How to Thrive in a Flooded Creator Economy with Matthew Gartland

Matthew: [00:00:00] it's never been easier to get started these days in terms of the technology and the available options, but that almost, again, sort of cuts, cuts both ways, which is because it's now so easy and easier than ever, you know, the zone gets flooded in terms of people starting and now it just.
Again, that much harder to actually get traction.
Dustin: All right. Welcome back to the seven figure lead podcast. I am joined by a very special guest today. It's someone that I had the opportunity to just randomly sit down with dinner at craft and commerce and Boise earlier this year and knew the name didn't actually know the face that well. And as I got to know, Matt Garland, our special guest today, I Not only is he involved in so many things in the creator economy and has so much knowledge [00:01:00] that he's really been instrumental in the, several of the brands that I care a ton about.
And I think most importantly, he's a family guy, a good Midwestern dude like me. And I think he's very relatable down to earth and open to sharing. So Matt Garland, thanks so much for being here. I'm going to turn the mic over to you. Just let people know a little bit about you and then we'll get a little bit into your,
like, Backstory on
Matthew: Thanks for having me. Holy heck. I mean, I'm a father of two. So yeah, starting with sort of, you know, family values and Midwestern vibes. I live in Columbus, Ohio. I'm not a Buckeye though. My wife is. I graduated from Penn State. You know, we're a house divided, especially on Saturdays during football season.
But it's all good. It's all good. I've been an online entrepreneur for heck 14 or pushing 14 years. I came from corporate actually was in sort of a executive leadership position. Fast track development program. One of those things right out of my undergrad. So for two years rotated around the country, it's actually brought me to Ohio.
Not from here natively. But I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I was the kid with an eliminate stand and selling baseball cards and [00:02:00] like all that stuff. So, you know, kind of just had that spirit this whole time. And then. You know, had a wonderful corporate career, and I'm sure I'll even come back to that in terms of some stories later.
But before I did get married and started family and put down bigger roots, I was like, Hey, if I'm going to get into startups and start trying to figure this out for myself, I've got to do that now. So that's when I made made the leap, so to speak, right into this whole universe and one of the best decisions of my life.
Of course. So it's been a thrill to be operating at the intersection of, of a few different things you know, emerging technology, given my, my tech background the emergence of course of like content based branding and companies that we now call the creator economy. And I also have experience in direct to consumer e commerce.
So it's a kind of a fun intersection to have built a career at.
Dustin: That's awesome. Yeah. And it's, I kind of chuckled when you said a few. So, in preparation for today's, I really want to understand Matt's backstory a little better for my own use so that we can really highlight for the audience. You know, I think most of our audience, which I think would be true of a lot of the SPI audience, where you're, you're most forward facing to my knowledge, at [00:03:00] least a lot of us, you know, are.
During our own, we have started our own solo company, right? We're our creator. We start with some specialized knowledge or some specialized skill, like marketing or technology or consulting or whatever, the way that you scratch your entrepreneurial itch to me is it is quite a bit different because I looked at your LinkedIn and I'm like counting and I'm like, he's 15 15 different companies that say dash present, you know?
So, advisor, investor, obviously some of these, you have much more of an active role than others, but share a little bit, maybe some of the backstory of like, How you got involved in so many different aspects of what we now call the creator economy. And is that by design? Is that something that really fuels you?
Does it drive you crazy? Cause I've ran three different businesses at once a few different times in my in my career and it's tough. So I really admire the fact that you've got 15 listed there.
Matthew: It's a lot, and it's a little bit misleading in that You know, they all don't take up, half of my work week, you know, so to speak, right? It's a it's a real privilege to be an advisor and in some cases an angel investor into some of [00:04:00] these companies It's something that has been you know an outgrowth of some of the success and projects, you know That have been a part of you
know to date and and I do believe that for you know, a certain, person it's a great opportunity to give back and have a real imprint right on the platforms that solopreneurs and you know Creators are using to create income for themselves and support their families.
