I never had any of that. So it was just raw animalistic desire. "I
want to escape this situation. I hate these menial jobs. They pay nothing. I hate what
I do there. I want to do something I enjoy." And that desire drove me to seek knowledge.
I started talking to professors in college, in the business school. I began seeking out
people that were entrepreneurs and that had succeeded at whatever level, even if it was
a small level, to find out how do you set up a business, what's my first step, how do
I do this, how do I do that? It was really the desire to succeed that drove
me every single day to fill in the knowledge gaps that I had to discover what is the path
to becoming an entrepreneur. It was really painful and difficult, but if you want it
bad enough, I got there in the end. >> Pete: Absolutely. And then that parlayed
into the first real success, which was NuTech. Is that correct?
>> Matthew: Correct, correct. >> Pete: So what was that business?
>> Matthew: It was a technology business. In between the fitness business and NuTech,
I graduated from college with a finance degree and had a money management company with another
person that was an investment banker. That was the first really substantial business
in the sense that we were managing about $150 million and other people's money.
The reason we ended up selling that was because of the technology boom in the United States.
You remember '98, '99, the tech explosion. So we sold that business and created the first
really big company which was NuTech. It was about building enterprise software for optimizing
logistical processes. The way trucks move around the United States,
the way you should move products from different destinations to optimize the cost of other
variables. And we raised a lot. I was CEO, there were two other founders. There's the
investment banker from my previous business, and my father who's a computer scientist.
We incorporated the company. We raised a lot of venture capital, about $15 million, and
we immediately began. The first thing that happened was that the stock market crashed
and the tech boom became a bust, which made for a very interesting story for the next
few years. >> Pete: This is the intriguing thing, and
this is what I think a lot of conversations, entrepreneurs keep private and it always fascinates
me. How do you go from being a college graduate to raising $150 million and becoming a money
manager? And then from that, move into a technology company which seems like in an area that you
had no skills personally whatsoever in? >> Matthew: Correct.
>> Pete: How does that actual journey go? Because that's an intriguing thing which so
many people gloss over in conversations like this.
>> Matthew: That's a fantastic point, Pete, and absolutely. My degree is in corporate
finance. I've never seen a line of computer codes. I have never written one. So you're
absolutely correct in picking up that moving from finance into technology was not an area
that I had a background in, and even the finance business.
The key to it all is really surrounding yourself and being in business with people that are
more successful than you. That's really the trick to it. When I had the fitness business,
it was just me. But when I moved and graduated from college,
the finance business was co-founded by a person that had 30 years of experience. He was one
of my customers in the fitness business, so I developed a very strong relationship with
him. And one day, we came up with the idea. I think
it was even at the gym. "Why don't we go into our business for ourselves in this area of
corporate finance?" He had tons of experience, tons of contacts. He had credibility, he is
able to bring money to the table, and off you go.
Always, in business, if you can team up with someone that complements your weaknesses or
is even ahead of where you are, you've got a much greater chance of success. So then
after the money-management business that earned some runs on the board for me as an entrepreneur,
the next business NuTech, moving into technology, the person that we brought into that equation
was my father. He had written 400 research publications,
40 books in this specific area of optimization. He had enormous amount of credibility. He
had created unique technologies in the university setting, and he brought all of that credibility
with him into the company. Combined with me and the investment banker,
which now had a track record from the money-management business, that became a very attractive package
for investors to come and back. But if it was just me, I mean you picked up
on it very quickly; if I had created the fitness business and then I said, "I want to become
a money manager," it'd be tough. It'd be really tough because you've got no track record.
You got no one who knows you from a bar of soap.
But if you team up with an established money manager, everything's easy or easier. And
then when you move into technology, and it's two money managers and now they want to become
technologists, same story. No one's going to back these guys because they don't know
anything. But then you introduce into the picture someone
that knows backwards and forwards what they're doing, people follow them, they've got a track
record, they've got a following, again everything is now easier. So that was the secret.
>> Pete: This is another thing that intrigues me about your story, is going into that next
business with your father. There's probably three things that stuck out that most people
would say avoid. One is, obviously, your father (with all due
respect) coming from this little communist background now becoming entrepreneur, would
be a big shift. Because you being young, you wouldn't have really been (I'm guessing) as
affected by that regime as they would've been. >> Matthew: Correct, correct.
