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Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Mastering E-Commerce: From Concrete to Shopify Success with Matthew Stafford
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Matthew Stafford, the Shopify optimization guru from Build Grow Scale, as he shares his inspiring journey from running a concrete business to making waves in the e-commerce world. Discover how Matthew transitioned to online entrepreneurship, using innovative marketing strategies like personalized ads to drive significant revenue on platforms like Shopify. His story highlights the growing importance of having a direct-to-consumer presence, especially with the challenges third-party sellers face on platforms like Amazon.
Unpack the secrets of boosting e-commerce conversions as we explore the transformative power of customer reviews and the critical role of search functionality. With over 200 reviews, a product can see dramatic improvement in conversion rates due to increased trust. Matthew and our hosts delve into how search-driven traffic converts at double the rate, emphasizing the necessity of a user-friendly interface and trust-building design elements. Learn from real-life examples like Cubcoats, where search insights led to the creation of a successful product.
Dive into the nuances of data-driven revenue optimization strategies and the power of specialization. Matthew shares how data-driven decisions can lead to improved customer interactions and increased profitability without sacrificing user experience. Discover the impact of psychological triggers in boosting sales and how engaging with customer feedback, even from negative reviews, can be pivotal in enhancing conversion rates. Matthew also shares entrepreneurial engagement opportunities and personal growth tips, rounding out a comprehensive episode packed with actionable insights for both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs.
How to connect with Matthew?
Website: https://buildgrowscale.com/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/build-grow-scale/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bgs_ecom_education
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuildGrowScaleEcommEducation
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/windowsuccess
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we are again joined by Matthew Stafford. If you didn't catch it, matthew was a guest on episode 192 back in the summer of 2023. It was one of our most downloaded episodes, as Amazon had just rolled out some new inventory fees at that time and third-party sellers were putting more resources into their D2C websites. Since our first recording, the belt has continued to tighten for Amazon sellers and having a D2C website presence is no longer a good option. Rather, it is a necessity for survival in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
Speaker 2:Matthew is known as the mad scientist behind the data and development of Build Grow Scale and their revenue optimization system. He is regarded as a top Shopify optimization expert and has extensive experience in e-commerce, having run his own companies for over 35 years. In this episode, we'll dive into the evolving landscape for third-party sellers, increased demand for Shopify optimization and how BuildGrowthScale leverages extensive revenue data to drive impactful results for their clients. Matthew, welcome to the show. I'm glad to be back, absolutely. So, to start things off, can you share with our listeners a little bit about your background and what has changed since your last podcast appearance?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I would say obviously, like you said in the intro, I've got about 35 years of business experience. A lot of that was back in the day. It was in the brick and mortar industry. I actually had a commercial concrete business and I grew that up to about 25 employees and we traveled all around the country.
Speaker 3:We're actually on the road about 200 days a year and it was difficult, it was a hard life and I kind of stumbled across this.
Speaker 3:It was actually a t-shirt site and you could put up marketing ideas and then run ads to that and sell it, and so I kind of started playing with that at night, you know, even on the road, you know, even on the road and I had some pretty good success in the first, you know, first couple of months.
Speaker 3:I had made thousands and thousands of dollars, had a couple of hits and I thought, wow, this is really really amazing. I can actually create revenue without having to travel, without it being weather dependent, because we could be on the road and it could rain three, four days in a week and we literally would be sitting in a hotel room, um, racking up money and and the whole nine yards. And so I thought, wow, this is pretty intriguing, and I kind of set a goal, uh, to be online, um, a hundred percent within five years, and it actually happened almost to the month of you know, when I had set that goal, and I remember kicking myself going, man, maybe I should have set that goal to be three years, but it just. It's amazing how, once you get something in your head, how you follow through or things just happen to lay out that way Very nice, Very nice Now.