So even though it doesn't, you know, in terms of, you know, hours per week, take up, you know, the most of my time at any given time I'd say it's one of the things I'm just enjoying the most, but it wouldn't have been possible unless we kind of rewind the clock a little bit. Yeah. And talk about maybe some, some origin stuff when I did make that big jump out of corporate you know, A lot of success sometimes involves luck, right?
So I got lucky, you know, with timing. This was when Tim Ferriss dropped his first book and started to kind of blow people's heads apart with what's possible in terms of working for yourself. You know, WordPress was just hitting the scene and starting to, you know, fundamentally change how content could be published online.
And given my, like, IT and systems and data background, like, that was, you know, super interesting and [00:05:00] appealing. I was studying even in college, like, you know, composition and In like weird classes, essentially. So I was studying ancient history, you know, the Greeks, the Romans composition literature around the Arthurian legend, you know, new media and where media was evolving from.
Because I liked storytelling and I'm a nerd in that way, you know, Star Wars kid, the whole thing, definitely, definitely, you know, Marvel and comics as well. So, all of the say, like, there was sort of this, like, Perfect effect, you know, in the 2012 era, right? When, you know, content publishing and democratization was happening, you know, wordpress was happening.
Amazon KDP can direct publishing burst onto the scene. So this just massive sort of transformation for anyone to be able to do. Publish and share more easily was happening so that kind of ticked almost all the boxes, right? You know, it was tech and data. It was branding and storytelling. And then that entrepreneurial spirit, you know, really drove me to, to get in there.
And one of my first entrepreneurial startups. Was what we would now call today a creator studio. So it was a services company, an [00:06:00] agency our kind of wedge in the market was actually self publishing and, and working with authors on books as a lot of even traditionally published authors that had built careers in that way were like, huh, like there's now this.
Publishing route. How do I do that? I've typically worked with it, you know, a publisher, but now I want to for economic reasons and more creative freedoms, you know, kind of explore that new opportunity. So, so it was great timing for us.
Dustin: That's awesome. So you're, framing that. I was like, he's gotta be talking about like 2008. Cause I, I kind of came into the online marketing world, 2008, 2009, my first online website or my first website and my online business was 2009. And I know, obviously we'll talk about Pat Flynn and smart, passive income. I kind of cut my teeth with Pat and actually knew Pat early on. We, we collaborated on a project actually in the marriage space, which was where I entered this world. And it was like that heyday of. Blogging. And like you were saying, you know, it's like people could for the first time had licensed to sort of express themselves online and actually create a business out of it.
So you kind of came in a few years after that. It sounds like [00:07:00] after things have been more solidified early 2010, 2012 in that timeframe, that that's really cool. So,
Matthew: that 2010 2012 is a, yeah, is about right. And it does, I can pick up the story now kind of lead to Pat at least as a kind of a marquee relationship, of course, in, in the broader story, right? So the. The project, you know, that first startup did well, we started work with a lot of authors, but it was then kind of one of the reasons fantasy football being the other reason actually why I was introduced to pat.
So we worked together on his first self published project, his memoir book, just hit it off, you know, in terms of collaborating together, became fast friends. So then fast forwarding, you know, in time towards the gosh, what was it, 2018, you know, we were. Immensely close. I was sort of a pseudo business partner to him already, you know, with SPI, you know, I certainly didn't create SPI or, or co found the brand and the story and all the value that was entirely Pat, but just thinking about now in that era of time, you know, 2018, you know, what was happening to, [00:08:00] you know, folks like Pat and others that had built up, you know, notable platforms on the business side, however, like things were changing, you know, demand was changing in terms of how people wanted to learn and develop online, you know, courses had been an explosion.
Kind of 2015, 2016. That's when we got into that with SPI. But this is still where like we were supporting and helping SPI grow sort of in services relationship. But come 18 for any number of reasons not to necessarily drag the story out too far here. It was like, Hey, like we're better together than apart.