>> Pete: Going into business with family is always a tricky one. Also, going into business
with a long-term university professor, going from that mentality of university professor
to now being on the ground getting dirty as entrepreneur, they are almost three strikes
against you before you started. How was that? >> Matthew: Yeah, very good point. All your
observations are spot on. I think it's important you live by this mantra that you've got to
define your roles as founders of a business early on. It would have been really challenging
for my father to come into NuTech and for us to tell him later, "You got to be CEO now.
You got to go and raise money from investors. And then we want you to pitch to customers,
and we want you to do this and that." Because he doesn't really have the skills to do any
of those things, or background, or training, or experience, or anything else for that matter.
His real strength is he knew the technology, and he was highly credible on a world scale
around that technology. So we said, "We want you to become the chief
scientist of the company. Your role is really to build the technology. Build a portfolio
of IP. We're going to raise money, and we want you to recruit some of the best people
in the world," which he did. He recruited 20 Ph.D.'s that became employees
in the first year that were world-class in this particular area. And when we put him
in front of investors, all he talked about was his particular domain which he knew backwards
and forward, and he was really passionate about.
So you've got to put people in roles that they can perform and exceed, are comfortable
in, and have the background, prerequisite knowledge and experience to do. Rather than
pulling someone from some setting like academia, putting them into entrepreneurship and say,
"Now you're going to sell. Now you're going to raise money." They would fail.
>> Pete: And the thing is, your business grew very successfully. You had clients like Ford
Motor Company and Bank of America. And then, as you mentioned, the whole boom bust of the
good old tech bubble, you ended up having an exit though just through an off-market
sale? >> Matthew: Correct. For me and my father,
and some of the investors that came in early into that business, we were bought out by
venture capitalists that wanted to continue. Those venture capitalists continued for a
couple of more years, and they ended up selling the company to Netezza. And Netezza ended
up being bought by IBM Global Services. So even today there's 60 or 70 ex-NuTech people
working inside of IBM around the world, around some of their advanced technologies, predictive
modeling and so on. That was the whole journey there. And it was very, very difficult. When
you raise money in '99, it's easy. People call it the disco days in the United States
where you could have an idea, draw a picture on a napkin, people throwing money at you.
Then when the bust happened, all of a sudden you need a real business now. You need revenue,
and you need customers, and you need profit. Things that people forgot all about in '98
and '99. So even though from 2000 to 2003 the business grew every year in revenue, it
attracted world-class customers like Department of Defense, to General Motors, Ford Motor
Company, Bank of America; it was harder and harder to raise money.
Because the investor sentiment was shifting away from technology and so on. So it was
a really interesting experience about what drives investor inflow into businesses, and
it's not the things you might think it is. >> Pete: Well, even now, there's this some
really weird things happening over in Silicon Valley at the moment. Facebook paid for Instagram,
and just some of the real reevaluations, I think. What was it? Snapchat I think recently
got a ridiculous offer that they turned down. There's no revenues. I just personally can't
understand how people who I would think are smarter than me are willing to throw crazy
money at some of these things just because of they've got users, not because it's actually
making a dollar. But I guess that's a whole separate conversation.
>> Matthew: Correct. Yeah, Pete, it's almost like people are willing to pay exorbitant
amounts of money on the future hope that this would be monetized and turned into revenue,
and ultimately earnings per share in public companies, which is what drive stock values.
>> Pete: Yeah, I just think some of the evaluations are ridiculous. But that's beside the point.
I'm guessing it was this time when you took that holiday and fell in love with Adelaide?
>> Matthew: It was in 2000. NuTech was created in '99, I ended up selling out at the end
of 2003 and the holiday was around December in 2000. It was a lovely time. I remember
being in Australia, and I don't think we saw a drop of rain the whole time that we were
here. It was just absolutely lovely. So, it was definitely during the NuTech days. And
when we sold out of NuTech, that's when we decided to move.
