Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Independence by Design podcast where we discuss what it means to be a business owner and ways to get unstuck from the day to day so we can design a business that gives us a life of independence.
Over the last nine years, since I met Matt Paulson, the founder of MarketBeat, I watched him take his company, MarketBeat, and grow it into a $50 million annual reoccurring revenue business with around 20 employees, 6 million email subscribers, to the point where he has what I would consider unlimited options and a world of abundance. And it really intrigues me to understand how people like Matt, who have pretty much complete optionality, how do they manage their lives? How does he manage his attention, his focus? How does he say yes to things? How does he say no to things? So I was unbelievably pleased when Matt was announcing that he was going to be doing a podcast tour. I took him up on it. It'd been a handful of years since he's been on the show and him and I talk about how he grew MarketBeat into 50 million in revenue, how he thinks about employees and building teams, how he's managing his venture capital fund and what investments he likes and doesn't like, and then what it's like at the age of 40, hitting a milestone like a hundred million dollar net worth outside of Market Beat, why he's been able to say no to all the different offers that have come at him and really honestly, how he just stays focused and prioritizes the meaningful things in life. I love listening to how people that I respect manage their lives, stay focused and prioritize what matters. And I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Here's Matt Paulson, the founder of MarketBeat. So here we are, Matt, and you and your X feed is why we're here.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: And it sounds like you've made a couple dollars on your X feed in the last, what was it, like seven days you got, did you hit six figures?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yes, like a week. A week ago Thursday I teased out like, hey, I have this list of top affiliate offers in financial publishing. You know, would anybody want these? And like, would you pay for them? Because I've always thought about having this SaaS that would have be like a data play of, you know, hey, do you want this? And it turns out people are kind of interested that, but really they're just interested in getting on a zoom call with me and asking about their business and getting advice and that kind of stuff. So like somebody said, yeah, I'll pay for it. And like, send me the stripe link to check out. And I like, okay, I've got a stripe account I can make. I can make a checkout link in 10 minutes. I'll take your 2,000 bucks or whatever. And then here we are a week later. I've got like 25 consulting clients and 89,000 in revenue. Have done five.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: So close to the hundred.
[00:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I checked out today. Like, it is so, like, not thought through. Like, I don't get emails when people buy. I have to go, like, check the stripe account and see if there are any. Like, because, like, there was no planning on this. Like, it wasn't anything I thought through. It was literally somebody said, hey, give me a checkout link. I was like, fine, I'll take your money. Like, and then a lot of other people signed up for that too.
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Are you excited about Sharon? I mean, like, give me a little, like, pure insight, like, because you, you posted on X and you and I met at Rhodium back 2017, I think it was. And you know, I've. I just, I love your banter on X, man. I just have. I just have a lot of fun laughing at how you're out there. And I. So you said, hey, like, let's do some podcasts. And I was like, sure, why not? I'll throw my hat in the ring. And then, you know, what is it? How do you think about sharing your thoughts about business now? Like, it sounds like you're like, kind of putting yourself out there a little bit more.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm trying to reboot my personal brand. And not that I ever really stopped, but lately what has kind of annoyed me in the world is there are a lot of primarily content creators that are, you know, talk about operating media businesses, but they don't actually, like, operate a media business. And like, I really wanted to come out and be like, hey, I'm the guy that actually does operate the media business. And like, let's talk about it. And the way that that's happening is like this podcast tour. Speaking at Matt McGarry's New Media Summit in February, doing a consulting thing, just really trying to. Like, maybe like 10 years ago I tried this and I had my email marketing demystified book and some other stuff like that, and I never focused on it, so it kind of fell flat. And it's like, now it's like, I actually do have the business results and like, let's take that, you know, those results and then try to build a real personal brand based off of it and utilize that for a variety of purposes down the line.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: It's one of the things that I've always appreciated about you. Is it, this might be, this is my own perspective, but like, you have this ability to like just cut through the bullshit of like what other noise is being propagated out online and then just being like, I don't care what you say, like, this is kind of what I see as the truth, which is what I've always appreciated about you. And I' got a couple questions as it relates to some of the ways you've stayed focused over the years. But like, one of the questions I wanted to start with is, so I gather in your most recent update that you and I are the same age.
You know, just, I haven't hit 40 yet, but you've rounded 40. And you know, you and I met actually I was closer to probably 30 when we were both hanging out. And you've, you've done some crazy stuff, dude, over the last decade.
Like when you look back at the last 10 years, like, what would you have, what would your 30 year old have thought about what you've done? And like, what would you consider some of the things that you're most proud of?
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I thought I was a big deal when I was at like 2 million bucks a year. And like now I realize, like, oh, now I see why nobody cared back then because lots of people are at 2 million bucks a year. So like the, the growth has been incredible. Very proud of that.
I think a lot of my early 30s, late 20s was about experimentation, tried a bunch of different things and kind of landed on the one thing that is really my life's calling and that is to build and grow MarketBeat to its natural conclusion. Like, don't want to sell the business, don't want to get rid of it. I just want to keep doing this until I can't work anymore and just build a great life and then build a great life for the people that work for me and super happy with that.
I do think one, I kind of thought, hey, you're going to figure the thing out and then you're going to focus on it. But what I've realized about MarketBeat is if you over optimize it and try to turn the dials too much, you just end up doing stupid stuff that actually hurts the business.
So I've kind of intended, I've given myself permission to get distracted with things like consulting and being on X. And then with MarketBeat, I really only focus on kind of the main things and kind of keep myself from doing dumb stuff like that would.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: How did you figure that out? Like, what are some tangible things that you were like, reflecting on to figure that out?
[00:06:41] Speaker B: So, like, if we do like a landing page test or anything that would like, kind of change the funnel, like, I really need a week's worth of data to, you know, know if it's going to work or not or like, really be an impact.
And if you make too many tests and you don't give them like, the time to breathe and time to get results, like, you make a decision based on not enough data and then you do something dumb or you run too many tests at once and then like, they interfere with each other and like, you just gotta, gotta give some of these things time to breathe, time to show the results, look at the results, and then make changes based off the results. And like, I didn't always do that when I was market beat eight hours a day, every day. And now that I say, okay, I'm gonna go do this thing and I'm gonna check back on in a week and just make sure it's going okay. If not, we'll make some adjustments.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Super fascinating because quite a few of my questions I had teed up, Matt, are like, associated with attention and like, where we place our attention. Because even back in, when I met you and a lot of my stuff was way more focused on the sale because I was fresh off of the family business sale. And I've inverted that whole thing too. Like, hey, like most of my clients, it's like keeping the business is one of the most profitable assets you could have.
Staying focused, but also not screwing things up because you're, you're scratching that itch of new things.
What has helped you stay focused over the last 10 years? I mean, like, because you, you said you experimented a bunch and then you stayed focused. I mean, like, how did, how did you shut off all of the noise that's constantly a distract. Could be a distraction.
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good question. Thankfully, like, people have stopped asking me to start businesses with them.
