Entrepreneur, Among Other Things
Entrepreneur, among other things...
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, cook a meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
I talk to the most interesting people we can find in business, finance, science, art, technology, and human improvement and try to learn from them.
Entrepreneur, Among Other Things
#146 - Matthew Edward Pohl: Profit, People, or Process? The Growth Framework That Changes Everything
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What separates businesses that scale from those that get stuck? In this episode, Matthew Edward Pohl shares a practical framework for navigating the seven stages of business growth. Drawing from his own entrepreneurial journey, he explains why businesses stall, how leadership priorities evolve as teams grow, and why success depends on applying the right strategies at the right stage, not one-size-fits-all advice. From shifting the focus between profit, people, and process to building leadership systems that support sustainable growth, this conversation offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs, CEOs, founders, and business leaders looking to build stronger, more scalable organizations.
#BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #SmallBusiness #ScalingBusiness #CEO #BusinessStrategy #Management #BusinessPodcast #MatthewEdwardPohl #GrowthMindset #Entrepreneur
Connect with Matthew:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewepohl/
Website: https://www.rewildgroup.com/
Alexander V. Johnson is a Founding Partner of Mixt Solutions, a 6x Inc. 5,000 Fastest Growing Company in America. Mixt Solutions has successfully done millions of transactions on Amazon and works with some of the biggest consumer packaged goods brands in the world. In 2024, Mixt Solutions crossed over 150 million dollars of all time sales on Amazon.
Connect with Alex:
YouTube: / @eaotpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/06QZEpv...
Instagram: / eaotpodcast
Twitter: https://x.com/EAOTpodcast
Facebook: / eaotpodcast
TikTok: / eaotpodcast
Intro Music Credit:
"Alone and Afraid" - SourBlood: • Alone and Afraid Official Lyric Video
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7FJVH...
Matt, how are you this afternoon?
SPEAKER_03Good, Alex.
SPEAKER_01I didn't hear where you're you're based out of Matt.
SPEAKER_03Uh we're in Denver. So the North Metro area of Denver, Colorado.
SPEAKER_01Denver's fun, man. It's a beautiful town. Um well, Matt, how about you tell me a little bit about yourself, uh, who you are, and what you've been up to over the last handful of years.
SPEAKER_03Going back sometime, I grew up in Iowa, but have been in Colorado for 40 years. So um have uh grown grown kids, got four grown kids, ten grandchildren, and uh my wife and I are celebrating 38 years.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Congratulations.
SPEAKER_03Hopefully she doesn't listen and correct that. But um but um yeah, I kind of grew up in in corporate um and then mid-30s, transitioned into entrepreneurship and have been uh business owner ever since.
SPEAKER_01Did I see correctly that you worked at the Federal Reserve at one point in time?
SPEAKER_03Yes, very, very important duty there. Uh um was not involved in financial or the fiscal policy or economic policy. I I worked at the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve, and it's those smaller branches are fairly operational. Uh back when I worked there, you know, they they were kind of the source of new new cash and stuff like that. So physical currency, uh coin, um, and then um check processing when everybody was still writing checks. So they had a a mechanism uh an operational team that uh processed checks that were flowing through the the banking system.
SPEAKER_01Um so is this your first job out of college?
SPEAKER_03Or yeah, right out of college. So my um I finished up my undergrad at the University of Denver and in a uh program called Decision Sciences, which is I say it's like applied uh statistics, so using quantitative methods for decision making.
SPEAKER_01This was probably way before data and you know, all that was so cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. You would probably call it data science today. Um but I I joined um, it was really a management training program, management development program. So I worked as an analyst, did a lot of budgeting, you know. I reported directly to like the manager of a functional area and um really great program, really learned a lot, had met some really great people there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh my familiarity with the check uh thing for the Federal Reserve is uh I'm sure you've seen the movie Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo DiCaprio, and he's like writing the checks on the East Coast and they're floating all the way to the West Coast, and it takes like a couple days of float, and he's already gone with the money by then.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the Federal Reserve hates float. So, you know, they that that was one of their prime directives was to reduce the float in the system because it it creates odd odd things within the money supply.
SPEAKER_01Matthew, why don't you uh remind me one more time? As you started to do, I'd love to go back to the beginning of this journey, hear about how you got here and uh the the origin story, if you will.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no. The uh last several years I've been active in a company called the Rewild Group, which I founded uh about eight years ago. And we work with small, mid-size business owners. Essentially, if you have a business between one and 350 employees, uh that's really kind of our where our research and our growth framework applies. So um I've I've I work with and have certified uh small business consultants around the globe over those past several years. And so we're actively involved in that space and helping uh what we say our mission is to multiply the number of exceptional businesses globally. That's that's what we're about. Because we think work is such an important part of the human experience, at least it is today. We'll see where AI takes us, but um work is such an important part of who we are, how we develop as individuals. And so we want to make those experiences not just for the owner, but the team uh to be more exceptional.
SPEAKER_01And has that not been your experience, what you've seen from small businesses that they're mostly not exceptional?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I think uh when we talk about exceptional, we want uh there's kind of two parts of it. It needs to be a high functioning organization and also a highly profitable organization. So we're looking at both those dynamics, and I would say, yeah, most small businesses don't quite uh pass the muster to be exceptional in both of those areas. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I joke and I laugh because we we interact with a lot of small businesses too. You know, we're an Amazon agency, so we have we have very we have no clients that are like 500 employee organizations that's like a megalithic proctor and gamble. Not to say that those those organizations are exceptional on their own right, they're financially exceptional, but like every company you go to, there's a lot of organizational inefficiencies. Um but you you see over and over again like how little systems some businesses have. And for me, sometimes they're like successful businesses. I'm like, wow, you're doing a hundred thousand dollars a month on Amazon, and I'm like, you can't even respond to emails. Like, this is crazy. Um so yeah, I laugh and joke that a lot of uh I think most people overestimate the amount of competence and skill that the average business owner in business has, even especially like the successful ones.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I one one of my perspectives is you don't have to be really good, you just have to be better than the others. And when the bar is pretty low, you can you know you can shine amongst uh maybe uh mediocrity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So take me back to the beginning. Um, so how did you get into this like coaching and helping small businesses? Were you a small business owner? Was this something you always had interest in? I mean, take me back and talk me through that story.
