Invest In Yourself: The Digital Entrepreneur Podcast · Phil Better

Breaking Free from the 9-to-5: Entrepreneurial Lessons with Matthew Stafford

·30 min·2 clips

Matthew Stafford says most business problems are actually people problems, not business problems.

1. Invest In Yourself: The Digital Entrepreneur Podcast centers on Matthew Stafford's move from the nine-to-five mindset into entrepreneurship. 2. Phil Better hosts Matthew Stafford, who is presented as a veteran entrepreneur and managing partner at Build Growth Scale. 3. The episode asks how Stafford went from selling newspapers at 13 to helping e-commerce brands improve website conversion. 4. Stafford says he sold a paper called True Grit for a quarter, then 50 cents, and made about $60 a week in a small town. 5. He says that newspaper money helped him buy a Pontiac Firebird at 15 and rebuild the engine with a mechanic neighbor. 6. Stafford describes that car project as difficult, delayed gratification, and a path to freedom at 16. 7. After the car project, he says he worked for a body shop and then for a self-employed contractor who handled minor construction around canals and lakes in Michigan. 8. Stafford says that contractor sold him the business on a land contract, and he later grew it from about $50,000 a year to more than $1 million a year. 9. He says he also worked selling cars for 13 months and was top salesman in 10 of those months before quitting after being denied time off for a vacation. 10. Stafford says he then started a concrete business that handled commercial flatwork and parking lots for Menards, Home Depot, Lowe's, and Walmart across the country. 11. He says that job kept him on the road about 200 days a year before he shifted attention to online sales. 12. Stafford credits a Tony Robbins event and the 'Money Masters' program with showing him that people were making money online. 13. He says he tried Teespring, ran Facebook ads, and built a business that did about $15 million in T-shirt sales in the first three and a half years. 14. Stafford says he switched because digital work let him earn from a computer without weather, travel, hotels, per diem, or heavy equipment costs. 15. He says Build Growth Scale now helps thousands of e-commerce businesses improve the website experience from landing page to payment or opt-in. 16. Stafford says the team has looked at hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue data and stopped counting when it reached about $600 million several years ago. 17. He says website optimization is about human psychology and behavior, not tricks and hacks, and that a website is a conversation before the company gets to speak. 18. Stafford says his routine includes journaling, meditation, and giving love to himself so he can serve from a 'full cup' instead of a needy one. 19. Listeners interested in e-commerce, conversion rate optimization, and entrepreneurial self-work will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a theory-heavy debate or a story with a dramatic twist may skip it.

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