>> Pete: Beautiful. How long do you enjoyed the wine country that is Adelaide, and that
beautiful hospitality and food that's produced in that region before you decided to do something
else and start the next company? >> Matthew: It was a year and a half from
exiting from NuTech before incorporating the next company. In that year and a half, we
spent six months traveling to different places we had wanted to see around the world, like
Easter Island or the pyramids in Egypt. Things that were always on the list that you wanted
to see, do, touch and didn't have time to do. And when we settled for the year that
we were in Adelaide prior to incorporating the next company, we definitely enjoyed it
very much. It's beautiful. The Hills, Barossa Valley,
McLaren Vale, the beaches, all of that's lovely. Plus the people are fantastic. We had a couple
of kids during that time. I wrote a couple of books. It was really a great time to relax,
refresh, and then set off on the journey again. >> Pete: So you have this new journey. What
was that, another IT company? >> Matthew: Yeah, it was. The name of the
company was SolveIT Software, and it was really the successor to NuTech in the sense that
we thought there was an enormous opportunity in big enterprises to improve what they're
doing through better decisions. Every outcome you get in business is driven through decisions
that you make. And because big companies have lots of complexity,
lots of moving pieces, it's usually difficult for people or even computer systems to analyze
all of that complexity on almost a real-time basis, and recommend to a person or business
do this if you want to minimize cost, maximize revenue, maximize market share, maximize the
amount of iron ore you put on to a ship for example.
So we wanted to do it again, but in a more focused manner. I brought over some people
from the United States. My parents relocated to Adelaide. We incorporated this new company,
SolveIT Software, and it became a very focused vehicle of doing the same thing, but in specifically
the area of supply chain. So it's much more focused than NuTech.
We actually built an application, versus NuTech was more of a solutions provider. And we did
the whole thing again with two significant differences. One, there were no investors,
so we funded it ourselves and it was a much more enjoyable experience because no one was
telling us what to do. We weren't meeting with investors every month and having pressure
applied to us because they wanted to see this happen or that happen. We were able to do
it at our pace and make our own decisions. That was a great experience.
And the second was this area of focus. We weren't doing everything for everyone. We
were specifically focused in an area, and we productized that area to the best of our
ability. There was always customization and development required for each deployment.
But it was focused and it was easier to sell because of that focus.
>> Pete: Very cool. Did you find doing business in Australia a lot different to the US?
>> Matthew: Definitely, on all dimensions. I mean in the United States, probably the
biggest immediate difference is there is so much noise in the US. The competition for
everything is so high. Look at something like a consumer service like banking. There's four
main banks in Australia, and maybe 150 total banks and credit unions. In the United States,
there's 11,000. And that goes for every single industry. There's so much competition, so
much noise, that when you start a business in the US, you are immediately competing with
an enormous array of people and businesses. My immediate observation about Australia,
and Adelaide in particular, is that competitive environment was much weaker, and in some cases
it didn't exist at all. So, I found business easier in the sense because in the United
States, if I had begun SolveIT, I would be immediately, Day One, competing with all of
these other companies which frankly they weren't in Australia and they weren't interested in
conquering Australia. I had all this breathing room that I wouldn't have had in the US.
>> Pete: Very cool. And obviously, again, that story is a very similar one. It grew
successfully, number of clients, number of employees, and then an exit this year or last
year? How long ago? >> Matthew: Last year.
>> Pete: Last year, yep. >> Matthew: About a year and a half ago, it
grew to almost 200 people, almost $20 million in revenue. It became Australia's third fastest-growing
company. It really specialized in optimization software for supply chains. Mostly in mining,
that's where the majority of revenue came from.
>> Pete: Perfect timing. >> Matthew: Yeah. Who would have thought that
mining would do a 180 since then? But Schneider Electric bought us half way through last year
to integrate it with their other software services and products that they have.
>> Pete: Very exciting. Are you still involved in the business, or are you off now looking
at new projects? >> Matthew: No, no, no. I've left, and there's
two main reasons for my departure. One, I had really given up a lot of family time,
especially in the last two years of SolveIT. I traveled about 5 days a week. I'm always
a family-first type of guy, and it was painful for me, having kids growing up at home, to
not be there when you want to be there. I made a commitment, I really want to be at
home. The second is, the closest thing to my heart,
closer even than entrepreneurship, is writing. So, this was an opportunity to be at home,
be with the kiddies, take them to school, pick them up, and in between that time, write
the next book, which is what I spent really the last year on.
>> Pete: Yeah, and that's what Life in Half a Second?
>> Matthew: Correct. >> Pete: A fantastic book. Let's get into
that. Do you want to give a bit of an overview, rather than me doing a hatchet job of my summary?
