Purpose: Freedom to Support Lifestyles

On this Episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Matt Clark-Chief Rainmaker of The Virtual Edge and, in his own words, "Chief Igniter" for business owners. They discuss Purpose in the context of Freedom as Matt shares his background as a rainmaker first as a waiter, where he discovered his gift in connecting people. Soon he evolved to selling door to door telecoms services, and co founder of a business that reached $6mn in two (2) years only to find himself with “golden handcuffs;” he had a wage and began selling his shares in the company after the thrill of building a company was no longer.

From virtualedge his goal is to empower business owners to achieve growth without sacrificing their freedom. To learn more about how Matt’s journey into helping businesses wasn't just a career choice; it was a calling to fill gaps he saw in the market and to change lives.

Matt discovered his purpose and while traveling the world, he has served 1,800 clients in 26 countries representing over $100mn in sales.

 

You can find out more about Matt at:

 The Virtual Edge 

[email protected]

 

Transcription:

00:04
Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This Founders Sandbox podcast, it's now into its second season.

00:27
The monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, scalable and sustainable business with great corporate governance underlying it. My mission is very simple. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests to the podcast are business owners themselves, corporate directors, investment funds, professional service providers who like me

00:57
want to use the power of the private enterprise, be that small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests on topics that will include resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build.

01:26
a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Matt Clark, who's joining us all the way from across the world in Thailand. He's joining in his capacity as chief rainmaker of the virtual edge. And in his own words, his role is one of chief igniter for business owners to enable them to be happy and richer. That's right.

01:55
Thank you, Matt, for joining us today. Thanks for having me on. After our initial introductory call the other day, it got me really excited to join in today and just have a conversation, ask some deep questions, and say what's on the mind. You speak about what's on the mind of many people today. Absolutely. And my listeners are business owners themselves, but also

02:21
corporate governance, corporate board directors, and professional service providers who really are affecting change through the companies they advise. And I'm really excited that you reached out as the CEO of the Virtual Edge, because I think what you're doing to provide freedom to business owners to live a very fulfilled lifestyle is quite unique. And I'm eager to get into the questions.

02:51
We chose my listeners, again, the podcast is available on most podcasts streaming platforms. And I always like to work with my guests on a catchy title that really goes back to either purpose, resilience, or sustainability. And Matt and I chose purpose, freedom to support lifestyles. So catchy title, but you'll hear more as we progress in the interview today.

03:21
Matt and I do have some commonalities in the type of services we provide. We both work with B2B companies and we are absolute connectors. How his ability to connect people is key to being a rainmaker and his choosing to create freedom for business owners to live a fulfilled life is what this podcast is going to be about today. Woohoo.

03:50
Woohoo. So you have a serial background as a rainmaker. You first started out, I believe in South Africa as a waiter. You discovered early on your gift in connecting people. You then were selling door to door sales and then co-founded with two partners, a business that in only two years you got to $6 million in revenue. And at that stage you

04:18
told me in your own words, you know, I felt like I had golden handcuffs and I really didn't feel fulfilled anymore. And so you set out to travel the world and nine years later, Virtual Edge is still going and you discovered your purpose while traveling in the world. And at this stage, nine years in, you've served 1,800 clients in over 26 countries.

04:47
representing over about a hundred million dollars in sales. So absolutely delighted for you to really walk us through your journey, what it is in terms of secret sauce at the virtual edge and as Chief Igniter, you bring to your clients. Can you share your origin story, Matt? Thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you kind of touched on some of their, I was never one of those people who knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

05:17
You know, when you meet those people and they're just like, it's gonna be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor, became a doctor. And in some ways I envy them, where it's like they know what they wanna do and they can just go and do it. And in some ways I don't because there's just one path. And so I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left school. And my dad was like, you're gonna be the first Clark to go and get a degree. I was like, well, I think you barking up the wrong tree there.

05:47
I hated school. Yeah. And, you know, I actually went and my first job was as a waiter and I figured out that I really loved talking to people and I was good at it. And so, you know, I went over to the UK, started doing door to door sales there. And it's a really tough industry. All right. I've actually had one other guest, um, to the podcast who also did door to door sales while she was.