Speaker 2:I love that way. Very nice, Very nice Now. I love that story. I love your background in concrete and building a very successful concrete business. Now, at what point did you did you realize that, hey, this could be something this could like, there's something here. This is legitimate.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it's funny and this there's a little comic to this and probably reveals a little bit about my sense of humor. One of the shirts what I did is I got pretty good at running those ads and I started learning how to get names off of Facebook by user IDs, and so what I did is I created a shirt that said Schmidt happens instead of the opposite, and then I targeted everybody whose last name was Schmidt. That's awesome. And when I launched that shirt, um, I literally launched it like at five or 6 PM and uh, went to dinner uh, probably a couple of drinks, I think it was about 10 o'clock. I logged back in and looked at it and it had literally gone viral. I'd already done like $12,000 in sales and I was selling a $30 shirt for like $2 acquisition cost because people were sharing it and doing all this other stuff.
Speaker 3:And by the time I woke up in the morning and we had cleared a little over 20 grand in profit. Um, and I was like, oh my God, like you can have an idea? And, um, the user base is infinite. And the silly thing was, uh, I kept, I kept looking at the number of people that it said was my audience size and I thought that it just can't be right. There has to be more than that. And so I spent a couple hours and this is the next day and did okay, everybody with the name Schmidt in Maine, everybody with the name Schmidt in Maine, everybody with the name Schmidt in Vermont, everybody, and I did every single state, and I ended up having about 30 times larger audience. And, uh, so I launched it again and we 10xed the result. So I had made about a hundred grand on that shirt in less than 48 hours, 50 hours and I was like okay, I can make a living online.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. That is awesome and talk about knowing your target audience and having a very specific avatar. That's a great story.
Speaker 3:Then I actually even did like little onesies and put, like I'm a little Schmidt, so there was just like all kinds of stuff, so we played off of that, created a whole page around it and that that shirt went on to sell just an enormous amount.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I love that story so well. Really looking forward to getting into today's podcast. Now, one thing that most e-commerce sellers deal with as they're getting into e-commerce is they ask themselves the question where do I sell? Do I go to Etsy, do I go to Shopify? Do I build my own website? And so my question to you is how has the evolving landscape of third-party sellers influenced your strategies at Build Grow Scale and I would say, when I refer to third-party sellers, let's talk to Amazon sellers is that is probably the largest population of people.
Speaker 3:Yeah for sure. In fact, a lot of people all the time when I tell them I'm in e-commerce, that's one of the very first things they say oh, amazon. And I actually say, no, we don't deal with the Amazon. And the reason why was when I first, when we first started BGS, my business partner had Amazon listings and he had done really well with it, but he had also got burned. Where they went, they sent him a notice and said, hey, you have to tell us who your supplier is, how much you're paying all this other stuff, because someone said that this is fraudulent. And then within two weeks, they had went to his supplier and gave them a contract for two years worth of sales, white label that took it and he lost, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a couple hundred thousand dollars a year product. And so we just always said, like we're going to, if we're going to build a business around something, we're going to own the data, we're going to know the customers and uh, so we focused on Shopify and just to to tie in the story from where we started to where I am now, because I think it matters.
Speaker 3:I got really good at Facebook ads and that's why I got into e-commerce. I thought a different way about sales, and I think it had to do with me being in the brick and mortar world and then coming online. And so what I realized was sad, or sales ads were very, um, volatile. Um, you could have great weeks and then you could have really crappy weeks and then, like when they were redoing the algorithm before the fourth quarter, you know, black Friday, cyber Monday, all that everything would drop off a cliff. And so I was super frustrated. And we had a, we had a kitchen supply site at the time, and so I started looking into the data. I I saw an ad online. Um, a guy said hey, um, I'll do six calls with you for a thousand dollars and teach you Google analytics, and there's a whole bunch of data in there that you can use, um to make more sales. Um, after the very first call, I was like, oh my goodness, like this, this is going to be cool. And I just went headfirst deep dive into the analytics part of it and that made my ads work way, way better. And that's really how BGS was birthed. Before that, we were teaching funnels and sales pages and stuff like that. But when we realized that when you can use the data, start being predictable and see what people are doing and make the user experience better, our sales were just exponentially better. And we tried that with a couple of my other friends who had sold t-shirts with um. In the end, um, in that three year period, we ended up selling about 15 million. I sold about $15 million for the t-shirts. And uh, so I reached out to a couple of friends who had Shopify sites and said hey, I think, um, I'm onto something I would love to like work on your site. If it works, you can pay me, if it doesn't work, obviously, you don't have to pay me. And uh, we took.