>> Matthew: The easiest way to introduce it is that when I became an entrepreneur, I really
got interested in the subject of success because there's so much at stake when you're an entrepreneur.
I mean, your house could be on the line, your ability to feed yourself or your family.
The stakes are so much higher than just being an employee in a company. Because when you're
an employee, the worst that could happen is you lose your job. When you're an entrepreneur,
the worst that could happen is you go bankrupt. You lose everything you've got, so the stakes
are higher. When I got interested in the subject of success,
I started reading success books, attending seminars about success, or entrepreneurship,
or what it takes to grow a business. I quickly discovered that all of the material, about
99% of the material that I was exposed to, was somebody else's opinion. So, no matter
how successful someone is, they write a book or they give a talk about how they achieved
success with the implication that you should do the same thing if you want to get to where
they are. The fault with that is that their advice might
be completely unapplicable to your situation. They lived in a different time or a different
country, they were in a different industry -- things could have been different, social
values at the time, different economic factors. And so, all of a sudden, you're getting this
advice that is very contextual to a certain person's opinion, perspective and time period,
and you don't get the same results. In fact, what you read might not even apply to your
situation. So, I began studying at an early age, are
there things that are really scientifically proven to aid or increase the probability
of achieving success. Not opinion, not people's observations, but things that have been studied
in universities or organizations that you can apply as an entrepreneur to give you an
edge. That's kind of the genesis of the book, and that happened about maybe 20 years ago
that I began getting interested in the subject, because surprise, surprise, I want to succeed.
And so, 20 years later when I've been collecting research studies, I've been talking to people,
I've had this almost room full of notes and references, and all these different things
that I had been exposed to in terms of studies and papers I had read. When I left SolveIT,
it was my opportunity to compile all of that into an easy-to-read book that distills success
into five fundamental factors that anyone can apply, that are universal.
It doesn't matter if you read them today, a hundred years ago, a hundred years into
the future. It doesn't matter if you're a sports person, or if you're in show business,
or you're an entrepreneur, or you want to improve your career. I believe these are the
five fundamental factors that drive success. And that's really what I distilled into this
book, Life in Half a Second. >> Pete: Definitely a professor's son because
as you read through the book, there's a lot of footnotes, referencing, all the research.
So, it's clearly not an opinion-based book. It's definitely a professor's son's book.
But not in a dry professor way. I better clarify that, because I do encourage people to head
over to Amazon and places like that to get a copy of Life in Half a Second.
Let's talk about some of those five principles, because that's kind of the, as you said, the
breakdown of the book. Each section of the book covers a different one of these five
principles. I'd love to touch on some of them, if not all of them, and if we have the time,
just talk about how they can be applied to entrepreneurship or bodybuilding success in
sport, as you kind of alluded to then. So, what are they? Let's go through some of those.
>> Matthew: Absolutely. The beginning of the book, and really the beginning of any journey,
begins about having clarity around where the destination is. Where are you trying to go?
I've taught unbelievable classes over the last 10 years of maybe 10,000 entrepreneurs
through different programs, whether it's universities, whether it's government programs, whether
it's my mentoring programs, and so on. I've found that most entrepreneurs or people
that I meet, think they have clarity about where they're heading. But really, in fact,
they're very unclear. They use terms like, "I want to be a market leader", "I want to
have a profitable business", "I want to be successful", I want this or I want that. They
think that those terms represent some form of destination.
Really, clarity is about having very specific, precise goals. So instead of saying, "I want
to raise capital," you've got to say, "Look, I need five million dollars in institutional
money nine months from now." All of a sudden you're saying the same thing, you need money,
but you say it in a very specific, goal-oriented manner. Instead of saying you want to improve
your margins, you say, "I want to lift my margins from 10% to 18%, 12 months from now."
Every single statement has to be expressed in numbers, and it has to have some kind of
gate by which you try to achieve it. And the reason that that is so important through all
of these studies that I read, is not that some magical process takes place when all
of a sudden you write it on a piece of paper and the Tooth Fairy is going to deliver it
to you one day. It's not a magical process, it just focuses your mind on what you're trying
to achieve. It's as simple as that. If you define exactly where you're going,
then you start walking through each day looking for people, events, information, material,
that will help you get there. But if you wake up each morning and you've got no clear sense
of direction, where you're heading and what you want to achieve, then everything looks
the same. Everything is noise, everything has the same kind of look and feel to it.