And there was a bigger vision here. And actually community was a component of that in, in a notable way. So we kind of made a baby company, so to speak, where we, we co founded a new venture and sort of the SPI assets got dumped
in, my assets got dumped in still had obviously the same name, but we've started to change the business model You know, rather I'd say fundamentally, you know, under the scenes moving from a DIY course based business, you know, to an entirely recurring revenue based community membership business with other component parts along the way.
But that was the primary transformation and that's what we've done, you know, [00:09:00] over now the last, you know, five ish years, so to speak.
Dustin: yeah, and that's actually a perfect segue because that's really why I wanted to focus on today is for our audience who are a lot of the creative solo preneurs people, you know, making that seven figure leap going from a full time. Self employed status up into a real building, a real business, building a small team for the first time.
And part of that, of course, is the offer. And of course, I remember the ebooks phase, you know, all the way up into into courses. And I feel like we're now very solidly into this, into this world where a lot of the value add is in community. And so I think that you Matt personally, as well as SPI as an umbrella brand have been at the forefront of that.
I mean, you're talking 2018. I think a lot of people listening are like, yeah, communities, you know, that's like 2023, like communities happen. And you're like, Oh man, it's been five years in the making here. People are just finding out. I know you're an advisor to circle, and that is a platform that we've used at seven figure lead for our community.
It's really been a game changer in the value that we can provide. As well as our business model and the [00:10:00] offers that go with that. So I would love to dig in here a little bit about the evolution in the community. But really what I really want to focus on is why community, and what do we even mean by community in the creator economy?
Like, why are you guys so bullish on a community? Why have you changed the offer stack at SPI to really be, it seems a hundred percent community based and like, what's, what's the value there that's so important in your eyes?
Matthew: Yeah, two things that I would hope and I believe it's true for us and hope for others that they're kind of inseparable. You know, one is value, right,
that we believe, you know, fully that to to deliver and have as residents, you know, the most value possible in the short term as well as for the long term, a community based approach is going to be the right Avenue for that.
these days, at least, you know, 2024 now, you know, looking towards 2025 really rapidly. any form of one time off, content in, in almost any form, especially the ephemeral videos that are now everywhere on TikTok and YouTube, right? Everything is shorter and faster in and [00:11:00] gone in almost an instant, right?
And those are the extreme versions, but still like the polar opposite of that is where there's the most value in the, in honestly, the most demand these days is, you know, closer, sparser, Largely, sometimes smaller environments that are, you know, inoculated from the noise of just the online atmosphere, kind of in general, special social media so that people can focus and not get distracted and meet other people and, you know, participate in a shared learning journey, right?
And that's possible if you design it and execute it right, you know, with community. So, you know, that's that to me, I kind of all describe around value, but it does also harken to that second point, which is Which is the, the economic potential for a business owner. Right. So, you know, increasingly hard in general terms to sell one off products.
Especially if you're just getting started these days and we have the immense privilege and that's a competitive advantage to some degree that we're, Oh, gee, no, you know, Pat started a brand in 2008. Right. And so we, we have close to two decades worth of, you know, a brand [00:12:00] identity and brand equity, you know, in the market, we have tremendous relationships with other creators and platforms, et cetera.
Right. And you know, we don't take that lightly. We're very honored to have that. It's a lot harder to get started these days, at least in terms of, I'd say the audience building and then the positive business momentum that you can generate off of that, it's an interesting juxtaposition because it's, it's never been easier to get started these days in terms of the technology and the available options, but that almost, again, sort of cuts, cuts both ways, which is because it's now so easy and easier than ever, you know, the zone gets flooded in terms of people starting and now it just.
Again, that much harder to actually get traction. So coming about back around to just like the business side of it. And if I put back on sort of that, you know,
MBA hat, so to speak, right. As, as a CEO, it's like, okay, how, how am I innovating my business bottle? How am I building for the future? How am I potentially quote unquote, like future proofing the business?
Though. I don't think you can like future proof it once and it's future proofed always. It's, it's the perpetual idea just of, you know, [00:13:00] what's happening in the market? What's happening to your customers? How are they, you know, choosing to tell you, you know, where they're deriving value? And then are you listening to that?