SPEAKER_03Well, my experience with small businesses really starts as a a child. My parents were business owners. Okay. Um so I grew up under that umbrella and you know, saw the experience of you know having to work hard and you know having uncertainty. But my parents actually had built a nice business. Um, and you know, all my growing years, uh, we were kind of in that middle, maybe upper middle class. We took vacations and you know, we had nice things and that type of thing.
SPEAKER_01What was that uh business in? What was their kind of field?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so my dad uh is a very he was a very talented interior designer. So he went to school for that in Chicago, and uh just incredibly gifted in that area. And yet, you know, we we grew up in Iowa, so I'm I I suspect most people think, okay, Iowa and interior design doesn't seem to be it.
SPEAKER_01That seems like a juxtaposition for sure.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, that's where we lived, and that was what his talent was, and you know, in the 60s, 70s uh kind of time frame, you know, it was just a different marketplace for a business. And um, so he built a nice business kind of uh his his marketplace was about a two-hour drive from where we were in southeast Iowa. It went all the way over to like Peoria, Illinois, where Caterpillar had their headquarters. And um, but it was it was a good enough market that it paid for, you know, us four kids and and things like that.
SPEAKER_01What would have been like a typical client from him? I know you said Caterpillar, so would he be designing like corporate offices? Is that kind of the the vibe?
SPEAKER_03No, he did primarily residences. So interesting. Okay. Yeah, so a lot of the executives at at and even middle management uh at that company, he got uh he had friends and family and church associations that kind of got him into that. Uh but you know, farmers and you know, uh bus just bankers and you know, just regular kind of folks in in small Midwest towns. And he just brought a skill set that really was unheard of in that area. So it was easy for him to distinguish himself.
SPEAKER_01And did did life look pretty calm for dad? Like was business good enough that it seemed calm, or did you see these kind of ups and downs of a small business?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I guess when you're a kid, your parents, well, my experience was my parents kind of isolated us from a lot of the ups and downs. And maybe it was more obvious if I wasn't a kid. But um, you know, all I knew is that my dad worked hard. In fact, I would say one of the two people I have known in my life who worked hard. And so it it always felt like there wasn't enough hours in the day. And and so that was that was a bit of a challenge. That was a reality. You know, he because our hometown wasn't sufficient to be a big enough market, he was on the road probably three or four days a week just driving to uh nearby towns and and and that type of thing.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. And uh what did he have uh employees that would help him out, or was it kind of him who was doing a lot of it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they did a lot of custom uh interior work. So uh my mom and my aunt uh did custom drapery, sewing, that kind of a thing. My grandpa worked for him and he was uh he didn't know.
SPEAKER_01The whole family was in the business. Ah, cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. But on that kind of interior design and going out to the client, he was really the only person. I think at one point he had another younger gentleman for maybe a year or two that was helping with installations. And so it'd be like ordering custom furniture and putting custom fabric on it. It's you know, just things that you don't see today in that industry or in that market, you know, we just go to IKEA now and um it was quite different back then.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's funny because I I mean my wife just we well, I shouldn't say we just it was like a year ago we moved into our house and like our furniture's fine, but it's all just like uh just like kind of thrown together furniture, you know. Like I would and I was like, when we finally like settle into a house that we're gonna stay in, like let's get nice furniture, like real furniture that like someone had to build, not like and not Alex built it, like a real carpenter, like a real skilled individual. Skilled, yeah. And my and my my grandpa actually built quite a bit of furniture. Just seems like that was the era that like people build things.
SPEAKER_03Was he in Carolina? That was that's a was a historically a big furniture area.
SPEAKER_01He was in Columbus, Ohio, and he just loved woodworking. He was like an insurance salesman that was successful, and this was like one of his hobbies that if you'd seen it now, you'd be like, Wow, this person's amazing, but it was just like I just did do that on my side, you know, as for friends, essentially. And we're fortunate we still have a bunch of stuff.
SPEAKER_03As a kid and watching my grandpa do an upholstery, and he would have this mouthful of these really sharp tacks, and it'd have this little um tack hammer that had a magnet on one side, and he would spit out that tack and you know, do that, turn it around, knock it in, and boom, boom, boom, he was just like a machine on those that furniture.
SPEAKER_01People were just different. I mean, there's uh there's a really great book about the Wright brothers. Um, I think it's called The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. And they just they built all the furniture in their house, they built their house, they like added the additions onto their house. They're like, we want a deck, we're gonna just build it. It's like, geez, these were some industrious people that they they built all their toys like for kids. They're just like, we're just gonna build these that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, cool. Now we don't have to know how to build anything, right? So and it's all mass produced. Um, okay, so do you feel like you took what you saw with your parents either conscious or unconsciously thought, like, oh, okay, that would be cool if I could be a small business owner, or did that not really come into your thought process?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I think the idea of owning something did come from them. In fact, I recall, you know, um soon after I got married, telling my wife I had kind of three things I wanted to accomplish. The first was I was the first one in my family and really all my cousins, and I had plenty to get a college degree, but I told my wife, because I had when we got married, I I had just graduated from college, I said, I want to get a master's degree, I want to have four children, and I want to own my own business.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03And so at a young, at a young time, you know, it it took me over a decade um to get there, but that was always in the plan.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. So what was it like after college? I mean, I know you said you wanted to start your own business, but did you immediately jump into it? Or was this a slow process where you were kind of building up into feeling prepared for it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I don't I don't know if I knew this right out of college, but I I kind of adopted the philosophy that I think a lot of entrepreneurs do, and that was I wanted to learn skills on somebody else's dime. So the idea was I'm gonna work hard, I'm gonna do a few different things, try to build some skills and capabilities and get experience. And then once I felt I had kind of had a quiver full of capabilities, I would go and and do my own thing. And so that's kind of what I did. I out of college, I started with the Federal Reserve Bank here in Denver, then moved to Arthur Anderson for a number of years. What's uh what's Arthur Anderson?
SPEAKER_01Is that a bank?