So, like, because they, they realize, like, you're focused here. He's really focused on MarketBeat. So like, that distraction has gone away. The real distraction is like, you know, here, you know, I live in kind of suburban, you know, a serving suburban community, 250,000 people. And like, to be a $50 million a year business in, you know, Sioux Falls, South Dakota is a pretty big deal. Like, I just had lunch with the top candidates for congress, mayor, governor, downstairs in our kind of shared Meeting room. And like they were all happy to be there to hang out with me. And it's like that's kind of weird. But like. Okay, so like the distractions are really more on like community side of like, you know, every nonprofit in town wants to get involved with their thing and like, yeah, we're happy to do a bunch of that but like I can't only do that. So it's really just kind of keeping the city at bay. And it's just like, it's like, it's like guys like the magic here is that market makes a bunch of money. Just like give me the room to like go make a bunch of money and then I will be happily give all of the donations in the world. But like, you guys got to like, let me do this and not ask me to come to every dinner, every lunch, every. Like you can't do all the things.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: It's. How do you like. Because there's always like I was saying a lot of my questions. I'm very fascinated with attention and time, Matt. Like I like I have personally I've gone so down this rabbit hole, like is, you know, with a lot of the stuff that I've done over the last 10 years is like a lot of exposure to very successful people and trying to like, you know, I think the Internet does a lot of this too is we see one side of the story but we don't realize how many trade offs there are. And like, you know, you and your about section, all the stuff that you've been published out there is like you decided to balance family and then you get community and like it's this attention.
Like we can only do so many things and how do you, how do you just. How do you think about community? Family market beat your real estate, the angel investing, how do you think about the trade offs of time?
[00:10:13] Speaker B: All of my kind of side projects, I try not to cause like to suck up a ton of time.
So like with the real estate stuff, like there's. I have an operating partner, guy named Kevin Tubey who's fantastic and like I can think about real estate for zero hours a week and like it'd be totally fine. On the venture capital side, I have a partner named Tim. He's awesome. You know, I think about that, you know, on the busiest weeks, five, ten hours on, you know, a very quiet week, you know, I might not have to think about it too often at all because there just might not be anything to do.
So I just, I'm very careful about my time. Like I Don't like, there's so many like evening events that happen in Sioux Falls I get invited to and I just don't go to any of them because like, kind of want to be at home after 5pm Because I've had a, you know, seven, eight meetings during the day and like, I just want to be at home with my wife and kids. And like, it's like, yeah, it's great that your banquet's happening and like, I'll write a donation to your non profit, but like, I'm not gonna go.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I just kind of have to.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Kind of be jerk about it sometimes because like, you know, you. I probably got invited to 20 Christmas parties in Sioux Falls and I went to like two of them just because, like, am I gonna be gone four nights a week for the months of November and December? Like, no, of course not. Right?
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah, you got family.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: It's gotta just set those things aside and be okay that you're not everywhere all the time. And nor do you need to be like it just like, you don't need to go to everything.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: What.
Where in your journey did you get that peace with yourself that you were okay not having fomo? Did you ever have fomo? Or did. Did you there were there times that you chased.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Used to have a ton of fomo and then it just kind of became like not possible to like do everything with two kids and two dogs at home. And when I like, wasn't able to do all of the things and then like nothing bad happened and like, didn't really miss, you know, you don't really miss out on anything, then it just kind of eventually just get over it. And some of that might be like getting a little bit older and being 40 now versus, you know, late 20s when like, like I used to like, want to earn my seat at the table and like now I've got the seat at the table and I don't feel like I need to earn it anymore by showing up and helping with every last thing and, you know, doesn't exist to do it either.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: How do you choose what to focus on?
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Like, there's the stuff I have to focus on, which is like at MarketBeat, it's like the paid marketing to grow MarketBeat and then the monetization. So like, I always pay attention to that. And then beyond that, it's kind of whatever interests me at the time because like, next, a week from today will be my 19th anniversary of building MarketBeat. And I know that because my AdSense account has a birthday to December 26th. Of 2006. That's awesome. So there's this continual journey of 19 years of personal finance, blog to investing, blog to investing, websites to market be. That is uninterrupted. And I think the reason I've been able to stick with it that long and just keep doing the same thing, well, partially because it works, but because I just allow myself to pursue other hobbies to their natural conclusion.
I did the book writing thing, wrote six books because I thought it would make me some money. And it did, but also totally wasn't worth it. And then I got bored of it, moved on to the next thing. Had a podcast for a while, doing the Twitter thing, now doing a podcast tour. And eventually these things will get boring and I'll stop doing them and move on to the next thing. But just giving myself that space to do these things and experiment a little bit and pick a new hobby every now and then. Like, my, like, my hobbies are, like, not golf. It's like, I'm gonna go learn how to make great espresso and, like, be the coffee guy and then do.
And now it's like, yeah, I can still make great coffee, but, like, sometimes you just don't give a crap. And, like, put the pod in a Keurig machine and, like, I just want caffeine.
Yeah.
Like, I was really into watches for a while. Kind of got out of watches. Still have a bunch of great watches. But, like, that was my Covid hobby. Cause, like, that was something you could do during COVID Yeah, that's super cool, man.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Like, it's. I think there's a think giving your. Giving us ourselves the space to just, like, experiment. But, like, one of the things that I see that other people struggle with and I have also in the past is experimenting in ways that are safe without blowing up the mothership.
And I think that's the balance that I think, you know, either they're, like, hamstrung or, like, captured in their operating role of the company and which doesn't allow them to have that flexibility that you're talking about, or they chase that flexibility without taking care of the mothership. And so it becomes this, like, either or thing. And I. And you're. You're showing that you. It can be both. If. If it's what makes that work.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: A lot of it is all the stuff that I don't want to do at MarketBeat, somebody else does.
And some of that, like, you know, I don't want to do QuickBooks, so, like, hire a couple people to be.
Have a CFO and an accounting person and you know, a couple other people and like, I just will kind of willfully ignorant about how all the financial stuff works other than like looking at the P and L every month to see how, you know, where the money's coming from and going out. But like the actual, like how, like how payroll gets done and how bills get paid and like, I really don't want to know about that. And I, you know, do my part just to kind of keep good accounting processes in place. But, you know, continually telling people like, hey, this is your decision. I'm not gonna get involved with it. Like, this is kind of your neck of the woods and like not micromanaging. Like, we have a content team of like three editors and 10 writers, a couple YouTube people, and they asked me my opinion and it's like, like this is up to you. This is your decision, how you handle it. Like, I'm not going to tell you what to do and just kind of really, kind of keep my hands out of the stuff that like, is not kind of the stuff that I'm really good at. Like, if somebody wants to mess with the advertising, I'd say, like, go away. This is not your area of expertise.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Is that where your, your main. That's your baby?
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's been my whole thing for 20 years is getting people to click on ads on the Internet and buy stuff. Like, like, that's, that's like the thing I'm good at in the world. So now it's like, how do we grow marketbeats, Email list or SMS list, website traffic, Kind of our owned audiences now. YouTube channel too. And how do we just get a ton of people there and how do we get them to click on ads and buy stuff? And that's the whole business. And like, that's really good at. So that's what I spend my time.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: On and it's, it's what I want for a lot of my clients. Matt. Like, when I. Because, you know, as I look at my clients where they're like, some of them have gotten out of the operations and they're kind of quasi in the board, some of them, like, that's their intent a lot of times because they're all founders or operators to some degree. There's a part of the business that they love, but everything else they hate.
So it either gets neglected or I think that there's this world, like you can be both, right? You can be the owner and you can tinker around in the places that you love and it doesn't have to be so rigid, but then it's building the systems and the team around you so that way you can actually give yourself that flexibility.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Any.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Any lessons learned or thoughts about team and, like, how you build a team and how you manage the team?
[00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah, so much of it is, like, that's a good question. In terms of hiring, like, we've had really good success hiring.