And are you innovating whatever it is that you have, whether it be a product or service, whether it's a community or not, doing that. And that's what I feel like we did. You know, we did have aspects of community even in the early days of
S P I. You know, and like others that were maybe participating at a certain level at that time, most notably Facebook groups.
So, we were inviting our students of our DIY courses to join topical groups on Facebook as a part of the say like the purchase, right? Of buying a particular course, but you know, those environments on Facebook back then, and I would argue still today are not actual community, right?
It's much more like social media. Pretending to be community. but we were trying, like, we had, we had that spirit always around community, like lowercase C, right? Kind of built into the brand. But we wanted to, like, if you will make it a capital case, see community by way [00:14:00] of, like, what is the business model?
What is our product? So that was the big, again, the big kind of transformation point that I let us through.
Dustin: Yeah. So it was this transition from individual courses where basically you're buying education. It's like, Hey, I want to learn this skill. So I'm gonna go buy this course. There's still people doing that. There's still a market for that, but definitely lower price points, definitely a lot more competition because there's no technological barrier to entry.
Basically anyone can, can do that because everyone's got the camera, everyone's got a platform they can plug into some of which you advise. But the point is that's very commoditized. And as you already said, social media is just. A wash, a flood. I mean, we really went from this age of information to what I would say, like an age of insight, right?
Like the curation actually becomes the value, not the obligation of more information. And so you guys made that transition very successfully at S. P. I. And. So tell us now, like when we fast forward to today, SBI, we're going to talk a little bit about your own transition internally to the company, which is an announcement that came out very recently.
But [00:15:00] before we get to that, more like the offer stack. So tell us, you know, maybe a couple years ago, you know, What the business did, not numbers, but like what was generating the revenue for SPI. And then you look at today and now that you've really focused and doubled down on this idea of community with a capital C, what is the offer stack?
Because I think that really is the sort of rubber meets the road of what you've actually done in in response to this MBA level thinking that you guys have have put together.
Matthew: if it's useful and maybe even fun on some level, I can go all the way back in time around like the offer stack of SPI. So the very first offer was effectively nothing. You know, Pat created SPI. as a, as a passion project, as a give back project, he was generating income for himself through niche websites that were different and sort of detached, if you will, from from SPI.
And if you know, Pat's origin story, if you don't, by the way, like, check it out. But like he wanted to give back right just based on all that he had learned falling into [00:16:00] almost by accident, you know, online business. So that's the birth of S. P. I. So there were like there was no business model there.
There was no revenue coming in from S. P. I. In in sort of, you know, generation one, if you will have the business model generation to his affiliate. income, right? So affiliate marketing. And that came around because Pat was so successful building up SPI and building up its audience that web traffic was immense, right?
Back in an era where again, as a, I guess now towards the current plus the future, like what traffic is a lot harder to generate through SEO and other things. You know, because AI to some degree, notably, and other factors. So anyway, like that was the real, the first like business model that, that Pat did.
And it was significant these days in my mind, in my, perspective on the market and whatnot, like it's, it's harder, especially again, if you're just starting out to say like, Oh, I'm going to make a bunch of money, you know, and anchor my business model on affiliate, income, right?
When you're getting fractions of fractions of something but nonetheless for S. P. I. That was its generation to model, which is the first model that [00:17:00] actually generated revenue. You know, the third stage was D. I. Y. Courses. And this is when there was an explosion because of the technology and it got a lot easier.
We sold on Teachable and got very close with Encore, the founder of Teachable. That company grew massively and then was sold massively. And then other platforms that are still I mean, Teachable is around, Kajabi is very big, Thinkific, right? All these kind of major players. so that overtook in terms of numbers, the affiliate income rather quickly when we really prioritized DIY learning, built courses, sold courses, you know, in that way.
And then now today, you know, it's. It's recurring revenue, you know, our own recurring revenue, which is something I guess to punctuate, which is to, at least in my experience and trying to emphasize, you know, a sort of small business or solopreneur or very small team, right. That is operating off of, you know, savings, right.