Speaker 3:The very first site that I worked on was Organifi. Um. They had done 2.75 million the year before I helped them and in 90 days I had them on a run rate of over 9 million Um. They ended up doing 16 million the first 12 months that I worked with them. So almost a seven X um ended up having about 50,000 members on continuity. I mean it was a huge success. The second one I helped, uh, they were doing about 300 grand a month. They thought they were really awesome and that is an awesome number. I'm not knocking it Um, but within six months we had them at 2.7 million a month.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:And I was like, okay, lightning, lightning didn't just strike me and I got lucky. This actually works. And that's really what spawned us going into that and and, honestly, I haven't run Facebook ads now in eight, nine years. I just I don't even have a clue how to do it. Because I said I'm going to figure out the data, everybody else is teaching Facebook ads and you got to do all this other stuff. But the site doesn't work. And I was like, when I started looking at my own site, I said traffic's not really the problem. Everybody thinks they need more traffic, but the average e-commerce website converts around 2%. And so I'm like, okay, a hundred people came, 98 people left. They want to get a hundred more people for two more sales. I'm thinking, why don't I get two more of those 98 that left and I'll double my business on the same ad spend. And that was kind of what started the foray into data and using data to actually run the business.
Speaker 2:I love that perspective and the thought about running traffic, traffic not being the problem. I think that's something you know. I personally I've got that wrong not being the problem. I think that's something you know. I personally I've got that wrong where it seems like you kind of get hooked on, you know, trying to get those two out of 100 sales, and so when you look at a site and you're trying to get it from, say, two conversions to four conversions, what would be some types of optimizations that you would look to to to make that jump?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm going to um I'll share several um as we go through this, but I again I want to tie it back to your Amazon sellers. Uh, because, uh, Amazon, their conversion rate is much, much, much higher, Like people literally go there to buy, and so I think it's somewhere in the 70% range. It's extremely high. And so I always thought like, okay, let's look at their site, see what they're doing that works, and then try those things over here and see what we can garner from it. And not everything worked at all. There was a few things did. One reviews. Reviews are huge, Doesn't matter if it's on Amazon or if it's on your website and they had released a study saying that once your product gets to 200 reviews, it can literally cut your conversion in half. So if it took 10 visitors to get a sale with 200 reviews, now all of a sudden it's only gonna take five, and so like a much, much better conversion rate. And so we started applying that to the website, making the reviews front and center. We actually even borrowed the credibility of the Amazon yellow, because everyone knows that and it's a psychological trigger of trust, and so we changed all the reviews on all of our sites to that. Amazon yellow made sure that if they didn't have 200, we took a combined site reviews and put the bigger number on every product until they started getting enough, and we saw huge advances from that.
Speaker 3:Another one was and this is a damaging emission we used to think that if you didn't have very many products, you didn't need search, because they're going to be able to see what you have. You know you need to have like eight, 10 products or more, Otherwise search isn't a big deal. What we found out is search is a really big deal because people don't just type in what product they're looking for, they actually type in their problem. And so when we started tracking that, we started seeing what people were typing in and what products got typed in the most. And a good example was one of our clients, Cubcoats, and they don't mind if you tell the story. Their top two search terms were for products that they didn't have. It was a unicorn, and then unicorn spelled wrong. Well, they had all these products that are like a stuffed animal that you unzip it, it turns into a hoodie for a little kid. Well, all the kids wanted unicorns and they didn't know that. But when we tracked it in the search. We saw that. So they created a unicorn and then they released it on Amazon Prime Day and they did a half a million dollars in 24 hours. So we would have never known, had no idea, if we weren't tracking what was happening in the search.