Like, when we've tried to go out and hire for, like, something that Nobody does at MarketBeat today, like, we've almost always failed at it. Like, like, we didn't have a media buyer. We tried to hire a media buyer that, like, didn't work out. Like, because we had agencies doing it. Like, I didn't know how to do it and, like, that didn't work. When we, like, hire for some. Something that, like, this one person's too busy or cut their job in half, hire a second person and, like, we can train them, like, because we know how to do the job, like, that tends to be pretty well. It's like when we go out a limb and try to hire something for, like, nobody knows how to do this, and we just expect somebody to come in and know how to do it. Like, that never works. And then, like, for the senior roles, like, just, you know, like, our Senior people are 2, 300 a year and just hiring really good people that, like, know what they're doing and just kind of take care of stuff. Like, you know, I've got people, like, I just don't need to worry about it because I know that, like, if I give them something, it will get done.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Did you have to go through a process to find those people? Like, did you have to go through one or two people before you figured that out? And is it a combination of the pay and just being open to that level? Because, like, I'd say, like, that that's the C suite paid pay range that a lot of my clients are working on too. And I've had to say, like, you know, first of all, inflation has hit the C suite very much so in the last five years. And, like, once people swallow that golf ball of reality, then it's like, okay, it's kind of like when you're looking for a house, like, now that we realize that this is our budget, we're not lying to ourselves. Now can we open this up?
So how have you, you know, have you gone through a couple iterations to figure out who the right people are and what would be, like, the right qualities of the C suite or, like, that leadership team that allows you to trust them implicitly.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, a lot of it's kind of been upgrading what we do over time. Like, MarketBeat, we.
We tend to. Or we're typically, like, intentionally kind of bad at stuff until we decide we need to get really good at it. Like, our accounting was just, like, not. Like, not like we knew we had money because we made money and had profit at the end of the year, but, like, very disorganized. And, like, when the state Department of revenue came and said, like, hey, we're going to do a sales tax audit, it's like, I had to go. Like, I had to, like, go through my email and find 400 receipts, which I did.
But now we have it all on QuickBooks. It's there. If they come back three years, and they probably will, we say, here you go.
But we decided we're gonna get really good at accounting this year. We had the money, so we went and hired a good accountant to be our cfo. And one thing that we've kind of done here in Sioux Falls is that we very intentionally make MarketBeat be seen as the premier employer of the community.
Like, we're doing, like, paid promotional content about MarketBeat in the local business journal, like, talking about our employees and how they, like, how they love their job and, like, what they were doing before and what they're doing now. At MarketBeat, we talk about all this stuff we sponsor. Like.
Like, people know in Sioux Falls, like, MarketBeat is a great place to work at, and obviously, we pay well. So, like, when we go out to hire somebody, like, we tend to have a pretty good choice of people to choose from. Like, stole the anchor away from the local news to go to our YouTube channel, and we, like, that's awesome, dude. We stole a CFO of a $300 million construction company to come be our CFO. And, like, we. We can get great people now. And it's because we put all this energy into making Mark be, like, a great employer brand in our community.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: That's awesome. I actually was on a call with one of my clients who. He'll be listening. He sells boilers and installs boilers and, like, skilled labor crisis is happening. And so I got a lot of my clients matter. Like, real things for real people in the real economy. Like, just, like, stuff. And, like, we had, like, the skilled labor is going to be a problem for quite a few of the people I work with, and we want that dynamic for them to be able to be choosy because they have, like, very similar characteristics and qualities. I think that you have attracted. And I actually said to the guy, I'm like, I. I think that there's a serious argument to become, you know, I'm going to put in air quotes here, like a media company, but like, you know, like right now they don't have a lot of YouTube channel or any of that stuff where people don't know that they should be the employer of choice where they are. They're even a half esop, Matt. So like there's like, there's all these things that could make them. But they. No one knows it. And so like, I think as labor and the demographic cliffs become something that are really a constraint, it's interesting to hear you say that because I think that's something that people should take notice of.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Well, and it's like not really expensive to do. Like, our local business publication charges us maybe $250 to do it. Maybe 500, I don't know, to do like a sponsored kind of story on their website. And like everybody reads it because it's like the only thing out there in town. Like, we write the article so we can say whatever we want. We publish it and like it's money well spent.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Awesome. Yeah.
How about the people that. Have you had any varying experiences, like when you not hiring the right person and then how you figure out it's the wrong person and then how have you address that to find the right person?
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we've only had a few mishires.
Like I think we've had like four or five people leave ever.
And really only one person left on their own accord.
Maybe two. Yeah, two left on their own accord.
First one was like a gal that I helped her start a business and then she made too much money from it and like, okay, go do your thing.
I'll find somebody else. Do customer support. Second was a minority business partner that I had that I was going to let by up to 10% of MarketBeat. But he had just so many other things going on. MarketBeat was never his priority. So then I ended up having to buy him out. Was that this is probably 2019. There was a person I met from Rhodium, so.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Oh, really? I don't know if I ever knew you had a partner. How did, how did that go?
[00:23:25] Speaker B: Like, the, like the guy was super smart, really good at marketing and doing online stuff and I felt like, okay, if I'm ever going to take a partner, I think it's him. But like he still had other stuff going on. And then the other stuff quickly became A priority. And like this is just. Was not working.
And you know, it was the type of thing where he was supposed to provide a ton of value, grow the company and that's how he'd earn his equity. But then like the value never really came. Yep. This is like, all right, we need to wrap this up. And it was expensive to wrap it up, but we did and I. Yeah.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: Amen. That's a very elegant way of putting partnership disputes.
Did you. How did you guys. Was there any.
And we don't have to get too much into if you don't want to, but I'm just curious because when I, when I've. I've also facilitated a lot of internal buyouts and, and phantom equity and there's this understanding of what creates value and how valuations work to become. I think I like Matt, I believe that like that is one of the biggest gaping holes where like if we, if you and I are going to trade value, whether it's this phone or whatever. I think, you know, my example is like if we're arguing about over Android versus iPhone, it's very difficult for us to argue about that. If you think that this is worth a hundred grand and I think it's worth $10. And so it's like I just have found that the valuation education becomes one of the biggest issues on the trading. I don't know if have you any experiences on that with all the ventures that you.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah, thankfully in my deal with my minority partner, it was all spelled out and I made sure I had the right to get rid of him and at what price I would get rid of him for. So thankfully I thought about that ahead of time and was able to deal with that on kind of the venture capital side of things. I've got a firm called Homegrown Capital. We've got about 40 million under management. So not big by any means, but big enough. And you do find a lot of first time founders that have never raised money, never done a deal before, just have very inflated expectations about what their company is worth. And like, I think they just hear a number and get it stuck in their head. But like, even with venture stuff and tech startups, like there are actual like metrics you look at to determine what a company is worth. It's not all just blue sky and picking a number out of the air. It's based off, you know, your revenue and your growth and your retention and kind of all that stuff.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's been wild to me, Matt. I mean, because I'm Curious because like as you look at market beta as an asset, as you look at your commercial real estate and your real estate portfolio versus the vc, you're playing in different asset classes that different have different valuation metrics and stuff like that. And I just, man, I have in the middle market, call it privately held business where they're cash flowing assets. I don't play in the VC space. I'm the first to admit that it's an idea that there's going to be a monetization event at some point. But for me, normalize Zipita the multiple or discounted cash flow distributions and like I cannot believe how few people understand how valuations work. It's truly fascinating to me because. And then like everybody just wakes up doing stuff, not knowing where to spend their time.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: Well, and like, like people get a number in their heads and like just think my business has to be worth that because that's what I think it's worth. And it like, it's like hate to break it to you, like this is not the first business of your kind that's ever been sold and like there are benchmarks for this stuff. And like people don't want to hear that.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: How do you think about valuations with homegrown?