SPEAKER_03Arthur Anderson at one point was the largest professional services firm. They're an account, they're known as an accounting firm. Got it. And um at that time they would be like uh McKinsey, you know, that kind of global. Someone of a consultant almost. Yeah, and I did kind of some specialty consulting in that group uh related to litigation. So I was uh would be considered a litigation expert doing data analysis for uh complex commercial uh lawsuits. Interesting. So left there and went to uh a $4 billion office products company um that was really consolidating the office products industry. Um and they were headquartered near near where I lived and uh had just a great group there, and I led a business intelligence data warehousing team there. So I've kind of been around the data, data analysis um kind of area, and that that fits my background with a background in statistics and and information systems.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, you were saying that you kind of got into data before data was was cool, before everyone was thinking and talking about it.
SPEAKER_03They didn't have cool names back then, so uh yeah, but um anyway, so I was I was approaching my mid-30s, and our youngest was getting into school, uh, pre uh preschool and uh no kindergarten. And my wife had been wanting to get back into the workforce, and so we kind of looked around for opportunities and just didn't feel like we could find something that balanced, you know, her being a mom and four kids and you know, all this other stuff. And um, so we said, well, let's let's maybe start a business. And we had been talking about it for a while, but the timing seemed to align. And so um, you know, as brilliant entrepreneurs, just a few months after 9-11, we opened a business.
SPEAKER_01So our time, our timing's impeccable, uh, usually bad, but how and how did you decide um what business you were gonna go into? Because it sounded like you you started with the end in mind, we want to be business owners, but that doesn't take you back to the beginning and actually help you decide what the business will be, unless you're really smart and then you think about oh, I'm gonna design my life based on the certain particular like like dad was driving around all over, you may not have wanted to do that, you know.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. Well, there was a business that kind of came out of my experience at Arthur Anderson that we felt had some key characteristics. First of all, it didn't really require me to travel. Um, our clients could be not just local, so we could have a national marketplace. And kind of the basic skill sets really fit my wife and I well. She's very process-oriented, detail-oriented, and there's some administrative uh paper handling, data processing, data entry kind of stuff that she uh is good at, and that was part of the business. And then we have project management and kind of the systems, data analysis, and uh component of the business. So we it it just so happened that I had done this work at Arthur Anderson, had built up a good resume for it, had worked with other businesses that provide this kind of service and was not impressed with them. Um and so at the end of the day, we felt that there was an opportunity for to be kind of a high-quality provider of a it's called uh class action administration, is what the the service is. So we manage class action lawsuits, their settlement and notice process. So that was the business we started.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_03And in large part of the exciting, of course.
SPEAKER_01Exciting. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know, everybody wakes up, you know, uh coming out of college, they say, I want to be a class administrator.
SPEAKER_01So uh, you know, I admit it's good if you're making money off the class action. It's not so good if you're paying out the money from the class action. That's right.
SPEAKER_03That's right. And so we did that administrative work, and also I I continue to serve as an expert, so a testifying expert in that arena.
SPEAKER_01And what would uh like what would be an example of something or somewhere you might testify?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so you know, if you if you watch TV shows and there's the the scene in the courtroom and they have this medical expert up there describing how the person was murdered, um that's that's a forensic medical expert. Uh so they're a doctor and they've have credentials to opine, to give an opinion on you know what happened medically. Uh my background is in data analysis, so I'm a data analysis expert, and I would not always in front of a court, but I've I've testified in court, but most of the time it's more in depositions and written reports that are my opinion of of a certain set of facts. You know, this and I'll just give a quick example. You know, a um a a product uh was defective, and that product uh analyzing how frequently that defect shows up and the economic impact on the c the people, the consumers who purchase that, that would be something that I would model out and estimate.
SPEAKER_01Gotcha. Yeah, I two really dumb class action lawsuits that come to mind. Meta has this big class action lawsuit. I I signed up for it. I want to say that I got paid, but now I think I'm making that up. I don't think I've got any money from Meta on that. Um, and then a headlight one time. I bought a headlight and somehow they knew that I bought it and I got $11 or something like that.
SPEAKER_03$11. Yeah, that's that's that's about right. We got uh we we kind of focused on some really specialized one. We did a lot of environmental class actions which were very complicated, and people got thousands of dollars.
SPEAKER_01And so what would what would be like an example like that? We're in we're in Ohio, so there was the the train uh wreck in East Palestine, Ohio. Would that be like a situation?
SPEAKER_03That was exactly so we handled one down in Pensacola, Florida. There was a uh a railroad treat railroad tie treatment facility used that uses creosote, as well as there was another uh chemical manufacturing site, both kind of within a mile of each other. And uh the carcinogens, you know, some of the chemicals that they use was was detected in the groundwater that that serves the community. Got it. And so um basically people within a certain distance of that, based on scientific data and research and stuff, those properties were part of that that class and um you know participated and got uh you know significant benefits from the settlement.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. So yeah, like how would they determine let's just I'll just ask the really dumb question. How would they determine how much a house that's three-quarters of a mile away should be entitled to get? And and also do I have to prove harm? Do I have to prove like I went in, got tested for cancer, and my biomarkers are elevated, or is it just the assumption of harm?
SPEAKER_03Well, there's there's different kinds of harm uh that could be claimed. In this case, there were two two kinds of sets uh economic harm and medical harm, or at least potential medical harm. And so there are two aspects of the supplement one that allowed for free medical monitoring, so you could be tested for free. And if you were tested with, you know. Something bad, then then there's more money that would be available to you. Okay. Now I don't know that anybody within the area tested positive for any of the medical uh side effects. But um so that was one aspect. But on the economic side, it's really um there's this idea of of value, I can never pronounce this diminution. Uh so it's it's a decrease in the value of your home because you're in this area that's polluted, was the kind of easier way to say that, simpler way to say that. So there were testing done, there were uh you know regions, and we used GPS to uh GIS data to to kind of mark the various distances and where where there are higher levels and things like that. And then we used uh valuations from the uh the county assessor's office to identify the value of each of the properties. And what made it really complicated was that this was going on for like 40 years, 45 years, I believe. Oh, interesting. And so all those people who ever owned any of those properties over those 45 years were considered class members. And so it was a very, very sophisticated process that I had to design, and that's one that I had to testify in court to say, here's how we're gonna do it, and the judge had to approve that approach. Um anyway, so that that was definitely on the complex side and much different than like your uh headlight case.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. So then your business is kind of um is it doing something similar to that, or is it more so administration of like, okay, these people lost this lawsuit. Now they need to have a process where people can email or write in, and then I can assess the the amount that they're deserving of and send it out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so um the class action when it's going, you know, in a contested form, that's called litigation. So you're litigating this case in the court. Once the parties get to a place where they say, okay, we're gonna stop fighting, we're gonna settle this, uh, which most cases do uh in the US, um, then that's where this administrator would get involved as really this independent third party that sits between those two and really is, I wouldn't say working for the class, but on behalf of the class to make sure that they're treated fairly and according to the agreement.