Speaker 3:The other thing that we've realized over time is in search on your e-commerce site, that traffic converts twice as high as your normal site traffic and its value is almost four times the average visitor. And so you know we had to try to, we have to try to determine why that is, and we think, just if someone can find what they're looking for, easy navigation to it, they tend to buy more, and so that again we're like, okay, how do we make navigation easier? And that started. Okay, the homepage is no longer meant to sell. It's only purpose is to build trust and then easy navigation to what we're looking for, and when we did that, conversions went up, and so I would say that's a really big one. Reviews and search traffic.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice. I love that you looked at Amazon as an example, because they certainly have split tested it a lot and those stars being social proof. I think that is one of the big differentiators between e-commerce and brick and mortar Is you get to hear the opinions of people that bought that exact product and you know, you can see what they like, what they don't like, and so I really really like that. And the search bar is another one that I viewing that as a spot to get information from your customers. You know, if it was brick and mortar, somebody would come in and say do you have a unicorn hoodie?
Speaker 2:That's essentially the search bar right, and framing it that way, I think is really really interesting, really interesting. So one of the things as I have prepped for this episode is, in my inner accountant loves this is that you make data-driven decisions. You let data really guide the way and with your pool of clients at Build, grow Scale, you have access to a ton of data, and so how does your team kind of collate that data and then how are they making data-driven decisions that benefits the group of clients you serve?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we actually call them revenue optimizers. We coined our own term because so many people use CRO. And the funny thing is, when they would come to us, they would go oh, I want to increase my conversion rate. I want to increase my conversion rate. And I'm like, well, we want to do that, of course, but there's good ways to do that and poor ways to do that. Like, we can put all your products on sale and your conversion rate will go up, but you're going to do a bunch more work for not a lot more money. And so we look at the site very holistic and the data that we're looking at is how do we get the user to take the next action? And so, instead of looking at a whole site and going, okay, we want to make more sales, we broke it down even farther and said if they land on the homepage, what is the best way to get them to go to a filter page? And if they land on the filter page, we know that if they use filters on the side, you can get as much as a three to 500% increase in conversions of the people that use the filters over the people that are scrolling. And so how do we get them to use the filters, then on the product page, how do we get them to add to cart? And there's so many different elements in all of that and there's so many different elements in all of that. We just got very, very granular and we've used all that data, hundreds of millions. I mean we're probably close to a billion dollars. I've stopped saying it after 400 million because it's like okay, if I say 400 million or 600 or 800 million, like nobody actually even translates what 400 million means and so that's just an ego number at some point. But there's a lot of data and so we've done that with every page and had lots and lots of split tests and I'll actually share, just because, like you said, the inner account and the data. This is another damage to the mission and a really, really eye-opening test for us.
Speaker 3:We used to test something on a page and then when it would win, we would go look for something else to try to test and win, and that's logical. But one of our ROs said not everybody goes through the page the same way. What if we put that winning element in another place on the page? And we tried it and the page increased and so we tried it in another spot and the page increased again. And on the fourth try it was kind of like a diminishing return, but we literally increased almost 50% more by adding that winning element in other places on the page, because not everybody goes through the exact same way, and so then it was amazing how much bigger our wins were when we learned okay, success leaves clues. Let's try that in a couple of different ways on a couple of different pages, and many, many times we would get more and more lifts from doing that.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice. Yeah, I love the data-driven decisions and for listeners of the show it's probably familiar with me talking about. I try to leave my opinion out. If I can let data drive the decision, that will lead to the best outcome, and so I really, really like that.