What's the investment thesis? What are you guys looking for?
[00:26:48] Speaker B: So we just raised on December 31st we'll close our second fund.
We raised 22 million bucks for it. But we're playing in that seed the series A space, kind of middle of the country companies, typically the stuff that is, you know, some, you know, stuff Minneapolis, Chicago, Des Moines, Omaha, Fargo, Sioux Falls kind of based, you know, that's kind of really where we're looking because like I know Andreessen Horowitz is not playing Sioux Falls, S.D. so I don't have to compete with them here, thankfully. But we would look at, you know, we look at what's your revenue this year, what's your revenue last year. We really like to see strong growth and like it's like companies at four million today, but they were at three and a half last year and three the year before. The growth isn't there. It's not like a venture scalable company.
You really want to see at least 50% year over year growth, maybe 100%. You really want to see good retention.
Customers that were with you a year ago, are they still there? What percentage of them are? Have they increased their spend? Have they lowered their spend?
And then what's revenue today? What does the sales cycle look like?
Everybody will have these Great forecasts about how their revenue are going to go up. And of course it's all BS and none of it ever happens.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: If you invest, it'll then guarantee it to go up. Right?
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Well, it's just like they've got these rosy. See all those pictures, right? Like, oh, we're, we're at 20,000 today, but next year we're gonna be at 2 million. It's like, okay, maybe, but probably not. So it's just.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: What type of businesses are you looking at? Like what industries and how many pitches do you, have you been going through?
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so we have 15, maybe 16 portfolio companies now between fund one and fund two, it's all technology based. So we have some ag tech businesses. Like there's a company out of Nebraska called Grain Weevil that's this robot that goes in grain bins. It's really cool.
Like, you know, people that aren't in the Midwest don't know this, but like farmers die in grain bins all the time because like you can drown in a green bin if you fall in and like nobody's there to help you. Like that's, that's a bad deal. Yeah, our former governor's dad died in a grain bin and like bad deal. So some guys made a robot that would go in a grain bin. Like there's typically like a crust on top of the grain that you got to break to get the grain out. So they made a robot that does that and it's really cool and does some other stuff.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Super cool.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Mix it up. And so we invested in that. On top of that, we'll do fintech stuff. Sioux Falls is kind of a fintech hub in a way. We have yet to find a fintech to invest in, but we keep saying we want to invest in fintech, then a lot of B2B SaaS. I'm not one that believes AI is going to eat the lunch of every SaaS company in the world because you still need specialists.
People don't want to build their own tools. We built our own CRM, but most normal companies don't want to do that. They don't want to build their own solutions with the vive coding that nobody's there to support. Like they want complete solutions and that will continue to be the case. So like whether the next generation of SAS tools or Vibe coded or still built kind of the old fashioned way like that, like, like line of software stuff is still going to exist and be a great business for a long time to come.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Not shocking for me to hear that from You, I. How, how do you think about AI and valuations and where it plays a role right now? And then pick a time frame, Matt, like whether, whatever time frame you want to unpack.
What do you see that? What do you think the puck's going?
[00:30:09] Speaker B: That's a good question. I don't think AI is going to fundamentally change the world as much as some of the technorati say it is.
I think it'll be a lot like the transition from the 1950s to today where like everybody still probably has a job, the jobs are going to be different. Like we don't have typing pools anymore, right. And people aren't doing accounting using these long books and doing the numbers by hand.
So I think it'll be a lot like that where it's like some of the more, I don't know, like basic computer jobs, like, probably go away. And it's more about like, you know, like being a programmer today is not like just knowing all the syntax perfectly and writing all the code by hand.
Just like 75 years ago I was all writing assembly machine code kind of line by line, and then we moved to these interpreted languages like C, C, whatever. That made it easier. And now you don't even need to know the syntax. You just need to be able to tell cloud code what to do and then it'll write the syntax for you and this stuff will get easier and it will allow more people to do it and it'll allow people who know what they're doing to do more.
But I don't think it's going to fundamentally upend society probably at all.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: I agree with you and I'm curious, I want to hear, I'm curious on your thoughts and my comments. So first of all, the whole world's going through this demographic issue over the next 10, 15 years. That's very significant.
And like everybody, I hear, Matt, like we hear it's gonna eat the world and everyone's doomed and AGI is coming versus like, you know, very practical conversations. And I go, okay, well if we have a serious amount of baby boomers getting out of the workforce and our entire, like, what, 60% of our economy is white collar. And I mean, I don't know if it's 60% white collar, but there's a lot of services, right? Less so than the hollowed out manufacturing base that we've all been discussing. Like, we need the ability to do more with less, just to stay in the same spot.
And like, and I think about Matt, as I got rid of my last company with Payroll. And like, as I just got my coaching business, like, my God, the amount of I'm able to do with AI right now is fantastic, you know, but it's not like I can't like just ask it to do. Like, I. It's not going to take, it's not going to take the business and run with it. So it's very interesting to me where. And like, and from what I've gathered too, like the LLM structure does. They don't even see a path to AGI compared to like, I don't know, it's just fascinating to hear you said.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but I remember when GPT4 came out and it was like such a big deal and frankly it was. But like people was like, I'm going to start a business and ChatGPT is going to be my boss and I'm going to work for it. And like, obviously that didn't work out. Like, those people don't have businesses today.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Are you seeing this stuff come up in, in your pitches or how, like, how are you seeing. So when I say stuff here, let me clarify. So what I have noticed, you know, with the boardroom playbook that I've got, I mean, everything ends up coming down to cash and to financials and how the business produces more cash. So it becomes this first principle constraint that's deterministic and it's becoming more and more aware. I become more and more aware of how many advisors and consultants have no idea what they're doing because they plug it in and they give you something and you're like, it's just wrong. But they don't know that it's wrong.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: And like, are you seeing, like, how are you. How is that. Is that coming up in places that.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. You know, every startup we talk to has an AI story of some kind.
You know, I think you just kind of. It's like something you have to do. Like, you know, if it was 2020, everybody would have their slide about like how we're being inclusive, right. And then like society changes and like, that's not the thing anymore. And now it's 2025 and everybody has to have the AI. Like, here's how we're going to do AI and five years from now it'll be like, here's how we're going to use humanoid robots or whatever the thing is. Right?
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: So it's just like part of, it's like the narrative is this and I got to go along with it. So here's my I have to at.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Least address it to some degree.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: But a lot of it just like, it's like, I don't know, it just.
I don't think every business in the world needs AI to succeed. Like, I think what will become more valuable is the stuff that AI can't automate. Like, you know, plumbers making 100 bucks an hour is like going to be a real thing very soon if it's not already. You could like, no, you know, not many people want to do it and it's a very valuable thing that we all need.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: And like, yeah, the trades.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: It's going to be a great time to be in the trades.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Oh my God, Matt, the. The trades up in the Twin Cities. I mean, you're 150 bucks an hour for electricians, plumbers. I mean, like, I'm seeing it already and it'll be really interesting as the private equity roll ups in the trade space come to fruition because with the debt being more expensive and then the inflation and the payroll, it'd be interesting to see if all these roll ups that everybody thought were so obvious 5 years ago come to fruition on the back end.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: I mean, we saw how it played out in E comm space.
It obviously didn't end well. Right. I think we'll probably see some of that in the trade space. But like, there's a reason, like, these businesses are hard and not everybody starts them. Like, you can't abstract away like all of the actual work that needs to happen.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: That was so well said. Oh my God. What allowed you to, like, what was your experience over the last 10 years of the hype of selling businesses? Right, because you saw it in the E commerce. E commerce. You saw it in the digital space.