To get started, you know, we're not raising money like venture capital backed, you know, startup companies. Where we want to try to prioritize cash flow, right? At least in my mind [00:18:00] finance is a big part of my life and my background also. So anyway you know, so moving into that model in terms of like, yeah, the offer stack has helped a ton to create recurring revenue on our own terms be able to have more predictability of, of, of that revenue.
And there's another and maybe last notable point in all of this especially moving away from selling DIY courses singularly to now selling community is we've. Reduced choice and we have simplified the offer stack right at one point we were selling 15 different courses right on different topics and sometimes we'd run promos on say, you know, power up podcasting and then we're kind of having a big month on on the theme of podcasting and the next month, you know, the theme of affiliate marketing and oh, hey, we have a course related to that, right?
And to some degree, like we still do that. Right. And those themes are, are still relevant and still teach those topics. But in terms of the business side of things, right, it was like, Oh, my gosh, we have 15 different products that we're trying to weave into our funnels and all these [00:19:00] other things, right?
And it, it was kind of noisy and chaotic. Okay. So anyway, moving to community, it's like, really, we just sell one thing, you know, we sell
community. A little more specifically, we have to like offers, you know, we have our pro community that you have to apply to get in. It's a more elevated offer.
And not everyone gets in because there's an application. And then we have the kind of open access where all of our courses live today, which is called all access pass. So you can come into all access past. You can get the full library of all 15. I think we're closer to 20 courses of big in sizes, big and small, right?
You can still do that on demand. You can still jump into that if you want to. But then what we're really focused on our learning journeys and pathways You know, the term accelerator has been used in the market a ton. We use it also. So we call, our you know, six to eight week learning experiences accelerators.
We run one at a time, you know, and these are the more conventional maybe term for it in the market is a cohort based course, right? We just call this accelerators. And that's all like the details in the weeks, zooming [00:20:00] back out to the offers hack. It's like, Hey, we offer a community. It's the best and most experienced has been out there for 15 years, you know, community for learning and development for early stage online entrepreneurs, you know, beginners that are going from idea to income.
Dustin: I love it.
Matthew: It's that simple.
Dustin: And the beauty of all that you said in the journey you went on is that last sentence, right? It's like, this is who we serve. And here's your basically one choice to, if you're more advanced, right? Like you have two tiers of community, but basically you have one core offer. And I love that wrote down, put a star by reduced choice.
I think we as business owners. So of course, as consumers were inundated with information and we value curation and we want to, be told what to do next. But I think as business, as consumers, that's true. And then, but as business owners, the paradox of choice is very real too, right? Like you have way too many
options of things you could sell, and you're always trying to launch the new thing versus really be able to focus on one core offer, or maybe, maybe a couple as you get a little more mature.
And so, Yeah, I've experienced that. So like back in my marriage days, when I first met Pat with that business, it [00:21:00] was like every month was a new
workshop with a new expert on a new topic. Right. And that worked. And we had a membership site and, you know, back in the day that that sort of worked but I would say fast forwarding to seven figure leap.
It's very analogous actually to what you guys have built with SBI. Now we're a little more upmarket because I have a smaller audience and I'm serving a more advanced base, I guess, a more advanced topic, but we do a 90 day accelerator, you know, the podcast profits accelerator. And then if you want to continue on with the more advanced track, you basically graduated out of that into the seven
figure elite mastermind.
And that's for the, you know, advanced business building sort of the infinite problem. But basically, Very simple, right? People know Dustin, you can do his accelerator or not. And then if you like that, and you want to, you love the mastermind and you love the experience that that provides you and the value you get, you can continue on or not.
And so it makes it very easy for me to market makes it easy for me to describe what I do when someone shakes my hand at a conference. And for the consumer, it's like, yeah, I do want that, or I don't want that. And it, and it gets out of this, you know, I have [00:22:00] 15 choices. Which one do I start with? And I think there's a lot of value for the consumer and for the business owner in that simplicity of choice.