Speaker 3:We do too, because we do this well. Now it's been almost 10 years and this is all that we do is just use data to make these decisions, and I'll tell you, probably 50% of the tests that we run don't win, and that's using data and making our best guesses. So I don't even understand what the odds would be for someone to actually get wins, and I realize that's probably why most site owners have never tested, actually tested anything. They just go, oh, this site's doing that. I'm going to do that too, and we tried that in the beginning, and what we realized is a lot of these really big sites. They own the traffic and so their traffic actually interacts with their page, different than someone who's buying cold traffic or interruption marketing.
Speaker 3:Getting people to come to that and that matters. The context and the frame of mind that they come to your site with is different. So the people that I'm going back to we weave this back to one of your original questions with the Amazon sellers. A lot of them come to us and they try to mimic a lot of what was on Amazon. Well, we've already done that. We know what works, what doesn't work, and we can help your Shopify site do really well and then you can actually even do fulfillment through that, where you get a lot of the data. So the people who have come to us and optimize their Shopify site or built their Shopify site to be another channel has worked really well.
Speaker 2:Very good, Very good, that makes a lot of sense. So next question I'd like to talk about is a trend going on, and that is with mobile. There's a lot of people I don't know what the stat is, maybe you do but the trend of people shopping on their phones instead of desktop has significantly increased over the next couple of years, or over the last couple of years. What are some ways that entrepreneurs, as they're looking at their site, what are some things they should be thinking about to ensure that they are optimized for mobile?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say the very first thing that they should focus on is mobile, A hundred percent. You know, five, six years ago, when we first started, desktop was higher and mobile was kind of catching up. Now mobile is like 87 to 90% of your traffic and desktop's 10. Traffic and desktops 10.
Speaker 3:Depending on the product, there is ones that require more education and more real estate to sell, Cause we have some clients have three $4,000 products and so most people aren't spending that much money on a phone. They might discover it on the phone and then we retarget them back to desktop. So there's actually a little nugget right there that people can use If they find you on the phone. Run a retargeting ad that takes people back to your desktop version of your site. That ad will be very profitable. We've never not seen it be very profitable because your desktop experience will convert about twice as high as your mobile experience, even when they're both highly optimized. We've never been able. In fact, we use that kind of as a rule of thumb to see if something's broke on one or the other, and we consider a tablet the same as desktop because you have more real estate. So you have mobile and then you have desktop and tablet, and the desktop and tablet should always convert twice as high as mobile.
Speaker 2:Uh, no, that's. That's really interesting, and so you know what what you're saying is. People are doing a lot of researching on their phone, but when it's time to get the wallet out, when it's time to spend the money they are they are in. The higher the ticket item, the more likely this is is they're going to desktop or tablet. Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. Very, very interesting. That's something that I have not heard in over 250 podcasts, but it makes complete sense and I'm thinking of some of the big purchases that I've made and it does. It starts on social media, maybe a YouTube video on the phone, but when it's purchase time, I do go to desktop. So that, anecdotally, also makes sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and you have a lot more real estate there to make your pitch to the client. I always tell everybody your website, whether it's on mobile or desktop. That's your conversation with your client, and so wherever you can be the most conversational or whoever in your market is the most conversational has the best conversation they're going to make the most sales and dominate the market, and that's why I think people that run media are our best referral partners. When the site works better, their ads work better, the people buy more, they can scale, and hence the name build, grow and scale.