06:15
pursuing her undergraduate degree. It is truly a test of true resilience. I love when I get to talk to other business owners who are doing really well and they say, yeah, I also started in door-to-door sales. And then we go down and have a bit of a laugh about some of the stories that we've got along the way and doors that have been slammed and things that have been said to you. And it definitely does build resilience. And I think

06:44
For me personally, it was the foundation for everything that I've done in my life going forward. I mean, there's not much anyone can say to me that I'm gonna take offense to or get upset by and into days, day and age where people are getting offended by everything. You know, it's, people are more sensitive, let me put it that way. Where people are more sensitive, you know, when you come from a stage where

07:14
You've just been drilled every single day. There's not much that can bother you. And if it bothers you, it actually kind of clears the way for you to go out and do what you want, um, because you're doing it on your terms. And so, you know, when I came back from the UK, uh, I started a, I started working for a company in South Africa, doing door to door sales, we were selling telephone systems on a five year lease agreement to businesses. Okay. And that's where you started with B2B, right?

07:43
It was kind of less harsh, maybe. Yeah, I wouldn't go that far. I heard that. We'll talk about B2B, right? Yeah, let's say they're different. I don't know if they're less harsh and you know, you've got more, more obstacles to go through because you got to get through the gatekeeper or the receptionist or whoever that person is. So it's a different relationship. Right. And so.

08:12
You know, what we learned and what I really uncovered there that made sense to me was that there is a process for everything. And it's a system, right? We were doing things manually, but it was still a process, still a system. And I landed up, you know, starting a business where, I mean, in that business alone, we were selling 200, 400 systems a month. We had offices all over the country. It grew like wildfire. Nice.

08:39
And then two buddies and I started a business and within four years, we'd taken that business up to $6 million a year, just doing door to door sales. And that thing of systems kept coming back to me because we could literally take somebody that had never sold before in their life. You could find them, we could hire them, we could train them. And within two weeks, they're up and running selling, making money.

09:08
That is truly remarkable. A repeatable system. Right. We had a system for how do we find them? We had a system for how do we qualify them? How do we hire them? How do we train them? How do we keep them going? How do we fix them when they're broken? We even had a time when, um, one of our competitors poached all of our sales people, we were left waiting from.

09:35
We went from 18 salespeople down to four overnight. And it was myself, my two business partners and two sales guys in Johannesburg, two sales guys in Cape Town. And what we did was we still went out and we went and sold and you know, we, as owners stepped up and we went crazy. I would say is a good word. In fact, we had one of the best months we've ever had.

10:05
Wow. While that was happening, we were able to replace our entire sales team. So we actually decided to have a smaller sales team with better quality people. Okay. But within a month, we'd replace the entire sales team and back at the same revenue that we were at. Okay. That's truly remarkable and a sign of resilience, right? And you know, having skin in the game as a business owner.

10:28
Exactly. You've got to because you know, what are the options? It's like, do I let this whole thing fall over and then everything that we've built goes to waste? Or do we get stuck in and go and fix it? And so the good thing is, is that we built the systems to be able to do it and to do it quickly. Right. And so I've taken that thinking into what we do now. Okay, because

10:53
For me, you know, my wife and I have been traveling the world for the past two and a half years. Our business has been growing on average, we work with about 50 clients at any given time. And in order to do that, you need to have systems in place.

11:09
So let's go into exploring specifically the use of social media platforms to reach B2B. All right. It's kind of at the core of what you do. And you're going to explain more. But Gina, you and I work in the B2B space. And I was really shocked. You have clients that are from the energy, telecoms, high-tech companies.

11:38
You use LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, perhaps others. I would not have thought that the buyers of these products and services would be on these platforms, maybe LinkedIn. I mean, what's the use of, so the secret sauce, using social media platforms and what is the typical buyer decision profile? That's kind of a loaded question. It may be a great question.

12:08
You've already served 1,800 clients. I want to learn some more. Thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, it's actually a really good question and not something that I've been asked before, so I love that. We use LinkedIn as the primary channel for generating leads on the B2B platform. And the reason that we do that is because I don't see LinkedIn as a social network, a social media network. LinkedIn is a networking platform. Right.