And then 2020 it ramped up with all the cheap debt and the free money.
What kept you from having or did you have those conversations? How did you, how did you stay focused?
[00:35:58] Speaker B: I did try to sell my business in 2016 and nobody offered me like more than three times EBITDA and then I didn't sell it.
So, like, yeah, I, I kind of fell for the hype cycle for a little bit. And we had some personal stuff going on in our family that like, made me think, like, I just need a break from work for a while.
But like, the, the right offer never came. I told the guys at the brokerage that we were working with, like, somebody wants to offer me four times EBITDA today. Like, I'll probably, you know, I'll take it. And I got like three. And then they were surprised that I didn't want to take it. And it's like, well, whatever, I'm gonna go back to work now and then, like, from there, like, you know, things at home kind of settled down and like, we had. So we had two NICU babies is kind of the deal. My wife had two tough pregnancies and, like. But, like, that settled down, kids are fine.
Just kind of went back to work. And then eventually I realized, oh, this is actually something pretty special. I should probably hold onto it now. It's like, I don't take the emails, I don't take the phone calls from private equity venture capital people.
There's a firm that bought another financial media company in our space, and they reached out and I was like, well, just so you're aware, I'm never going to sell MarketBeat and I'm not acquiring any businesses. So if you want to talk, that's fine. Just know that I'm not for sale and I'm not buying, so. And then for some reason, they never followed up.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: I can only imagine that the, you know, from 2016, to call it 20, 21 or 2, the multiples doubled, tripled, or whatever it could have been. And, like, did you ever think about. Because, like, maybe you might not have gotten it, but I think what I. I know what I've seen over the last six, seven years has been actually overpaying for a lot of these companies. So did that ever change your mindset?
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Well, eventually I had enough money where it didn't matter because a lot people sell for life changing money. But if I had sold MarketBeat, it probably wasn't gonna change my life at all.
We weren't gonna move houses or we kind of already bought all the stuff we wanted to buy other than the jet, so it just didn't matter at that point. I just kind of like doing the thing, and I want to keep doing the thing.
The other thing that I've noticed in town here, I've got some friends who have kind of built businesses to, say, mid seven figures, up to eight figures and even 19 figures who have sold their businesses. All kind of guys my age. And then, like, after they sell and get out of the thing, like, they either don't have anything to do or the next thing is not nearly as cool as the first thing they did.
Like, I've seen it happen like four times here in town. And, like, like, I see that happen to you. I'm not going to do that.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: You're talking to one right here, by the way.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: And like it's, it is so such a. And, and that is why this concept of like you have a. There's this operator role and there's this ownership role and just understanding, I mean, Matt, after. I mean again, it's been almost 10 years since you saw that presentation that I did where I like the, the messaging tweaked over and over as I learned more and more the.
It's a false choice. I think of like when someone. Because like it sounds like when you were having the family stuff, it's like, okay, well I'm, I'm exhausted. But then it's like the. We comingo the asset versus the job. And like, and that's why, you know, you were explaining how you tinker around and the stuff that you love and then you get give yourself space. Like I, There was this story about Walt Disney that really resonated with me, Matt. So his brother Roy was like his like co partner or whatever, like doing all this stuff. And when he built out Disney World, he's like, I just want to play for the rest of my life.
And that's how I think about business. You know, it's like, hey, like you can design your own little sandbox.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Yeah, in a way I've done that. Like, I've got really nice office here, 9,000 square feet, brand new office building downtown. And like people I love to work with, work I love doing, you know, and if we get bored, we just go try something new. Like we started a YouTube channel a couple years ago. It's up to 400,000 subscribers now. We're building out a studio for it. And like, it's fun to like try stuff like that and eventually, you know, doesn't work every time, but you know, there's never a fatal blow and we try the next thing if something doesn't work.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: The financial freedom threshold that you crossed, what has been your relationship with money?
Like, like over the years, how you grew up and then how that threshold was crossed and how that, that, how that mentally was processed.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
So we grew up lower middle class, we had a home, was very nice. Our new parents had blue collar jobs. Dad was a police officer, mom was a school librarian.
I had to work my way through college.
So like I kind of went from a place of like having no money to like barely having any money. Didn't really know how money worked. Couldn't hold on to it in high school. Then like finally figured it out in college. Then kind of by the end of college, like I, I had a nice paying job, made like 60 grand a year doing web design and then had my business on the side making also 60 grand. So out of, fresh out of school, I was making six figures. And like, like, I just, like, I was kind of a Dave Ramsey guy for a while. So it just kind of felt like I need to, need to be tight, need to hold onto this, need to max out my 401k IRA. And then, and I, I really stuck with that for probably about five years after college. And then I realized, like, oh, the Dave Ramsey content is not for me. That's for people who are in debt. I had no debt, had plenty of money, buy whatever I wanted. And now it's just, I hold onto it, I'd say loosely.
I gave away $10,000 of coffee this morning for a political candidate and didn't think too much about it and give away a lot of charity.
Wife wants, whatever, go for it, it's fine. It's weird to be in a place where you've got so much money, you can just kind of spend money and not worry about it, like, ever.
So now I'm kind of think like, generationally, how do I not screw this up? Of like, I've got a son who's 13 and he's like, for every 13 year old in the world. And then I have a special needs daughter. And I'm just trying to figure out, okay, how do I take care of my daughter and just like not screw up my son? Because I have friends who have kind of adult kids now that also have. They have money and then their kids who grew up having money and like, the kids are in their 20s and don't really work. And like, I don't want that for my kids.
So, like, how do I not mess them up is probably my main worry these days.
[00:42:21] Speaker A: What are your thoughts about how to teach money to kids or to your son?
[00:42:25] Speaker B: You know, we, I don't hide anything from him. He knows basically what we have and how much. And like, he knows he's going to get a lot of it someday, but he also knows that money's not unlimited. And like, I give him an allowance every week and when he spends it, it's gone.
We talk about working in high school and a lot of kids do that and kind of made it clear, like, there's no job waiting for you at MarketBeat. When you go through college, you go to college, I'll pay for it, but you're gonna have to get a job, you're gonna have to get your own apartment and you're gonna get all my money someday, but not right away, you're gonna have to go prove that you can be an adult by yourself first.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's really interesting because again, I don't. We're the same age. I don't know how old your parents are, but I have noticed is a lot of my clients, half of my clients, and that I'm really good friends with my dad still, like, are all around my parents age.
And there's like this huge, like a huge number of people that have like one child at home that. The failure to launch thing. And there's a lot of correlations, I think.
And it's just interesting that like, money has a constraint, you know, and just teaching that. Because, like, I end up teaching my kids that too. Like, hey, like, here's how to earn it. Here's how it works. I mean, it's just interesting. Interesting dynamics.
How do you think about donating to charity then? Like, like, how do you pick the charities? How do you. How do you figure out what kind of. What does impact mean to you?
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really hard to give. Like, you know, you know, Bible kind of talks about giving away 10% and that's kind of a good rule for life. And when you're selling your, like, personal income is well into the eight figures. Like, it's kind of hard to do that. Like, because like most, most, you know, small non Christian nonprofit or whatever that's got like a budget of $750,000 a year. Like, you can't just give them a million bucks and like, expect to have it spent well. So then you kind of got to spread it out and then you develop this reputation of like, oh, Matt gives money to everybody. I should go hit him up. And then everybody hits you up and you're on everybody's list and it kind of becomes a thing.