Speaker 2:I want to recap what you just said. So your number one referral source is people that are buying media buyers. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting because, yeah, yeah, that's interesting because they, when you guys run your revenue optimization, they shine. That's neat, that's really neat. I think that's really neat. I, you know, prior to this interview, would have thought of of you guys as kind of competitors and and knowing now that it's really the opposite is really really interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we don't, and we don't run media. Obviously, because we optimize sites, people go, oh well, can you do this and can you do that. And in the beginning we did it and what we realized was e-commerce was growing at such a pace that it really required specialists in each area. It really required specialists in each area, and for us to really be what we wanted, we wanted to be world-class at optimization and the user experience on the website. In order to do that, it just required focus, and so the more things that we said no to, the better we got and the better referrals we got too. And so over time, we just yeah, we literally have said no to everything other than when someone lands on your website or your landing page or your sales funnel, from there until they give you money. That's our, that's our focus and that's our job. And you know we use psychological triggers. Psychological triggers, in fact, I would say that's probably one thing that differentiated us from the very beginning is I read a lot of books about that stuff and I would read I'll just give you an example of optimization Everybody on the podcast can use this.
Speaker 3:It's very simple. It's the form field text. So the text that's in your form fields. 99 out of 100 websites says email Enter your email. Well, I was reading Robert Chiodini's book and he was talking about people don't mind giving you information if you give them a reason why. And they used an example of cutting in line. You could ask someone if you cut in line and 80% of people say no, 20% of people will let you. But if you say, hey, do you mind if I cut in line? My kids are going to be late for school that giving them a reason. Even if it wasn't true or whatever, like they didn't have to check up on it, 80% of people now said yes and get in. Let them do that. I thought, oh, that's interesting. So we're asking for the email and we were tracking form field errors and they were always huge at email and phone number. And uh, and I think it just was, people didn't trust you know, um, giving out their their good information and so started testing form field language and the one that we came on that made a. It was a 279% reduction in errors like astronomical.
Speaker 3:Was email required for order confirmation? Well, the order confirmation email is opened 85% of the time. It's the number one most opened email in e-commerce. People want to. They look at their order confirmation, make sure everything's right. So when we said email required for order confirmation, we stopped getting errors, like literally 300, almost 300% less errors.
Speaker 3:The other thing that we realized is our abandoned cart revenue went way up. Well, why was that? Because now we had their very best email and we were actually they were seeing those emails instead of it going to some off-brand email. And so then and this is still before SMS was huge. Now SMS is the number one way to. It's the number one largest revenue source um for recovery, um and uh. So under phone, we put phone required for shipping notification. Everybody wants to know when your product ships and so by doing that um, we've had as much as a 17% lift on checkouts, um for digital products on a site that was doing $60 million a year. So that we've never, ever seen, we've never, ever implemented that and not seen it giving them a lift. And so everybody can do that. Just put in there required for order confirmation, required for shipping notification, and that's all you have to change and you'll make more sales, more money.
Speaker 2:I love that. I love that, and at the beginning of the podcast we were talking about, you know going from two out of 100 to four out of 100. And as you walk through these examples, you know adding the reviews, adding the search bar, adding that type of language. You know, can I cut in line? My kids are late to school. That equivalent on a website is you can, you can see how you can make that jump from two to four and and how your traffic, you know, becomes much more valuable and so I love that.
Speaker 3:I'll give you one more, just because your audience is Amazon driven and I got this from Jay Abraham he actually talked about using the language that your customers use, and a lot of times when you're building your website, you don't have all those reviews, you don't have the language that they use a lot of times. And so what he did is, he said, go over to Amazon, find your competitors or similar products and read all of their reviews. Use those reviews as how to make your product descriptions. And so we started doing that and we started using the review language from competitor products on Amazon, where they'd have a thousand reviews. We'd read 200 of them and then literally create our product description off of what people loved, and they loved it so much that they went back and left a review. We use that to do our product descriptions on our Shopify sites and again we saw, you know a significant increase.
Speaker 2:Again, we saw a significant increase and the ability to do that. That's free. If you want to go read competitive reviews, that's free.
Speaker 3:And use your customer's language. Use your client's language, they will resonate. It will just feel better to them and they don't even know why.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. You read a lot of one-star reviews that say the eggs stick to this pan. And now, when you're on your website, you're going to highlight the non-stick your eggs won't stick to this pan. I really like that.