12:37
And for me, the reason that we got onto LinkedIn was when I sold my shares in the previous business, I wanted to create something online. I wanted to break free from those golden handcuffs. Okay. And I couldn't figure out Facebook, uh, the kind of clients I was looking for. I couldn't find them. I couldn't figure out Google. I couldn't figure out YouTube. I couldn't figure out these things to actually make it work for me. All right. One of my friends said to me is like, you've got to go check out LinkedIn because it's like, I'm doing amazing on it.

13:06
And I did, and you know what I realized? Is that it's like virtually knocking doors. Except I can skip the red tape, I can skip the gatekeeper, I can go and speak directly to the exact person. I can find them, I can connect with them, and I can start a conversation with the exact person that I'm looking for. Wow. And that blew my mind. Okay. So we started doing it.

13:35
started signing up some clients. Then I went to some of the people that I was working with, some of the clients I was working with, I was like, hey guys, you've got to check this out. This is what we're doing. Would it be valuable to you if you could book an extra five to 10 calls a week with the exact person that you're looking for? And they're like, hell yes, of course, it's a no brainer. So we started helping some clients and they loved it. And then we started running events, teaching people how to do it at scale. Okay.

14:02
we, you know, live events, we'd have like 300 people in a room, teaching them how to do it at scale. And it just kind of grew from there. And now we've kind of gone full circle back to the more personalized, um, working with more specific clients, uh, helping them going deeper and helping them get bigger results. So the buyer decision profile that you then, um, use your system and

14:31
is developed jointly with your client, right? Correct. And we've got a strategic advisory part there. That's interesting. Okay, I get it. Yeah, so we do that. Each client is individual, right? I mean, we work with a lot of our clients are B2B service providers. And who they're looking for is they're looking to sell to other businesses. So typically it's a small to medium organizations or some of them are looking for corporates as well. Okay.

15:01
Um, we've worked with energy companies, we've worked with accountants. Um, we've worked with a company that does, that's an auction house, right? They buy and sell heavy earth moving equipment, you know, where a minimum sale is $200,000. I mean, they did $25 million in six months with six salespeople that they send me publishing houses, right? So it's high ticket services. And it's

15:26
for people that are looking for a very specific kind of client, they know who their buyer is, they know who the decision maker is, they're trying to get in front of them and they're trying to walk them down the journey. Now how we look at it and how we look at our process and what we take our clients through is that we've got about 11 different ways in which you can reach out to them, connect with them, get them on calls, walk them down the journey. Right. And we've created like pre-built processes and campaigns systems.

15:55
that can be plugged in. And when we work with the client, we will identify who is that ideal client that they're looking for. What are the trigger points that are gonna get them moving down, that are gonna get them to connect, to open up a conversation and then move down the buying cycle. And then what's the conversion event that needs to happen? Do we need to be getting them to a call? Do we need to be getting them to an event? Do we send them to a sales letter? What's that conversion event based on?

16:23
their process. Do you want to get them to one of your salespeople, whatever it is? Okay. And we help them structure that. All right. Now, the journey between getting from connection to paying client is where the magic happens. And how we look at it is that if we look at like golf, right? Everyone knows what golf is and how golf works. You stand at one side, goal is hit the ball into the hole. Right.

16:53
oversimplification. If there's any golfers listening to me, I have, I do play and have played golf. So I know I'm oversimplifying. You won't share handicaps on this. My handicap is that I haven't played in a hell of a long time. So I don't even know. Cause you're running a business. I'm traveling the world, right? I tell you one thing that doesn't fit in a 20 kilogram suitcase is golf clubs. So how we look at it is, is if we look at golf, right? So,

17:23
If you are the, you're the person who's swinging the golf club, the ball is the prospect, right? The person that you're trying to convert and the whole is the goal to get them to become a client. Now, what most people are trying to do in their sales process is they're trying to hit a hole in one every single time. They're trying to go from hello to buy my stuff. Right. And if you look at in golf, not even the professionals do it every single time.

17:52
Yes, they get that it does happen from time to time, but it's not, especially if it's like a par four or a par five, you have to have a couple of hits because you just don't have the power or the strength to get there. So we look at it a little bit different. And instead of trying to hit a hole in one of every single ball, we can have multiple balls on the field, right? On the fairway. And we now have somebody that doesn't have to be a professional that can just tap the

18:22
towards the whole. So when they get in, it's an easy tap to get in the hole and become a client. So the approach, right? Exactly. So the best part is because how we've built that is you can have a team member run it that doesn't have to be a marketing expert or a sales expert. It's about building the right assets, the right communication structure and the right journey to walk the client down that it becomes an easy tap in the hole. Excellent.