The way that I've been able to maintain some sanity to it is I put a committee of my people in charge of a good chunk of the money. So then when somebody wants a donation from us, they have to apply. And then like four times a year, the committee will meet and give money away. Then I don't have to think about it too much. And that way all the non profits in town feel like, yep, marketbeats. Being a good corporate steward. We got our five, ten grand from them for our annual event, and good for them. But I also, I don't have to think about it all the time.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: You're not the one saying no all the time.
[00:45:04] Speaker B: And like, we don't it's not even that we're saying no because we give away plenty of money. It's just like that all the asks become an interruption because like it's, it's a phone call, it's an email, it's a text, it's a Facebook message. Like, can you give to X? I'm like, like giving away the money is the easy part. Like managing the whole thing and like doing communications and like sending people to the right place and like making sure like, yes, you're a legit non profit and like, and like you give people a donation and it's like, oh, you guys, did somebody from your team want to volunteer here? Do you want to have somebody on a board? And it's just like there's no end to it and it's like every non profit in town. So it's just I kind of gotta kind of keep it at arm's length in a way just to maintain my sanity.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: Is there any topics or specific organizations that have your heart?
[00:45:50] Speaker B: Yeah, and there's a bunch. One of them is an organization called the Foster Network that we support at MarketBeat. And like they, what you find is like, kids end up in foster care for no fault of their own.
And then like, you know, it's pretty unexpected. They often have like nothing with them.
So families, can you pick up the kid. You stop by the Foster Network, you get all the stuff you need, clothes, whatever, shoes, maybe toiletry kits, really anything. And that way the kid has some stuff that's theirs. And then they do support groups for foster families and super cool stuff like that. And we've got two of our employees on a board. I'm not on their board because it would probably drive me crazy to be on a board of small nonprofit, but stuff like that.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: Why is that?
[00:46:38] Speaker B: I just. Well, when you, it's hard to slow down to that, that speed because when you're operating a, you know, $50 million your business, it's bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, thing to think to thing to thing and like there's no stopping and like you just can't slow down to that speed successfully. Like, that's why I've really struggled to be like a church leader. Like because like, you know, you're trying to run an organization with, you know, often a bunch of blue collar people and like do good things. And it's just you really struggle to like work on, you know, something you might do in business in a week. Like might take 18 months at a church and like you just, you end up running over People by, like, trying to operate a business speed, you know, in a church. And so, like, I've had to learn that about me and like, the things that I should, like, spend my personal time on versus, like, you know, it's fine if my wife Karina's on a school pto, like, perfect for her, operates at the speed she's comfortable with. But I would probably go in there and run over people and I should have nothing to do with it other than sponsoring the annual fund run at school.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: I'm just cracking up to. Because I can resonate with the speed of things like that. I sat on a board of a nonprofit in St. Paul 15 years ago, and when they were asking about it was donation time and like the annual event. And I was like, well, where's the CRM? And they're like, what? And I'm like, oh, boy. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:48:01] Speaker B: Well.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: And just. And it's interesting to hear you. And what I'm hearing too is like, just knowing that that's part of the dynamic. So that way you're. Because I. I've struggled with that. Like, then I've. I become too much for the dynamic.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:14] Speaker A: I didn't know you went to seminary school.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: Yep. Got the seminary degree I got is a 64 credit hour Master of Arts in Christian leadership. About two thirds of an MDIV accredited school. It's all legit. And then I was on their board for six years after that, too.
[00:48:32] Speaker A: That's awesome. I don't know if I told you, I'm a theology minor.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: I think I did know that. Yeah.
[00:48:36] Speaker A: Did you? Yeah. Like, how does that.
That your faith, the perspective that you got in seminary school, how does that show up and how does that sprinkle throughout your life and your entrepreneurial career?
[00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm very much.
When I think about my Christian values in a workplace, it's very. I don't want to say subtle, but what I found, at least in Sioux Falls, the people that kind of wear it on their shoulders are sometimes the people that you need to be suspicious of because there's a Christian businessman who had a construction company and he's part of all the local Christian groups, but he also, like, he shut down his construction company in the middle of a project for us and just left us high and dry. And it's like, really, like you're gonna put yourself out there as this Christian businessman and then also just like not follow through to your. Follow through on your word and finish this project. Like, these two things don't line up. So, like, I'm I honestly like, don't necessarily like, fit in with like, what, whatever that Christian businessman's group would be because I'm kind of a little bit too rough around the edges for them. But I mean, it's more like, am I doing the right thing all the time in all my interactions with people, Am I a kind person? Am I nice to people?
And I like to think that I am. And like, you know, you find here somebody's in need, you help them out and, and you just don't think too hard about it. And really it's how, you know, do you feel good about every interaction you have with people in the community, regardless of who they are and like, why they're talking to you? And I don't know, I just try to do the right thing all the time.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: It's. I have found.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: And I have found that like, because of the sheer quantity of decisions made as an owner, that ability to do what's right or wrong or make impact at scale becomes really fun.
And then it's. It's always the, it's always the people in the first pew that you have to worry about, right?
Yeah.
[00:50:31] Speaker B: Well, you just gotta do some fun stuff like say organizations behind on budget. Like you like individually have the capability of like taking care of like fixing the problem yourself, which is kind of neat or like, I don't know, like giving people like, like there's a non profit that needed a new place to live like for their organization and like went out and bought a building for them and said, okay, you can pay, live here rent free. Just pay the property taxes and you know, the insurance and whatever and you know, stay here as long as you want. Like, so you got to do some really neat stuff. But I also like, don't necessarily like advertise it. I don't know, it's just, it's a weird dynamic of like, I don't necessarily want to be like the person. Like that's like, where's it on your sleeve? Well, why?
[00:51:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, what's.
[00:51:18] Speaker B: What.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: What would be the reason to do that? Right. Becomes just an interesting topic in itself.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: I'm really like not a big fan of labels and just, I don't know. And I feel like people that like live by their label, like, like, okay, do you have any like independent thoughts or are you just saying like, I identify as this and now I'm this because of that?
I don't know, I'm just me.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Why do you think that is, Matt, with people again, especially as you're, like, bumping into.
You know, I saw a couple of. What are the events you're doing, the people that you're on stage with and the friends that you have and like, in.
How do you choose who to spend time with? And how do you. How do you filter through that? Those people that are throwing themselves labels that are disingenuous.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's. It's weird because, like, people want you to have. People, like, want you to have labels so they can understand you and, like, put you in a box. So, like, that's kind of why I don't like labels.
Like, entrepreneur, Republican, Christian. Like, oh, you know, sorry, what was the question again?
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Like, how do you. I'm tracking it and. And reminds me, I mean, I'm a big fan of Naval. I watched a handful of his podcasts and, like, I just.
It.
Once you have that thought process in that filter, like, how do you choose to spend time around who, like, as you're like, so, okay, let me just see if I can answer or ask a question a different way. Like, as you're becoming more of a thought leader, like, you've actually done this stuff, right? You've got a company, you've executed it. You're doing all the stuff that we've talked about on the call. Like, maybe, like, maybe I could ask it this way.
[00:53:02] Speaker B: Go.
[00:53:02] Speaker A: Go ahead.
[00:53:02] Speaker B: I think one thing that happens is, like, you know, you kind of, like, people want you to identify with their label. And then, like, like, I'll. I'll sit down with, like, any, like, local city council or, like, legislative candidates, regardless of political party, because I just don't really care that much. And then people are like, why'd you meet with my opponent? I thought you were for me. He's like, I am, but I just talked to everybody. What's wrong with that? Or, like, why'd you meet with that person? They're a Democrat. It's like, so what? Who cares?