Speaker 3:Another really, really interesting. The counterintuitive thought that we've realized and done a lot of data on is one and two star reviews do not actually hurt your sales. In fact, two stars and less are the most clicked on reviews and they are also the highest converting spot on your website.
Speaker 3:That's really interesting, that is really the only time that you see that is when the person has responded to it and taking care of the problem. When they don't take care of the problem, you don't get a lift. So, people, you know and I put a lot of thought into this why is that? True, people do not expect you to be perfect. What they do expect you to do is when you have a problem, you take care of it. So when you push the ones that are less than perfect, they go oh, these guys are truthful and now I can see how they take care of their problems. I trust them.
Speaker 3:The people that only have five-star reviews and no poor ones people are like oh, they're lying, so automatically there's an inherent. I don't know if I'm going to get a good thing, I don't know if it's true or not, but the people that are willing to share the stuff that's not perfect um, like early on in the podcast I said this is a damaging admission. You know, we're awesome at optimizing a website. We would jump from optimization optimization option, but when we realized that, like, success leaves clues and we would put that in another spot on the page and you go, oh, okay, well, they actually learned something and got better at it and they shared how they didn't do good people. They will like that more and trust you more and want to do business with you.
Speaker 2:That's really, really interesting, and I can think of some shopping experiences I've had where I've went in and it has been all five-star and I've wondered huh, this seems there's something fishy here, and so that's really really interesting. So last question before we get into the fire round, talk about Build Grow Scale what type of clients do you serve? And a follow-on question I have is, as I was prepping for this podcast, I had listened to another podcast that you were on and someone had mentioned that you tend to turn down more candidates for coming into Build grow scale as clients than you accept, and so can you talk about that a little bit more?
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, I would say so. We have a couple of different ways that you can do business with us. Um, one, um, we have all kinds of free information on a YouTube channel, our blog, et cetera, and, um, the point of that is, hey, we'll provide value when your site starts doing better than you can choose to do business with us if you want to, and if not, you know, awesome, like you got some value from us, you'll tell other people, and so that's one way. Another way is we have people that they can engage with us, where we put the entire team on the site, do all their optimizations, their dev work, et cetera, and so we have a couple of programs where you can work with us for eight weeks.
Speaker 3:We have a membership that you can join where we teach all the time and actually interact with the members on a weekly basis on there's three different calls per week, so you can join the membership. That's like $67 a month. And then there's also when you're doing about $250,000 a month or more in revenue. That's when we have a what's called an amplified partnership, where we would actually do all your split testing, your Google Analytics and take care of everything on the website so that you can focus on traffic, sourcing, customer service, and those are the examples that I gave you early on, where we took Organifi from $2.75 million to $9 million and then to $16 million within a year, and then the 300,000 to 2.7 million. Those are examples of different ones that we've done.
Speaker 2:Outstanding, outstanding. That's good to hear and it's good to hear that there's different ways to engage with Build Grow Scale. That learning the learning component that you had talked about is, I think, great for people just getting started and you know some of the stories that you've told today and the work that you've done with your Amplified clients. You know again, my inner account is flaring up here. But the return on investment as an entrepreneur, that's what you want. You're seeking return on investment. My dollars are soldiers, I'm sending them out into the world and I want, you're seeking return on investment. I, my dollars, are soldiers, I'm sending them out into the world and I want them to come back with more soldiers.
Speaker 3:And what you're saying about us turning down some too. Uh, we've gotten to the point now and we've been out there and we've done this long enough uh, that we can be a little bit picky, like, I love coming to work, I love doing what we do, but there's been times that we said yes to certain clients that we just didn't really enjoy working for, or we use the data and said, hey, this is what's going to make the most sales and like, ah, that's not on, and we get paid based off of winning, and so if you're not going to use the data to do that, it's really difficult for us to feel like we're going to and who we say no to and who we refer to other people, just for that simple fact of you. Know, we want you to love working with us and we want to love working with you. That's where we get the best results and, yeah, that's just how we run the business.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice. Now, if people are interested in working with Build Grow Scale, what would be the best way?