SPEAKER_01Kind of like a trust. You know, there's a trust set up, and then I'm administering the trust, like I'm just playing by the rules and I'm trying to say what the rules were. And would you get paid based on how would the payments work? Amount that you're doing, or is it billable hours?
SPEAKER_03It it basically was basically a billable hours plus costs, you know, bet uh charges and stuff like that for postage and mailings and printing checks and all that other stuff. So basically uh time materials would be kind of a generic way to think of it.
SPEAKER_01Hey. I I mean, those are businesses you never know exist, but they can be really good if you get good at them, and there's only so many people who have the skills and knowledge. And that's not the like really exciting business that you hear about like on Facebook or Instagram. Like you can start a business in your garage, it's this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, class administrator. Yeah, right. In three easy lessons. No, it it wasn't sexy, but it was actually well designed and well uh a good fitting for Dawn, my wife and I, just because of our skill sets, it worked out really well. I enjoyed the work. Um, and you know, about 12 years into that business, we had built a very good lifestyle business. Um, you know, very profitable. We were throwing off about 30% net income on that business. And um and yet we we were kind of stuck on the revenue side. We we had tried to grow the business and couldn't really get past this threshold.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, how do you even like go out and acquire new clients? Like, what do you yeah?
SPEAKER_03Well, that that was the question I had been trying to figure out. And it was interesting. We had our business valued at year 12, 12 years into that business. And that was longer than I had worked at any place in my career. I'd only really had three, you know, uh big boy jobs, and you know, those are about three to five years each, and now I'm 12 years into this, and we had the business valued, and you know, it didn't, it wasn't bad, you know, just under a million dollars. But it's like, okay, 12 years of blood, sweat, and tears of going without pay for six months, you know, all this kind of stuff. It's like, uh, why is it not worth more than that? And the reason is we didn't intentionally build it to be valuable. We were just we we were just working it, right? We were working in the business, as they would say. And so it was kind of an interesting pivot point or uh fork in the road, I would say, is better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I mean, a million bucks by the time you get taxes, you're at 600 or so. And yeah, and if you're making if you and your wife are making a hundred, it's like, well, this is only three years of work. Like, it's not even really that's not that good. We gotta go out and rebuild this thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the math's almost right in line. And and what was interesting, I had talked about my parents' business. What I didn't share with you that uh my parents lost their business when I was going into high school. So 25 years, my dad, that's all he knew in his professional life. And one day they just went to the store, turned off the lights, locked the door, handed the keys over to the landlord, and walked away from everything that he and my mom had built. Yeah. And, you know, um, I was still pretty young in high school and stuff, and I don't know that I really understood what happened. Yeah, I knew that my parents were struggling financially, and you know, eventually they would be on food stamps, and uh, you know, it was a total change in their economic situation. But still, you know, 12 years into that business, I was like, I don't want to have a business that just one day, 20 years into it, I just turn off the lights and walk away. I want to have something that you know I can transfer, that it can sell. I don't know if it was really even the idea of selling it so much that it could continue on and just wouldn't stop one day.
SPEAKER_01But you're hitting on a very important distinction that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think about. It's am I investing my time right now for like a current rate of return? Like I want to make a hundred thousand dollars a year, and that's like what I am producing, or am I working to build something out into the future? Like, is this a rental property I'm trying to pay off, or is this like a dividend paying stock? Maybe that's not a good example because dividend paying stock is still gonna be there in the future. Like, I don't know what the some sort of like an annuity that's gonna pay me right now, sort of thing. Right, right. And I think people miscommunicate misunderstand, like these are not the same things, and it's really cool if you have a construction company. I got friends that do construction, they do well. The company's not worth anything because it's like I'm doing all the work, but they're making good money right now. Um, but yeah, so it's sort of a different thing that I think it sounds like you were kind of understanding there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one phrase that helped me was the idea of do you own a job or do you own a business? Right. And and I would say we had a business, but it wasn't much more than a job, right? And that's kind of that. Well, I have a business that throws off 100,000, 200,000 in income. That's great. But it it has no residual value if I don't show up the next day. And that's really more like owning a job, right? Um what we wanted to do is build something that removing Matt and Don from it, it still had value. Somebody saw something there. And so that kind of set us off on a journey to figure out okay, what do we need to do different? I was working hard. I I did well in school. I I'm pretty bright and I pretty clever, but I could not figure out why I couldn't make this business grow. And so in year 12, I had a uh just a business owner friend who said, Hey Matt, here's a book. You should read it. It it really is a great roadmap for business growth. It's the best one I've seen out there. And so I read it and kind of devoured it, and turned out that the author of the book was lived just a few miles from me here in North Denver area. And so I hooked up with him and he coached me for about a year just to help me understand it more about what the book was trying to communicate. Um and I'm pretty good. If you if you point me point A to point B, I I can make things happen. So um we we saw this basically an immediate effect with changing my my where I was emphasizing, where I was spending my energy, my outlook, um, my leadership style, putting in some structures that we didn't have before. But we basically re-engineered our business along the lines of this roadmap. And in three years, we went stuck to three times that revenue. We we couldn't get past the ceiling, and now we are triple that. We have grown from eight people to 40. We really didn't hit any roadblocks because the whole idea behind this roadmap is that you go through these stages of growth and the rules change. And that's why businesses get stuck, is because they're using the old rule book when there's actually a new rules to the game. And so I knew when those changes would occur, I know what the new rules were, and I could just continue to grow the business. And um it was wonderful. I mean, it was it was pretty magical. I at year 12, I was burnt out, I was tired of doing the same thing, and by year 15, I had fallen in love with my business again. Wow. And um what was what was cool, we didn't plan it this way, but what was nice is that in year 15, when we had uh executives from a major competitor come and make an offer for our business because they were starting a new enterprise and they needed a platform company that we could compare where we the off the valuation year year 12 to what we sold it for in year 15, and it had multiplied in value 10x between those three years. Amazing. And now that was at a level where it's like, okay, uh, we we we we should take that. So we went ahead and and uh accept the offer and um eventually you know left that business.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. So what were those things that, you know, it's a book, right? But it sounds like that book made you quite a bit of money and made your life better. What were like the things that you were maybe missing that when you read them, you went, oh, okay, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, what was interesting is that the principles were pretty straightforward. They they weren't rocket science, you know. I would have been okay if it was a complex formula, but that that's not what it was. It was pretty straightforward.