So the journey begins with having clarity about where you're going. Without that, nothing
makes sense -- no book is going to help you, no amount of reading or material that you
put into your head is going to help you. You have to define the destination that you're
trying to get to. >> Pete: Let me ask you this though. You alluded
to and spoke about noise in the States. For a lot of people, there is a lot of noise out
there of opportunities and what to do, and where you to go. You get bombarded with sales
letters or TV commercials, or movies of 'I want to achieve it all, I want to do it all,
I want to do this.' How do you distill and work out what is important to me? How do you
get that clarity? >> Matthew: You're absolutely correct. Think
about just the average person's day. Whoever you are, you wake up in the morning, you might
watch the news, check e-mails, send text messages. If you've got a family you might have to prepare
your kids for school, you make breakfast, then you get ready for work. You might pack
material, you might have to send a few more e-mails. You commute through traffic, you
listen to things on the radio, you interact with people at work, you have meetings, you
have lunch, you might do fitness activities after work or hang out with your mates at
the pub. Think about all of the interactions, all of
the stuff that happens in each particular day. How do you decide what is relevant and
what is noise? The only way that you can do that is if you've got clear, precise goals.
I write about this in the book, in everything I try to achieve, I write out exactly the
one-year goal, and I write out the things I need to do almost month by month or quarter
by quarter to get me to that goal. Then as I interact with people, and I have
an enormous amount of interactions every single day of my life, I can immediately discern,
is this conversation relevant to my goals or not? And this is the critical distinction.
So all the time, people approach me and say, "Matt, can you be an advisor to my business?"
"Matt, are you interested in investing in what I'm doing?" "Matt, can you do this?"
And when I tell them no, I tell them look, it's no reflection on what you're doing. I'm
not saying no because I don't think what you're doing is good. I'm telling you no because
what you're doing is not aligned to my goals. They get very surprised. Not in a bad way,
but the fact that I'm so clear about what I'm trying to achieve that I can tell them
straight up in a conversation -- I don't even need to think about it, I can tell you right
now, no, only for the reason that what you've just proposed has no bearings on the goals
that I've set myself for the next year or two years.
And that's the key, the beginning really, to achieving something. You've got to walk
through each day and through all of those interactions and all of the noise that you
get exposed to, you've got to be able to pull out the signals that are relevant to what
you're trying to achieve. If you can't do that, you can't move forward, you can't break
through. >> Pete: I completely agree. We talk about
that on the show here quite a bit, in the context of filters. You need a filter to work
out what is or is not right for your business or for you.
>> Matthew: Yes. Exactly. >> Pete: Do you think it's important to have
this goal list for your personal life and a separate for your business life, and really
finely and distinctly see them as two separate lists, or do you think they should be blurred
together? >> Matthew: Different people treat that in
different ways. Even if you have two separate lists, there is a relationship between the
two lists because you only have so many hours in each day. So, if in your personal list
you put goals like, "I want to get in shape", "I want to lose weight", "I need to be spending
more time with my kids or my spouse", "I want to be reading books at night", all of those
are fantastic personal goals. Fantastic and I love them. However, they will take away
from the time that you can spend on your business. So there is some innate tradeoff -- you've
only got so many hours. How are you going to spend those hours? You've got to decide,
and this is one of the later chapters in the book of Life in Half a Second. You've got
to decide what is the most important thing to you. You've only got one hour to spend.
Is it more important for you to spend that hour pursuing a professional goal, whether
it's lifting weights in a gym, whether it's building a following online in social circles,
whether it's in your business making the next sale?
Or, is it more important for you not to miss out on the special years of your kids as they
grow up and spend it to them to the possible detriment of your professional [goals]? You
can't have it all. You have to choose. So people might create separate lists, which
I think is great. However, there is a tradeoff between those lists because time is not unlimited.
That's why the book is called Life in Half a Second. We only have a short period of time
and we have to choose how we spend it. >> Pete: Absolutely. I think you touch on
that quite a bit at the start of the book too, about life is really half a second when
you look at the time that history has been and how long we've been on this earth for.