So I love that you highlighted that I teased it a little bit, but there was a change and you've been the CEO of SPI for several years now. I would say to your credit a little bit behind the scenes, like a little bit, like I know who Matt Garland was, I know the title and the name. So like everyone would know, you know, Pat Flynn.
And so you've done a really masterful job. I feel like I'm adding intense, insane value to all these companies you're involved with without needing the spotlight or without needing that big, like personal brand. But that's even evolved a little bit lately where your role at SPI has changed. So do you want to just talk a little
bit about what's changed and where you see Matt Gartland going, I guess, in the near future, not only with SPI, but sort of in a broader sense.
Cause I'd love to hear that in the sense of like, What drives you and what motivates you because you're making a shift here and I think it's pretty
Matthew: Yeah. Well, that's again a very, very kind tea up there. Yeah, I'm thrilled that I have passed the torch in terms of the head job, you know, the CEO
[00:23:00] job to a really gifted, you know, leader and operator in his own regard and a very experienced team creator. And that's Caleb Wojcik. He's been a close friend of mine for a while as a passive also he was on a short list of folks that we kind of screened for as a part of a really deliberate succession planning process.
Not to get all like nerdy and wonky about that stuff, but the point of reference there is just like this wasn't rushed. You know, this was very deliberate. You know, and the process actually started in January. You know, Pat and I aligning on this it was, it was my idea in my call. And I'll tell that part of the story in just a moment, but to give Caleb credit again, just for another, another moment, you know, he emerged as the front runner through this process.
He had. You know, certain relationships with our team members or some of them, right? Just because he's been such a friend of SPI for so long. So that was an added boost, you know, for him, because when you get into team building and not everyone does, but, you know, in terms of your audience being a bit more advanced in their career, and they might have teams to start start building teams, you know, that level, like being a culture keeper, you know, with your [00:24:00] team and embodying those characteristics and behavior patterns.
And, and just, yeah, it's, it's. Ultimately trust, I guess, at the end of the day also was, was critical. So yeah, Caleb emerges that guy you know, we essentially went through a nine month process where then at the end of Q3, which was just a couple of weeks ago, you know, we were able to publicly announce that and he took over officially he joined the team.
Again, per our plan and by design at the start of Q2 as sort of effectively, it's like my number two. Right, to just get his feet inside the company, get him a little more inside access to the operation. And, you know, where we're going that's that's that. And couldn't again be more excited and grateful that Caleb
took on the job.
I am moving into a more limited role, admittedly but still very excited and grateful to be a part of SPI now as president. What that role means is it gives me. More focus on strategic partnerships and essentially like playing almost an ambassador role with within the market. Now, I was already doing that or [00:25:00] attempting to write as CEO.
Good CEO does but by,
Dustin: One of the many hats you trying to wear
Matthew: right,
Dustin: on that. Yeah.
Matthew: right. And certainly Pat does too. So it's not like, you know, relationship building is isolated to just me, but it gives me almost singular focus, you know, in that way. To, you know, have conversations like this one, right. You build relationships with great people like you and others at crop plus commerce to, you know, and this even has a sort of an overlay with the advisory work, you know, with tech companies, right.
And look for partnership opportunities in many different sizes. You know, I've done a lot of deal making, just another part of my background. And I think as a good business owner, especially for those that are, You know, growing up and doing well and, you know, their business is starting to take off.
Like you, you got to learn the ropes of deal making, like actual, like contract negotiation, et cetera, right? And partnership forging. So, so that's where I get to have a focus. But because it's a more limited role, it then creates more time and space for me to do, you know, some great work still in service of the broader idea just in the marketplace that is outside the box [00:26:00] of SPI, so to speak still care immensely.
I've never slowed down. If anything, I care more than ever about small business and especially online, you know, small business and solo printers in different market segments and not just say the creator economy. A great example are consumer package. Good startup founders, you know, in the CPG industry. My good friend Jason Pfeiffer and I have partnered up with three CPG pros to create a new community that is elevated.