SPEAKER_01Well, we need to be reminded more often than we need to be taught, right?
SPEAKER_03That's true. This one, though, was really I'll give you just one specific example. Um, so the idea is that, first of all, just the idea that there are different stages of growth and that there are rules or best practices that apply to those stages. And if you are misaligned with those rules, it's like trying to hike a mountain with a heavy backpack. You you might still get to the top, but you're making it so much harder than it has to be. And so the idea is get alignment, empty your backpack, lighten the load, and growth will come because you're kind of lined up with you know the natural state of growth. And so a specific area is what the the book called um gates of focus. And gates of focus says you can grow by focusing on one of three things people, process, and profit. So those three P's: people, process, profit. So those are three things. They're they're like three having three children, all three of your children are important, but your children go through different stages, and at different times you have to focus a little bit more on one versus the other. And that's kind of how these three work. They're all important, but in stage one, the priority is profit, people, process. And I had that flipped totally around. I'm a data guy, I am a process guy, I love systems. I said, Well, if I build the best mousetrap, systems process, and I have the right people, uh, profit will come. And as I look back and wondered why I was so far off on that, and I think this is common, is I along the way growing up, money and making a lot of money was not really considered necessarily good. And so, you know, it was a sign of maybe being a cheat or not following the rules, you know, being greedy, whatever those adjectives are, it just wasn't uh uh, you know, sought. And so for me, part of that, I think why profit was was down there was that kind of that mindset. And I had to switch that mindset to say, no, profit is not evil or bad or anything. Profit is essential. A business can't exist if it can't find out how to sell products and services and make a profit because it needs that profit to grow and and expand and get it through the lean times. And so we had to switch that mentality. I had to, and then that flowed through the organization. So it was more than just a mentality, though, it took action. I said, okay, stage one, profit is the number one gate of focus. I'm not focused on that. How do I change it? And so we just changed how we were allocating our resource and how I was spending my time. Instead of improving the mousetra, mousetrap's good enough. We need more revenue. So how are we going to get revenue? Well, a simple way we did that is one of the services we provide was like an inbound call center so those class members could call and have their questions answered. And we said, well, we already have the skill sets in the system. Why don't we make that outbound? And so we turned our when anybody had any time that was not billable, we turned them into marketing experts, basically, a marketing team. And in one year, we made 15,000 outbound calls to attorneys across the nation. Whoa, amazing. We went from two proposals a month to 20, 22 proposals a month, 10x our proposal rate. And even, you know, with with keeping our win weight the same, you know, uh, that was contributing to our growth on the revenue side. And so instead of almost every prospect that asked us to submit a proposal, when they when we asked how'd you find about us in the early years, it was, well, we just happened to find your website. Well, that's not a very strong relationship at that point.
SPEAKER_01Not very predictable.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And and yet after we changed our and put more energy into profit, um, 80% of the people that were contacting us said, Oh, I've been referred to you. Wow. I've heard about you. And that one dynamic was a key to getting the revenue past that revenue ceiling.
SPEAKER_01That was a smart idea, whoever said, Why don't these people just pick up the phone and start making calls?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was one of the team members, and we were just, you know, that was part of trying to create these uh we call it a one-to-one process where you're asking people for ideas as part of a, you know, uh every month or two months you meet with every everyone that's being supervised. And I think somebody just came up and said, Hey, why we we'd be okay with making calls. I was like, Oh, would you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a great idea. Probably not that hard of a sales call. You're calling an attorney's office and just saying, Hey, do you have anybody who does your class action administration? And I'm sure almost all of them said no, we don't have anybody who does that.
SPEAKER_03No, exactly. And 60% of the time you're just leaving voicemails. And what was what was interesting is uh our our team figured out that we had a pretty sophisticated telephone system uh for those times, and they had a way that once we called, if we got to a voicemail, we could have a pre-recorded voicemail. So they they were just cranking, and that's what that team was good at. They were really good at these processes, these detailed processes, and the team just went at it and they just cranked and it totally changed the business.
SPEAKER_01And why do you think, and I know you talked about you thought that profit was like maybe almost evil. I actually had someone on the podcast who had like a whole like I don't I don't remember if he wrote a book about this, but and it was interesting because he was like, if you think about it, basically every action movie, the bad guy is like a corporation who's trying to like screw people over and like pollute the river, or they're trying to like steal someone's data. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. I never quite realized that. He's like, Yeah, it's the same plot in every single movie. It's a it's a rich bad guy, is who it is. Yeah, wow. Interesting.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, we we we equate those two, and I would say, yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01But but he was just going to say, like, that has been like ingrained in our sort of like it's funny because like we celebrate wealth and we celebrate success, but basically every bad guy, Scrooge, you know, like um uh Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, they're like all rich bad guys. So, yes, I think a lot of people do have this idea that like wealth is inherently a bad thing. Um, but why do you think do you think that's like what it was, or do you think that you were just like saying, like, if we do the right processes, profit will come?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I think there is a another very important aspect to this. Most people, when they they look at how they prioritize the gates of focus, people, profit, process, there is a philosophical, you know, there's kind of an almost an ethical thing about it, but there is also a practical side of that. We all tend to enjoy things we're good at. And we will put things our energy behind those tasks that we enjoy doing, right? And so for me, it was really that. I would say the the mindset was part of it, but it was more I love process, I love data, I'm good at that. I want to do those things because that that pushes my button. I thought, people, I I enjoy leading people, I enjoy growing and investing in people. I hate selling. I don't like going out and asking people to buy my product and service. That's just not my strength. And so I would say it's more of that that led me to prioritize those gates as I had. But that's why the roadmap was so healthy because most business owners they're willing to do almost anything to make their business successful. But the challenge is they don't know what the right thing is to do. Yeah. And so when I saw the roadmap and says, okay, it's profit, people, process, it's like, okay, I can do that. I didn't know I should be doing that, but I'll do that. So we started doing that. And what was interesting in stage two, though it changes. It's now profit process people. People are the lowest. Well, people can't be the lowest, right? No, in stage two, you're not going to grow through your people. You have to have profitable revenue. And if you don't, you can't ever grow your team big enough. You can't pay them as much. So you have to focus on that profit. So we stayed focused on profit. Stage three is a big switch. In stage three, people become number one, profit's number two, and process is number three. And people become number one because once you hit 20 employees and you you're in stage three, there's just too much complexity, and you have to get your team on board. If you can't, you also need to start to delegate. So you have to invest in uh a line of supervisors and managers to help you actually manage the day-to-day work. And so if I hadn't known that, I wouldn't ever got out of stage one in the first place. But by the time I hit stage three, if I had kept the profit mentality, you know, kind of focus, I wouldn't have understood that now, no, it's changed again. People have to be on top. And so that's why we didn't hit a roadblock. Every time we got to a new stage, we knew what the new rules were. I could adapt to those new stage those new rules, keep my backpack light, and keep on growing.