Speaker 3:I mean, go right to our website at buildgrowthscalecom and contact us and there's a form that you can fill out. There's a couple of different ones for different levels of engagement. That's super easy. Or you could actually email me to matt at buildgrowth dot com and I respond to those emails.
Speaker 2:Very nice. We'll post links to all that in the show notes Now. Prior to hitting record on the podcast, you had mentioned a really sweet offer for our four firing the band listeners, so can you talk about that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we, we have an offer that's normally fifteen hundred bucks. It's called the audit and that's where we'll go through your entire site and we'll break down, you know, the use of the homepage, the filter page, the product page, cart, and then literally show you the things that we think are asked questions about, the things that we think are unclear, and it's really, really eyeopening for people. Easy, easy to ROI on. It takes us about 24 hours to turn around one and we normally charge $1,500. For your guests, we would do that for $500.
Speaker 2:Outstanding, outstanding. Well, matthew, we really appreciate that offer and Firing Demand listeners, this is going to be a podcast I'm going to re-listen to. There's a lot of nuggets here, uh, of great information and, uh, matthew, this has been an outstanding podcast. Now, before we end the show, there is something four questions we ask all of our guests. It's called the fire round. Are you ready?
Speaker 3:Sure, I don't remember these, but yeah, let's go All right, sounds good.
Speaker 3:So first question what is your favorite book, boy? That's difficult because I like a few. I will tell you, and I think you and I have talked about maybe doing another podcast around this. Over the last four or five years I've been on a on a deep spiritual journey, and so I will tell you.
Speaker 3:Uh, there's two books that uh, I really really like, um, that were very, very eyeopening for me. One was called letting go and the other one is called dark side of the light chasers, which is a really weird name, but essentially what it is is learning how to accept all parts of yourself as you know who you are. And so, yeah, those two books, I would say, made a huge difference. One and just how I show up in life. And the funny thing is that really actually affects how we do business too. And so a lot of times people will be like, oh no, I want the tactics, I want the this or that and, believe it or not, the more work that we do on the six inches between our ears affects our business a lot more than the tactics do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and there is going to be a second part to this podcast and we're going to dive deep into that. So listeners stay tuned. Second fire round question what are your hobbies?
Speaker 3:did a half Ironman twice. Um, I love exercise. I think that, uh, you know, one taking care of our body gives us a better quality of life, because that's how we experience everything. Um, so I was yeah, I'd say exercise cycling, and I like to play tennis.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice. What is one thing you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:What is one thing you do not miss about working for the man? Well, the very last time that I worked for someone, I asked for vacation time and I was the number one salesman and they said no and I thought, oh okay. And I, literally about an hour and a half later, about 90 minutes later, I went in and gave them my two weeks notice and they're like what do you mean? Yeah, I just realized like I'm not going to show up and be your number one employee and when I need something that you're not willing to provide that for me. So, yeah, just that I, yeah, I want to be able to control my own destiny.
Speaker 2:Very nice. And final question what do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:Hmm, well, I will tell you another thing that I've learned and it's changed my success trajectory is I used to think I was really smart and a hard worker, and I had a really, really intelligent person say what if you weren't smart, what does that do for you? And I was like, oh wow, that gives you a lot more open-mindedness, open possibilities for other areas that you could do better in, and so I would say, go into things with the child's eyes, be curious instead of thinking that you know the answer.
Speaker 2:Very nice. I really like that answer, Matthew. This has been an outstanding podcast. I want to thank you for your time today. If people are interested in getting in touch with you, what's the best way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, matt, at buildandgrowthscalecom works.
Speaker 2:All right, sounds good. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in to the Firing the man podcast and we'll see you next week.