It's more upmarket and it's focused on the needs and growing pains of CPG companies called CPG fast track. That's also on circle. That's also something of an accelerator. It's not for beginners. You know, it is for established, you know, CPG companies, but kind of fits into my, my larger purpose.
You know, kind of holistically, and this very much, includes SPI, and this has been true for such a long time, which is like my ultimate like, and this is deeply personal motivation for me is to protect founders and operators from themselves because it's hard. [00:27:00] It's lonely. It's difficult.
So many people these days are, moving into solo preneurship in any market, whether it's creator and personal brand or CPG or coaching and consulting or
any of these variants, they're moving into the space, not usually with a deep business background, they're moving into that because they have an addressable skill or they have a lot of charisma and storytelling ability.
And that's fantastic. Sometimes even like pat, you know, in his early days, he moved into it out of necessity, right? He lost his job. So all to say, like, as people get traction and grow, they're like, oh, crud, I don't really understand business or I don't understand business well enough. And I don't understand.
Finances and P and L's and budgeting. And how do I build a team if that's ever right for the right person? How do I actually do business strategy? How do I develop my offers? You know, all of these sorts of things that go into growing up as a business such that the business is sustainable. I think we all know kind of the general national statistics.
And they're remarkably consistent year over year as reported [00:28:00] by Forbes and Inc and all, you know, all the big boys in media, which is, you know, that after five years, half of small businesses die, right? Like they're, they're not around anymore, right? So like part of that mission statement for me in terms of supporting and enabling and protecting, you know, founders and entrepreneurs from themselves is that is that notion where You know, how can I plug myself into through partnerships, through other community groups, through other forms of value delivery, right?
That includes SPI, but now gives me an opportunity to like expand my surface area of impact. So that's kind of. And that's how it unites together, kind of everything. And I'll kind of shut up after this. Sorry to ramble, but you know, like the advisory work you know, the work I'm now doing with Jason Pfeiffer I've become good friends with Justin Walsh, another good example, just remarkably talented very value oriented guy, especially on LinkedIn, you know, rescheming some future stuff.
Like it gives me an opportunity and space to kind of build out like a broader kind of ecosystem. That still serves and supports SPI very [00:29:00] much.
Dustin: I love that. So yeah, you're in the middle of the playground with S. P. I. But you kind of got, you got a little more room to hit some different apparatus and scratch from different inches and different industries. Because obviously you have a, you're multi passionate to to an extreme. But I really love that.
You tied it back to your United kind of mission statement. And I actually share this. And that's this idea of protecting founders from themselves. I haven't used
those words, but I love that. One of the things that's been articulated to me is The value of our, of our mastermind people in there have described it as an entrepreneurial emotional support system.
It's like, we, we need a place to be real. Like our spouses don't really get it. Our friends don't really get it. Who work in corporate, like not only celebrate the wins, but talk about the struggles, bounce new ideas, get insights, get motivation, change your mindset. And I think community is, is just like the, the universal way.
I think has been and will continue to grow increasingly valuable to do that. So Matt, I know you've got family duties to attend to. So I want to be respectful of that, but I would love to turn the mic over to you for [00:30:00] a couple of minutes here if you'd like, and just give us any strategy or tactics, something that our audience, you know, a little bit about them that they can take away and implement when it comes to community.
Matthew: Yeah it's a great thing to end on. Especially in community and maybe even most especially at your community. I'd say like CPG FastTrack that I'm helping to build out and others that aren't necessarily sort of beginner oriented. Is the speed with which, you know, founders that have traction and some sense of even scale, right, are operating, you know, and therefore, like, there's an interesting I see sort of correlation between success and traction and growth with, like, how much content did then people consume, even if they're paying for something, right?
Even if they're in a part of community group. So the power of audio, like voice messaging and voice memos is increasingly interesting to me and very effective as a delivery mechanism. And as a tactic it's not necessarily like the big strategy, you know, that kind of encapsulates everything, but rather, especially inside, say, you know, my community programming at [00:31:00] CBG FastTrack, or potentially yours.