SPEAKER_01That's fascinating. It makes a lot of sense too. You see, like all these like you know, smart entrepreneurs or gurus. Or or people arguing about like how to make a successful business. And it's funny because they're saying all three of those things, and they all sound so convincing. Like Hormosy says, like, you got to hire the best people that you possibly can. And it's like, wow, that makes so much sense. Like, you know, once I started hiring talented people, you know, my business exploded. Like, wow, I got to hire the best people. And it's like, well, yeah, but like you already had a successful business that you could pay somebody $150,000. Like, you can't do that when you're like a one-person organization. You know, like it would have been impossible for you when it was just you and your wife to be like, we need to hire the best salesperson in the world. They're $250,000. It's like, we can't do that. Like, yeah, you can't find a way to do it.
SPEAKER_03Right, right. And that's that's why um that's why the the one size fits all advice, it can work perfectly for you because you heard that advice kind of at that stage when that advice was aligned. But if you had gotten it at a different stage where it was not aligned, you would not see the same success. And that's why knowing these stages and the rules is so critical because um there is not one size fits all when it comes to growing a small business. Uh it's very stage specific.
SPEAKER_01So when would you say you exit stage one to two and two to three? And is that the final stage? Is three the final stage? No, there's seven stages. Seven stages, goodness me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I'll just I'll just since most businesses fit in the first uh three, um, I'll just quick go through those. From it, it's based on the number of employees because it's the it's it's the head count that drives complexity. Yeah. As you add more people, things get more complex.
SPEAKER_01There's only a certain amount of people that can kind of be on a team and be managed by one person and be in the know about certain things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, you're you're absolutely right. And once you get past that threshold, it's it's kind of a stepped level of complexity. Yeah. And when you but when you hit it, it's like kind of overnight, you know, it's it's slow and then all and then all at once, as as they've said. But stage one goes from one to ten employees, 11 to 19 is stage two, stage three is 20 to 34, and 35 to 57 is stage four, and then it goes up there uh up to 350 employees.
SPEAKER_01Okay, now stage seven. Now my team is 40, 45, not quite 50, it's kind of bouncing around. So what are the things that I would be expecting? And it sounds like I'm in stage four.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so let me tell you some characteristics about stage four. So stage four is the professional stage. So stage one is ramp startup, stage two is ramp up, stage three is delegation. So once you get above 20 to when you're in the 20 to 34, that's when you have to start delegating as uh a CEO. The organization is just too complex, there's too wide of a span of control, you need that next layer. But that, as you build that, that creates some new challenges. Like you're kind of disconnected with the lying people, you know, the staff. And so anyway, so that's stage three. Stage four starts at uh at 35 employees. So you're right in the middle of state and goes to 57. Um it's the professional stage. And the professional stage is when you need to be installing uh professional managers or professionalized managers that are leading departments, and they have kind of a siloed focus to make sure your operations is good, your business development is good, your administrative services is good, and you have this. Maybe it's people that have grown up through the ranks, but they may need additional development to really become professional managers and leaders. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's what that stage is. And sometimes you find out the people who have been here and kind of managing your department aren't the people who can continue to manage it because they aren't really the right person. They aren't really that professional manager.
SPEAKER_03Yep. That's so that's the big change between stage three when you just need some people to start taking leadership. Stage four, you have to get that professionalized leadership management team in place. You should have between six to ten managers and two to three executives. Okay. Well, we're we're doing pretty decent. We're hitting a lot of those similar numbers. Okay. Uh stage four is the process focus stage. So you remember the three gates of focus. Process is number one, profit is number two, and people actually is number three. So this is where you really need to be uh while you're creating these professional departments, they're those professional managers are bringing in the systems and processes to scale the organization. And what can often happen is a business that is focused on profit all through this, goes through stage four, still focus on profit. They're growing the top line, but somewhere in stage four or stage five, they hit a wall. And it is just utter chaos. And those businesses sometimes grow themselves right into out of business.
SPEAKER_01Because they can't keep up with they they get excited about this. Is where I feel like we are sort of we're getting really excited about new business. Uh-huh. But we've lost some employees who could manage some of that business. So it's like, do we have the process in place to get new people in and get them up to speed and get them ready to take on this new business?