I just want good people doing good things in our state because there's a lot of crazy people around that want bad things for the state. And anybody that's working for good, I'm happy to meet with and help.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: How do you have that filter in the business community as you're choosing events and different people to hang around with that are also thought leaders.
And, like, do you see, like, is the labeling and, like, the aggressive. I don't even know what the words are. Like, like, what is necessary to get attention online?
It becomes like, this paradox of, like, I don't want to Be like that. But this is like. And that's why I think it's so interesting that you sent out something on X and next thing you know you got 100 grand in consulting fees and you're just being you. Which is so refreshing, dude, versus, like, the intensity that other people place and kind of just clickbait stuff.
[00:54:20] Speaker B: I mean, there's kind of like the whole like, Nick Huber pissing people off just to get reach kind of thing that he did for a while. And like, I'm never gonna do that. But then there's like. Like, that's kind of the obvious. Like, I'm gonna rage bait and just get all this engagement on Twitter. And what you learn is like, yeah, that's great for views and clicks, but it doesn't necessarily lead to purchases and transactions because he put out a book and I'm pretty sure nobody bought it just because people are watching. But maybe they're just watching the dumpster fire happen. Not because they like.
But then also you see people that are pure content creators and want you to think they're this business expert and really they're just a content creator. So it's like. Like, I don't really like that either. It's just I like. Like what I love are like, people who are like, clearly operators. And then every now and then they come up, like, from their. Their business to like, go to media. Like, there's the Operating the Operators podcast. There's a bunch of ecom people that, like, these people like, that are on the podcast, like, actually run the brands. They're CEOs. And like, I love stuff like that. Cause it's like, you know, their opinions and thoughts are like, formed from, like, their actual work and not just kind of trying to create content theory.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:55:30] Speaker B: And that.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. I appreciate how you said that because that's.
I have had to go through own personal. Because like, I. I totally subscribe to that thought process and I get frustrated. It probably more so probably like I've gotten better at it, but like unhealthy, like frustrated with all the people that are out there because, like, I can. Like, when we're in the trenches, it either works or it doesn't.
You know what I mean? And like, you can't. And you can't theorize something into actual, like revenue or income. You know what I mean? So it's just. I appreciate that a lot. What are you looking forward to over the next year?
[00:56:08] Speaker B: I was just looking at my goals list for next year. I know WWE is going to be at U.S. bank Stadium and for SummerSlam. That's going to be a lot of fun.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:56:18] Speaker B: Let me look at my goals with those for next year.
Where is that? Goals?
[00:56:23] Speaker A: When do you do your goal setting?
[00:56:24] Speaker B: Usually December. Kind of have a list. What I've found is like in recent years I have fewer, fewer and fewer goals.
It's because like they're kind of, kind of doing the stuff I like to do. Like one of our big business goals for next year is to grow a YouTube channel to a million subscribers, build out a studio, hire a full time editor. So like that's a business goal.
I want to take my kids out to the hills in the cabin for a long weekend. Stuff like you really got to plan, otherwise it won't happen.
Gotta finish up my second trust for estate planning. Like that's gonna be some work to do.
I'll hit a pretty important net worth milestone at the end of next year, which will be 100 million outside of MarketBeat, which would be great.
[00:57:02] Speaker A: That's awesome, dude.
[00:57:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I want to pay off my plane next year. Stuff like that.
I mean, I don't have like these huge like lifetime goals anymore because I've kind of done most of the things I wanted to do. I just kind of want to have fun with my family and do some good work and play with the things I want to play with and so be it.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: That's awesome, dude. I, it's.
I've always appreciated your balance and your perspective because I've. The thing that I've been wrestling with over the years is like, how do I quit trying to over engineer the future and just play? Like we're in this meat suit, you know, I mean like we're here for the experience and like how do we just play? And it seems like you're having a lot of fun playing and with the right intentions and like if that's the kind of the main point of what we're doing here, seems like a good way to do it.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: You know, I, I think people sacrifice too much for these like big long term goals that may never come. Like I think the good old days are today. Like these are the good old days. Like 10 years from now I'm going to remember the day that I was on Ryan's podcast and had lunch and had coffee with a friend in the morning. And then like, like I would look back at that and like that was the good old days. And like that's today. Like today are the good old days. Like we're not When I was in college, I sacrificed way too much for my future.
I didn't spend any money, didn't have any fun. And now I look back and realize there was going to be plenty of money. I didn't have to sacrifice so much.
There is something to be said to live for today and not to worry too much about the future.
[00:58:35] Speaker A: That's so good. And I think how that applies to probably quite a few people that are listening in is this letting go of the operations.
And like, because part of that or what you just said, what I've gone through this personal journey of, like, in the process of letting go, and this. I've been reading Alan Watts and a bunch of other, you know, spiritual stuff, like letting go, but being like. But then like, passively participating. I don't know if that's like the word, but, like, you know, you're not totally sitting off in the corner doing nothing, but like, you're passively participating, not trying to over engineer it. And I. And I watch that with the people that I'm working with. It's like every. Most. I'm trying to think most of the people I'm working with, everything that they want is right in front of them.
And it's just about kind of reframing, reorienting, letting go of some things, kind of shuffling things around. I mean, it's just. It's really cool what you just said.
[00:59:27] Speaker B: Yeah. I just think, like, the coolest things that happen in your life are, like, not stuff that you could really plan. They're just, like, the right opportunities show up. Like, our family got a suite at the Vikings this year, and like, we didn't plan on it. Like, it wasn't a goal. It was. I got an email one day from.
Because we had rented a suite last year, and they said, hey, the suite came open. Do you want. Do you want. Do you want it? And I'm like, hell, yeah, we want it. That sounds like a lot of fun. Let's go do it. And like, the best stuff in life, like, that just kind of pops up and then you just kind of take advantage of it.
[00:59:54] Speaker A: And you've got the margins in your life because you organize the margins to be able to say yes to that.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Thankfully, we've, you know, life is kind of dynamically set up. We're like, yeah, the money's there, but also, like, the time is there too. Where, like, right. I don't really work on weekends and outside of, like, maybe a couple hours before my kids get up on Saturday. And like, you know, we can be gone an entire Saturday and I think bad happens.
[01:00:17] Speaker A: How long can you take?
How long could you not be making decisions in MarketBeat?
[01:00:26] Speaker B: At least a month. Okay, maybe two. I mean the most. Like, I love MarketBeats. I never really trying to get away from it. Like, when Karina and I go on vacation with no kids, I would like delete slack from my phone and like, you know, not be engaged for like a week. And it's like, nothing bad happens. The team can take care of it. They know what they're doing.
Would like, would MarketBeat start to suffer after a while? Yeah, probably. But like, you know, a few days here and there or a week off or a couple weeks off, like, it would be totally fine.
[01:00:56] Speaker A: Have you, have you ever done any operational parts of your estate plan? Like, I. One of my old business partners who is an M and A attorney does a lot of business governance stuff those years ago. It's actually probably related to the time I met you. Like, if you keep the company, like what you. Which you are, like a lot of my. Over half of my clients do as well, then it's like, okay, well great, we got the trust and the estate plan set up, these assets move here, do this, avoid probate, all that kind of stuff. But like one of the challenging questions we've been starting to address is like, what operationally happens? Like, do this. Does this get. Does this company stay in the estate or does the trustee take it to market?
Like, who are the. You know, have you ever thought about any of that kind of stuff?