Right. Using audio messaging to kind of break through the noise, you know, to be something that then your member or your audience member, your community member or audience member kind of prioritize this in terms of if they're going to consume something, what are they going to consume? You can be personalized a little bit.
You can be compressed in your value delivery, you know, through an audio message. You can do it inside the community. You can do a what's up message. You can even do SMS like there's different channels and tech obviously to to
deliver that. And I feel it's a way to just further Kind of differentiate yourself in terms of who you are and what you're saying and what sort of help your, your offering through a big transformation or a small one, knock small blockers out, you know, along the way, or deliver a very needed, you know, boost of motivation, you know, at the right moment, if you kind of sense that someone's maybe drifting in your programming, something like that, drop them a one to two minute audio message, you can make, make all the world.
So, I, I would encourage folks to at least begin to experiment with audio messaging in some small, but tactically helpful ways inside of whatever programming that you're offering.
Dustin: I love that all of [00:32:00] my, all of my alumni and my members are gonna be like, he totally planned it, Matt, to come say that. Cause like, I am all about that. So, whether it's in circle and leave an audio, you know, post, or a lot
of times it's audio DM and then, you know, we use boxer as well as a support channel, that's same thing, but yeah, SMS.
And honestly, I use that a lot more in the, in the sales process, when someone's got some final questions It's nothing easier for me than, you know, walking my kids or walking my dog and leaving some very personal, real audio notes. And I love to receive those too. I feel like that's just a really kind of lost, lost art of communication that you can do in a moment and provides actually extra value, even though it doesn't take all the staging and all this stuff that like a video or writing all this stuff out would take.
So, Matt, I love the very practical takeaway there. Final thing here is just to turn the mic over to you and say, If people want to be in Matt Garland's world, they want to have a partnership. They want to just learn from you and all this amazing expertise that you've shared today and go a little deeper.
What's the best way to connect with you and stay in touch?
Matthew: I appreciate that. [00:33:00] And it's always a little bit weird with me. You said this earlier, like I don't have like the forward brand that a lot of these people do. And I actually have like a lot of even, you know, concern with social media generally. Different conversation for a different day. You know, LinkedIn is if I do anything, you know, it's on LinkedIn.
So yeah, that's probably the best place to connect with me. I'm not the guy that's publishing every day, at least not yet. I have a couple of friends like Justin and
Jason that are kind of on my case to probably do more of that. I don't even have a personal website. Probably should do that as well.
So I've always loved kind of being the a little bit of the, secret weapon behind the scenes for a lot of these folks. It's been a joy. You asked earlier, and I'm not intending to drift hopefully too far here at the end. But yeah, my motivation isn't to be like, you know, the guy on stage, you know, sort of thing.
Just, you know, doing the work, building out, you know, with vision and, programming, you know, these businesses has been awesome all to say yeah, find me on LinkedIn, send me a direct message on LinkedIn. That's probably the best. It's a very specific way to connect with me and, you know, we'd love to hear how I could possibly help
Dustin: I love it. And maybe a quick audio note. They're, they're limited. [00:34:00] They're, they're limited to 60 seconds on LinkedIn. So you really got to get your real estate done.
Matthew: they'll change that. I am sure. At some point.
Dustin: And I've been saying Matt because you know, we have a bit of a relationship, but on LinkedIn, he is Matthew Gartland with a T. If you want to look him up, I think he's probably one of the only ones.
He's the best looking one for sure. So,
Matthew: Oh,
Dustin: Matt, I, I will let you go for now. I'd love to, stay in touch, talk partnerships, collaboration, community, all the things. I mean, you're a gym. You're an awesome guy. I really appreciate you carving out time for us and your busy schedule.
And Yeah, man. Check out Matt on LinkedIn and go also Google him. He's got some really amazing interviews out there that I've kind of binged over the past week and learned a ton in the process. So, don't sleep on Matt Garland. He's a seasoned secret weapon, but he doesn't have to be a secret to you.
So Matt, thanks again for
being here.
Matthew: That's brilliant. Yeah, man. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Anytime. [00:35:00] [00:36:00]