SPEAKER_03Exactly. So that's your focus as a CEO and as an organization. People need to know this is the process stage. That's where we're going to invest. If we don't invest here, we're going to get stuck, we're going to hit walls, the backpack's going to get heavy, chaos is going to rain. So let's make sure we're doing that. Um we have what we call the classic challenges. These are the five top challenges that are inherent in your stage of growth. So I'll just read a few and you can let me know if any of these resonate. Difficulty diagnosing problems. So trying to figure out what's causing this problem. Employee turnover, you just mentioned that. Yep. Getting systems, getting systems into place. So systems are systems and processes. The organization is uninformed about company growth. So the business has gotten so big that people are showing up and doing a job, but they don't really understand the business well enough to know how are we going to grow from here. So there's that disconnect. You have a lot of new people. They don't really, they weren't there when the organization was more nimble and it was real clear vision. And then the fifth one is weak project management. You're initiating a lot of change in stage four. And with the systems and processes, you need to be good at project management. Here's one maybe for you. So we we uh rely on uh some research uh from the book uh Primal Leadership that identifies six leadership styles. And those are good and those are important, but what we've done is we've we've mapped those six leadership styles to what is the optimal blend of leadership styles by stage. So one of the key points is there is not one leadership style that's going to be effective across all seven stages because the organization needs different things from the CEO based on the level of complexity. Wow, interesting. So in stage four, the CEO should be exercising primarily coaching, then affiliative, and affiliative is kind of making everybody feel like they're part of the team. And then paceetting. Paceetting is important here because you've had a lot of man added a lot of managers, and there may not be a real clear sense of urgency. You know, they're kind of new, maybe they're fumbling around. And the organization can kind of get muddied up right here in stage four. And so part of the leader is to is to set the pace, to say, okay, here's what we're doing, here's when we're going to do, and personally show that level of energy and focus and drive to make sure that the organization doesn't get stuck right here in stage four. So coaching, affiliative, and pace setting. Uh, there's another set of rules called Three Faces of a Leader. And Three Faces says, as the CEO, you can be, you can wear kind of three faces or hats, if you would. Visionary, where you're really setting that vision and working on the business. There's manager, where you are managing other people and overseeing and growing them. And then specialist, where you roll up your sleeves and you're actually doing part of the work for the organization. That could be business development, so you could be part of the sales process. Um, it could be developing the product if your organization that would make sense. So those are the three faces. Where you spend your time or how you allocate your time changes based on your stage of growth. In early stages, you spend a lot of time, even as the CEO, in that specialist face. You're the you're the expert, you're driving the organization, so you can't just leave that to others. But by stage four, this is an interesting one. In stage four, it's 10% visionary, 70% manager, and 20% specialist. So the idea here is that while you do need to be working on the business and setting that vision, because you're trying to professionalize that management team, 70% of your energy needs to be developing, managing others, growing them, coaching. That's why coaching is that top leadership style. You need to be growing that team. If you're not investing in there, it's going to be really hard to get to the next level because more complexity, more leaders, more managers. And if if they haven't grown up, if you haven't grown that professional team, professionalized management team in stage four, stage five feels really burdensome.
SPEAKER_01That's uh really interesting, really insightful. Um, yeah. What what do you see as get as businesses go to five, six, and seven?
SPEAKER_03Well, uh, stage five is integration. So just at a high level, what this is now, you've you've created those strong kind of almost siloed departments. It's okay if they're a little bit siloed in stage four. Stage five is integration. Yeah. So you're now starting to get a leadership team in addition to your management team, and now you're trying to integrate those departments to get cross-functional planning and communication improved. Uh, so they're operating a little bit more sophisticated joint budgets and prioritization, all that stuff needs to start getting in place in stage five. And again, the key thing there is for the first time, you need not just a management team, you need a leadership team. And then stage six is strategic, 96 to 160 employees. Um and the big change here is people become one of the top is the top gate of focus. You're you're you if you get to this stage, you've kind of figured out the business. You have the clients, you're making revenue, you know how to manage your margins. And so people are gonna drive your growth in both stage um six and seven. Um, because like you said, those corporations, you you said they're kind of exceptional. Well, they're exceptional in that they're one of the very few businesses that have found a product or service that enough people want that's gonna generate a lot of revenue and good margins. So, yeah, they are exceptional in that way. And so, stage six and seven, your focus on people because there's so many people, there's so much complexity. You have to have those good leaders, you have to focus on your culture, uh, make sure everybody kind of has a common vision, uh, held to the same standards. Those are some things that kind of come out in stage six and seven.
SPEAKER_01And uh, of course, I I know this, but uh Matt, you really it sounds like you went really deep on this book. Like, what's the how did this book become such a big part of your life?
SPEAKER_03Well, um, like I said, this this book and this this roadmap was essential in us having this really positive exit. And uh so coming out of that exit, I figured, wow, this is this is great. I I saw what my dad had happened to my dad, where he had put in decades of work and walked away with nothing. And it's like, I don't want more business owners, I want to help small business owners uh avoid that ending, that that final chapter that was written on my dad's life and on his business. And so I ended up acquiring all the research IP and the book that was so instrumental, and have built out a growth system. Uh some people might be familiar with EOS. Um it's it's think of it like EOS, in that it's it's really a broad-based, comprehensive system that you build your business on. Um EOS is focused a little bit more on, I would say, the blocking and tackling. Uh we work on that as well, but we really focus a lot more than EOS on really working on the business, the strategic thinking and getting these key structures and being stage-specific also. Uh, you know, it's not a one-size, ours isn't a one size fits all. So we help guide business owners with this roadmap, help them understand it and apply it to their businesses so they can continue to grow. Not every business owner wants to get to stage seven, and that's totally fine. But we don't want you to stop growing simply because you don't understand the rules of change, and you're stuck not because you want to just stay there, but it's almost being forced on you that you can't grow. And that's what a lot of business owners did. And I did that for 12 years, right? I we went from eight to 12 employees, down to 10, back down to eight. And for some reason, we just kind of got stuck at eight. Well, the reason is that's the top end of stage one. I didn't, I didn't change, I wasn't, I didn't have the rules right for stage one, so I couldn't sustain stage two. Once I had the rules, we went from stage one to stage four in three years. And so, yeah, I acquired that, and that's really what the ReWild group, what I'm doing today, to kind of tie back to where we started, um, using this roadmap as um as a guide that we train independent consultants and advisors and coaches on. So you can use this as a part of their tool set to go and help small and business, small and mid-sized business owners create more exceptional businesses.