[01:01:36] Speaker B: Or, you know, that's probably the next project. The team knows who's. Who would be in charge if I were dead. And there's first in line, second in line before in the company.
And you know, my hope is that they probably run it for Korean's benefit and our family's benefit and for their benefit. So like there is just a little bit of that stuff there. But like, it's not well thought out. Honestly, what I think happens to MarketBeat assuming, like I don't die early, like, I run it until I'm 70 and kind of tired of it and maybe the last year of profit or something goes to all the employees and we just kind of close the doors at the end of the day. Like, I like these businesses don't. Like most businesses don't last forever and like to think that they would like fooling yourself. Like I. I've seen like financial sites like come and go and die, like over the course of, you know, my business career, like many Times and like, the fact that we've made it 19 years is kind of shocking and like, you know, we might not even make it to 70 and like, that could be okay. Like, it'll be okay.
[01:02:37] Speaker A: That's cool, man.
[01:02:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. There's the idea of like somebody else, like, running my business into the ground because I've seen it happened so many times in the finance space. Like, like I would have to like, be on board with whatever the company that acquires it is and like, work there. Otherwise, like acquisitions in a financial media space. None of them have gone well. Like, none of them.
[01:02:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it'd be interesting. I can see your perspective on like your sector, what you're doing and your perspective on that. I have, I've got some exposure where, like, I mean, I just was talking to this other guy on the phone two weeks ago. 137-year-old company, they make machinery for sawmills. Like, like, makes sense why they've been around that long. I mean, but it's. That's where it is. Fascinating. I. I do get fascinated with the ESOP structures as a mechanism for like, longevity. Obviously industry has a lot to play in, like the desire for that. As we round the corner here towards the end, I feel like I would be foolish because you're the email marketing genius of X and the online space.
Obviously I am not an email marketing expert and we've had a lot of different conversations.
Six. What? Six and a half million subscribers now, Matt.
[01:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah, we kicked a bunch of people off the list. So then we like through like 6.4, I think we kicked about half a million people off the list that were inactive. And we're at 5.9 now. We're like 6.05 or something like that.
[01:04:00] Speaker A: It's so cool.
[01:04:01] Speaker B: I think next year I probably have to top stop talking about her subscriber account because, like, it's such a vanity metric and like I have people on the list that haven't opened an email in 3 years that I should frankly just kick off the list and haven't yet. But then I won't be able to say I had 6 million subscribers. Like the real number. The real number is probably like 3 million that have opened in the last 90 days.
[01:04:22] Speaker A: Okay. Because I was, I. I thought I saw either some post or somewhere where it was like, you have a pretty solid intense or a pretty solid engagement.
[01:04:30] Speaker B: Right?
[01:04:30] Speaker A: So this is like. And I don't know what most people's vanity metrics are on their emails or whatever, but like, I mean, like, you have a Lot of engagement, right? I mean, from what I've gathered, was it like 60% or something like that or I don't know how you were measuring.
[01:04:43] Speaker B: So we, we try to hit like 40% as our open rate and we'll turn the dials up or down. Like if our open rate gets too high 50%, we'll cut back our sunset window and email people that haven't opened, maybe go from 30 days to 40 days or something like that. And then if it's like your open rates are dipping down, like below 35 will tighten things up to kind of hit that target because you want to kind of be at least 40% to keep the ESPs happy with you. Because I mean ultimately, like that's what you want to do is right. Keep Gmail happy, keep Yahoo happy, keep Microsoft happy and get your messages in the inbox. And like that's.
[01:05:16] Speaker A: How many companies have an email list as big as yours?
[01:05:19] Speaker B: I have honestly not. I mean, our space not.
I don't know, maybe like Yahoo Finance has more than six.
[01:05:27] Speaker A: Sure.
[01:05:29] Speaker B: Beyond that, like, I don't know, I haven't heard.
[01:05:31] Speaker A: I wonder how many companies just in general, dude, like, honestly, I mean, like you're talking, I mean obviously it's probably, you know, global and everything. I don't know. But like, like you just, just back in the napkin math, you're talking. What is that, 2% of the country? This is an interesting, like no way to think.
[01:05:49] Speaker B: I.
Yeah, I'm.
If I'm best in the world, anything, it might be like email list management and building. Like, yeah. Pretty good at it these days.
The.
[01:06:06] Speaker A: What, what are some like the core things that you do that might be contrarian to everybody else that keep that true.
[01:06:16] Speaker B: I think we have a much better handle on data than about anybody and to the point where we built our own tools, do our own tracking to know, say all the leads from Meta. During the month of November, we paid X dollars and made Y dollars back. So we can tell if any given advertising channel is working well or not and can make adjustments accordingly.
Nobody else really has that in our space that I'm aware of. At the level we do, that's kind of a unique thing.
We do optimization by email service provider and maybe Hotmail is doing great. So you've got one sunset window for Hotmail and then maybe Yahoo sufferings, then you have a different one for Yahoo. So we treat all the ESPs differently and give them the stuff they want. Gmail is actually the most liberal as to what they allow. So you send More email to Gmail, you send less email to Microsoft, less email to Apple. You know, Apple open rates are bs, so you don't really count them. You only count like their clicks. And just like each email service provider has their own kind of intricacies. And then like stuff changes. Like now all of the emails that used to be Prodigy are like managed by Yahoo. So then you got to change how you deal with Prodigy emails because they're now managed by Yahoo and they could do different stuff.
[01:07:35] Speaker A: How about on the content communication side of like building relationships with the person that's subscribed?
[01:07:43] Speaker B: You know, that's honestly less important because like, we're not like, I think of like Anthony Pompliano Pomp. He has a financial newsletter about Bitcoin and like very kind of personality driven, relational. And like people subscribe to him because they like to hear from him. And like, I love his stuff. I like to subscribe to, like to see what he's doing as an operator. Markbeat is not that we're like cnbc. Like you don't have a relationship with CNBC and like you're never going to.
So it's more like we try to write about the interesting topics of the day. Like whatever the hot stock is this month is the one we'll write about often because, like, that's what people are interested. So we try to create content about like this is the trend right now. We talk about our, you know, what's going to happen, what's not going to happen, and then that drives the engagement more than like, people want to hear from Matt.
[01:08:31] Speaker A: All right.
It's awesome, man. I just, it's been so fun to watch you and it was, I just think back 2017 when I met you. It was just good group of people. Yeah, man. I am very grateful for the time because since I got you scheduled, you started charging for your time, so yeah.
[01:08:52] Speaker B: You didn't have to pay three grand, right.
[01:08:55] Speaker A: Oh, look at that. Right?
[01:08:57] Speaker B: I mean, you're like, this is good for, for me because I'm trying to reboot my personal brand in a way. And then I'm also going to take all the interviews that I do and use them to train like the AI version of me because, like, I need some new content for the AI version of me. So it's not just all the old stuff.
[01:09:12] Speaker A: I actually asked your AI version of you. What question should I ask Matt? Because I was like going around, you know, scraping a bunch of stuff. But yeah, I'm happy to send you the raw file. The transcript.
[01:09:21] Speaker B: The cool thing about Delphi is you can just like give it YouTube videos and it will suck them in and read the transcript and train its model on it.
[01:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah. That's awesome. I appreciate your time man. This has been so fun. I. I appreciate you.
[01:09:32] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. I'll have to meet up in Minneapolis at some point.
[01:09:36] Speaker A: I'm here when you get when you fly in. I will put your website on the show notes. I'll keep you post when it comes out.
Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
[01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah, happy to be here.
Sat.