And really, if you break it down, it's a very small piece of time in the history of the
earth. So once you get that clarity, then desire is the next thing, to really have that
desire to believe in that choice that you've made and follow that through. Is that the
next part of it? >> Matthew: Yeah, the desire for goals is
really the filter -- and I love the way you use 'filter', it's a really strong word. It
filters the importance of your goals, it allows you to rank them. So why is it that every
year people set New Year resolutions like losing weight or other things and they fail
in those? Eighty percent of those New Year resolutions never get accomplished.
The reason for that is that they don't really desire those things. They might desire them
talking about that kind of want where you wake up in the morning almost shaking and
on fire, you're jumping out of bed and saying, "You know what? I want it so bad that I'm
jumping out of bed on a Sunday morning to continue working on it."
Most people don't have that for the goals that they set. It's a 'nice to have', "Gee,
I'd love to have a promotion", "I'd love to be a little bit thinner so that I can get
into my old clothes". It's a 'nice to have'. Whereas, the things that you are so passionate
about and you want them so badly, you're more likely to achieve those things because you
put more effort into them. So the whole second chapter of the book is
about filtering the goals that you've set because some goals sound great. But unless
you're going to work your *** off to achieve them, it's never going to happen. Look at
Schwarzenegger, look at what you said at the beginning, you work four to five hours a day
at the gym. Who would do that? Who would do that? Only
someone that really wants it and they want that success above any other success in their
life. That is what the second chapter is. You have to rank and filter the goals that
you've set by your internal, personal desires for what's important in your life. And it's
different for everybody. >> Pete: Absolutely. I couldn't agree more.
I think Schwarzenegger is the perfect person to use as the pinup boy almost for this type
of thing. So, I don't want to give the whole book away. I want to really encourage people
to head over to Amazon or wherever it might be and grab Life in Half a Second, but can
you touch on the remaining two or three things? A bit of a taste test for people?
>> Matthew: My passion in life is really helping others. I mean, that's the thing I enjoy most.
I love hearing from readers about how they like a book. But what really makes my day
is hearing from readers about how they applied the book. So I'm going to be launching next
month a free video series where I coach readers, or even just people who haven't read the book,
about how to apply these principles. I'm happy to share. It's not about selling more copies
and making money or selling a $20 book. It's about helping people and taking the knowledge
you have and trying to make an impact on other people's lives.
To that end, one of the most important concepts in the book, and this is getting to the third
part, is that whatever you are trying to achieve. Let's just say you've got a great goal -- you
want to be an Olympic athlete. You want to be an entrepreneur that has a business with
certain financial metrics. You're doing what you love and you're getting paid for it. Whatever
the goal is, it doesn't matter. The easiest way to help you get there is to start spending
time with people that have already gotten there.
And there are many reasons for that. Think about, for example, you're sitting at home,
you're in a job you don't like, you're one of the statistics where they do status on
happiness and they find how many people are unhappy in their jobs, and you say, "I want
to become an entrepreneur. That's my goal. I want to create a business. I want to have
such-and-such revenue and such-and-such profit, and I want it. I really, really want it because
I'm frustrated where I am in my life." That's fantastic. You've got the first two
things down pat. Now the easiest way for you to make the first step is meet people that
are already there. Start spending time with entrepreneurs that already have businesses
at whatever scale, doing something that they enjoy doing, and are getting financially rewarded
for it. Because the moment you start spending time with these people, your belief will go
up that you can do it as well. All of a sudden you meet these people that
are just like you, and gee, they're doing something they love, and they're making a
whole lot more than me. I can do what they do. Your belief immediately goes up. What
these people also do is they tell you how they did it. You ask questions. This is how
I started out at the beginning, I didn't know anything about business. So what do I do?
I meet people that are in business and I say, "What did you do? How did you start? What
was your first step?" And they tell me and I say, "Wow! That's amazing. Well, how did
you do that? How did you figure this out?" And then they tell me.
So, it is critical. If I could leave listeners with one piece of advice out of this whole
interview, it is that whatever your goal is, make it your mission to start spending time
with people that have achieved that goal, because you'll be amazed what will happen
in your acceleration toward that goal. You're going to figure out how it's done and you're
going to start believing that you can do it because you're around people that are helping
you believe and are educating you. >> Pete: Absolutely. So, is there any other
major elements from the book that we should cover before we wrap this up?