SPEAKER_01What was uh the process like of acquiring the rights to this from the original author? And what was what was that person's story like? Were they just like blown away that you wanted this, or was this like a pretty successful thing that they had done in past? Well, um because I know coaching and consulting can be like that's a tough business sometimes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So I would say the inventor and the author of the of the research. Um I I consider him kind of like a mad scientist guy, you know, really brilliant. Um, but he actually came to me after he saw the exit that I achieved and said, Hey, I've never been able to really monetize all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01Well, he's not listening to his own stuff, was he?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. And so we teamed up for about a year. We we we launched the ReWild Group together. And um about a year into it, you know, it's a startup, you know, we're not getting paid anything. I mean, it's hard, right? Oh yeah. And and he he was an older gentleman and had some health issues, and he said, Matt, I just I I I'm too I'm too old to do this. And so we parted ways and and I acquired the uh the IP as part of that. So um, so that's that's kind of what it was after he was gone. Then I was like, okay, I've got all this this stuff that I didn't come up with, and so I had to basically make it mine. And so that's what we've done over the past number of years. I've published 18 books that talk about the seven stages of growth and the 11 elements of the exceptional business and have built out this capabilities that uh uh consultants can be trained on and use. And it's it's a really robust system now that's available.
SPEAKER_01How much did you have to edit what he had? Um, did you did you feel like you got in and you went, I'm not sure if I agree with that, or was it mostly like I feel like most of this is pretty accurate? I'll update the language a little bit. I mean, maybe talking through that.
SPEAKER_03It I would say there were nuggets of really great stuff. And all the research and these rules that I'm sharing were part of that original. I would say outside of that, it was good ideas, and it was kind of a pretty much a rewrite.
SPEAKER_01It needed a process guy to come in and kind of define the process.
SPEAKER_03It did, right? It was too I I call it inventor-centric. He was really the only one. It was overly complicated. He was the inventor of it. He saw all the nuances and made sure those were all factored in. I had to strip away that to say, okay, what's the fundamental thing we're trying to communicate? Let's let's let's get that. Because if we get that, that's that's 80% of the benefit.
SPEAKER_01So you said 18 books that you have put together with this. Where would you recommend someone start? And does it matter about where my business is in the process? Is one book, you know, chapter one through one through three or or stage one through three and then four, five, six? Like how how does that work? And maybe where would you recommend people think about this if they want to learn more?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, the guidebooks, first of all, were written primarily to be read in about an hour. So we wanted to make them uh we call them guidebooks, you know, they're not big textbooks uh from school or college. Uh, we wanted them to be totally practical, and so we interweave uh stories of businesses within them. But the play best place to start is there are seven books for the seven stages of growth. So if you go to our website, you can use an online calculator to determine your stage of growth. That's really the first step. Once you know your stage of growth, because that's so critical, because without that, you don't know what rules your business needs to apply. Once you have that stage of growth, you just get the that stage of growth guidebook. And once you have that, it will point you to some of the other books as ancillary, but that's the best place to start.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm going through your website right now, and uh, I see I can throw in here uh kind of the size and info of my business.
SPEAKER_03And yeah, it's basically just asking number of employees because that's what it's based on. So you're not we're not asking for any financial information or sensitive stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01Um I can download the stage four card right now. I'm hoping I'm not stage four and anything else in my life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that has some negative connotations, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, you know, there's no stage five, right? So I'm trying to move on to stage five, baby. Get out of there.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, you can download a stage card which takes these rules and it's kind of a quick reference guide. And then if you get the stage book, guidebook for that stage, those two kind of go hand in hand. The the reference, the stage card is a quick reference that you just have hanging on your wall, and then the book is where it explains all the different uh uh categories that are on the uh on the card.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. And uh do you sell the books through your site? Do they sell on Amazon? Do they sell on other places? Uh what's the best?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we sell them through Amazon. Yeah, just um if you go to our website, you'll you'll find the books and it'll it'll eventually point you to Amazon. You can go to Amazon as well and look for uh my name as an author, and that'll pull up all the books.
SPEAKER_01Very cool. So um where do you want to go with this business? Is it help as many businesses as you can? Is it another exit? Is this the the final project? You know, how do you feel about things?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I think uh eventually there's an exit. Um we're still uh it's taken us a few years to get all this capability, the books, you know, all that that written and stuff like that. So we're at a place where I feel the product and the the kind of the IP is all there. We're still playing around with how do we slice and dice it to make a particular package of that attractive in the marketplace. Um but um yeah, and then part part of what's coming out now is you know, how does AI impact this? So we're looking at how how does headcount may come down. I I don't I don't actually think that the headcount will come down because it's still it it may be that a business does more revenue with fewer headcount. I think that will definitely happen. But it's still the number of people that drive complexity. So it could have taken a stage two business to run years, you know, a few years ago, but maybe with AI, you're you're still a stage one business. Um but for us, is how do we use AI to make the material more accessible? So that's a big initiative we have going on.
SPEAKER_01Very cool. Um well, awesome, Matt. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can uh people catch up with you, or where can they get in contact with you if they want to know more about the system and how it might be a benefit to their business, or read some books, or whatever else they can find.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, start start at therewildgroup.com and that's rewildgroup.com. So go ahead and start there. Use the calculator, find out your stage. There's a contact button. Uh, contact my team if you want to talk to me personally, just note that. I'd be glad to get uh a meeting set up for you. But we have a lot of material on the website, so spend some time perusing that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so what is working with you look like? Obviously, you can you can buy a book, you can read the book, that's the do-it-yourself version, right? I'm sure there are other done with you and done for you steps.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so there's kind of three three levels like you were kind of implying. There's a do-it-yourself, which is through our books and other resources available on the website. We also have a video series, so it's like you you watch it, there's activities, there's little quizzes, and you really get to learn uh the roadmap. So that's it's an inexpensive uh uh self self-help kind of approach. Uh we have a coaching program, uh, which looks like a 12, typically a 12-month meet meeting monthly kind of a cadence, and you're working on your business every month through this framework. Um, and then we have advisory services, which is basically just more in depth than what the coaching program does. And that typically is appropriate for stage three and above, where you might have not just the owner, but uh a few managers or many managers. And then kind of a final product that I'll mention is our exceptional manager program. This is a transformative uh one-year program where you put your entire management team from CEO down to your management level, all through a half day a month uh program. And it's it's just very transformative. You your team leaves there with a clear vision and a common language to grow your business. And they're talking in ways by the time they're done, they not only build management skills, which is a big part of it. So there's management skills and tools, um, but they there's a section called ownership thinking, where every time you get together, the entire management team is learning how to think like an owner and really understanding the business. So it's very transformative, and that's called the Exceptional Manager Program. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01I love it, Matt. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you, man.