>> Matthew: The last thing that I want to say, and this is where the vast majority of
people fall over, is they read a book like Life in Half a Second, they go to a seminar,
they listen to an interview like this, and they get excited. They think it's fantastic.
This is awesome, I want to do something. And then routine grabs them. They go back to what
they were doing before -- the e-mails, the daily life. Nothing you read or listen to
is going to make any difference in your life unless you actually take action, unless you
act on it, unless you do something. It all just becomes memory. It becomes extra information
in your brain. The difference between someone that moves
towards goals and achieves things versus the person that doesn't, is that the person that
is moving is acting. So I encourage any listener to act. If you're inspired by this, act. Do
something different in the next five minutes, in the next five days, rather than it just
being another memory of another interview or another book that you might have read along
with the thousands of others. >> Pete: Absolutely, I could not agree with
you more. And I think the first place to start is sit down and get a pen and paper, and really
get clear on those desires and that clarity. This is what I really desire to do, and this
is what the filter's going to be for me for the next six weeks, six months, six years,
whatever it might be for you to give you that motivation to start acting and moving forward.
>> Matthew: Absolutely. Do it. Don't think about it. The people that really want things
do it. The people that sort of want things but they're not sure, they talk about doing
it. So be a doer. And like you said, doing is getting out a piece of paper right now
and a pen and writing down where you want your business to be in a year, where you want
your personal life to be in a year, that's doing. You're now physically doing something
rather than just turning off this interview and going on about your life.
>> Pete: And do it as a draft. Give yourself some freedom. This is what I always say to
people and I love your thoughts on this. You don't have to come up with your next six months'
worth of desires in the next five minutes. Just do a draft version of your desires. This
is what I'm thinking that I might be wanting to do. But then you can get clarity and marinate
on that for a couple of days, think it though. Then by the end of the weekend or this time
next week, go, I've edited this down, I've added some stuff, I've taken stuff away, and
I really feel that burning agreement with this list.
>> Matthew: Agreed. Such good advice, Pete. I mean, many people are afraid of taking out
a pen and paper because they think it's permanent, they think that whatever they write down in
the next 30 seconds or the next 30 minutes, is forever, it has to be perfect. We change.
Life changes. Everything is constantly in flux. Whatever you write down, you're going
to reflect on it, marinate on it (just like you said), you might change it a few months
from now. And then, you know what? Your situation might change. You might get married, you might
have kids, you might move to another country. Goals aren't static. They change and it's
perfectly normal for them to change, but the point is you need goals. Don't wait for some
perfect time in the future to do it. Do it now and change it. Perfectly okay, rather
than deferring and delaying. >> Pete: Completely agree. Well, Matthew,
thank you so much for your time today, really do appreciate it. Life in Half a Second is
the latest book. There's been a few other ones, which I would love to have spoken about,
particularly Winning Credibility because I think that's such an interesting topic. So
we might have to get you back on at some stage to talk about one of your older books.
>> Matthew: It would be a pleasure, Pete. Thank you so much for having me.
[Pete's conversation with Matthew ends] >> Dom: So there you have it, folks. What
a great interview. What a fascinating story Matthew has, and what great insight into that
biggest problem that I think so many entrepreneurs face, which is getting down to it and taking
action. So Pete and I recommend that you go grab a copy of Matthew's latest book and just
get on with it as we come to the end of 2013. We're coming into 2014, now is the time. Work
out what it is you're going to do next year, get on and do it.
Thanks again for listening, folks. We'll be back with you soon. In the meantime, do check
out PreneurMarketing.com, and specifically PreneurMarketing.com/Win where you can, as
usual, win stuff from people that we've had on the show or just generally stuff we've
been sent. Also, you can check out back episodes of the
PreneurCast podcast and get the transcripts which you can read or download. You can download
episodes and you can leave us a comment either below each episode, or you can use a little
audio feedback widget thing on the side of the site. We love getting your feedback, so
do take a little bit of time and let us know what you think of the show, what you would
like to hear more of, all that stuff. You can also leave us feedback on iTunes.
Just go look for PreneurCast on iTunes if you didn't get this episode from there, if
somebody sent it to you. Also, as always, feel free to let your friends know about PreneurCast
whether you share the website or you let them know through iTunes. We love getting new listeners.
And if you are a new listener especially, drop us a comment and just let us know what
you think of the show. With that said folks, we will see you all again soon.