18:53
instead of trying to hit hole in ones all the time and just being frustrated and disappointed. Actually, another guest that has joined me here in the founder sandboxes, Gaurav Kumar, CEO of Beyond Code, and it's a lead generation and appointment scheduling company, headquarters.

19:19
in the United States, but operations in three continents. He wrote and authored a book and it's inspired. I'm looking for it on my shelf right now. I think it's covered up on the golf game and the similarities of what you're sharing here, the approach and the different tactics that are analogous to a good golf game. So I will introduce you, all right? Amazing. Because it's, yeah.

19:49
there on the other side of the world. Thank you for sharing that. I get it now. And the energy telecoms, high-tech companies. Let's switch gears a little bit. Part of my mission with this podcast as well as my consulting next act advisors is I work with founders, particularly on investor readiness.

20:17
to take in external capital, right? And just take in the amount of money that they need in exchange for a percentage of the company, but not too much, right? So that they can scale with the money they bring in to then increase the valuation of the company and do second and third rounds of investment with outside stakeholders that sometimes operationally help you, but ultimately they want to have a return on their investment.

20:46
I do not work when I do my intake business. I do not work for lifestyle businesses. So I had some dissonance, cognitive dissonance when I'm talking to you, Matt, about, you know, providing business owners the freedom to follow their lifestyle. So walk me through how founders

21:13
maybe have different definitions of success without going for external capital and you at the virtual edge are helping them. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we kind of look at business a little bit different. And I had my mindset completely shifted when I spoke to a buddy of mine. And, you know, he's started 40 companies. He's taken 10 of them to eight figures.

21:43
Um, he consults with some of the biggest well-known companies in the world right now. Um, you know, he's just came back from a weekend with Richard Branson, like that's the kind of level that he's playing at. And he said something to me one day and he was like, you know, so obviously there's someone you want to listen to, right? He kind of knows his stuff. Yeah. Uh, he said to me, he's like, you know, Matt, I think about things very differently. He's like, I decide I don't build my business around my life.

22:12
I mean, I don't build my life around my business, right? And this is the trap that most people fall into. So they start a business, they go crazy. Next thing they look, they've built a monster. They've got all the staff, all this team, spinning a lot of plates, a lot of moving parts. And exactly like what I did, then you land up with golden handcuffs. And so what we do is build things differently. And here's the explanation on this, which we've taken to heart and implemented with our clients, is that we first decide what...

22:40
is the life that we want to live. Okay. Right. What sort of, how, how, how much do you want to work? What sort of investments do you want to have? And how much money do you need in your personal income in order to achieve that lifestyle that you want? Okay. Then you go and you build the businesses around it. In fact, what he says is he calls them boxes, right? You go, you stack the boxes. Okay.

23:09
There's three ways to, to earn wealth, right. And to create wealth, which is start a business, invest in property and then pay the assets, you know, stocks, bonds, crypto, I'm chucking that in with that as well. And essentially it's pretty simple. It's that you choose which ones work for you. Some people are more directed towards business. Great. Some people work in jobs and they like going into property or they invest in stocks or.

23:38
whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. You take the emotion out of it. And the only question that you're asking is, how do I stack the boxes so that I can get the lifestyle and the income that I want? And that removes the emotional energy from it, which means you can look at it objectively and make better decisions. And then you can step back and say, all right, now I know what I wanna create. I know how much I need in order for that to be a reality. Now, what boxes do I need to stack?

24:08
And then when you're looking at them as boxes, you're not as, I mean, you're always going to be emotionally invested, but it's not going to become your baby. And you can look at it objectively and say, is this working for me? Is it getting me close to my goal or further away from it? And that will determine the actions that you take and not only determine the actions that you take, but also if you're building a business, it'll determine how you build the business.

24:33
Cause you'll make very different decisions. If your goal is to work three days a week, or if your goal is to take three months off and go travel, or you're trying to stack a whole bunch of cash so you can invest in property, you can have very different goals and you can have very different decisions that are going to be made to achieve those goals. And different systems you need to put in place in order to get there. And it would, when you bring on a client or a client,

25:01
or prospecting, do you have these conversations or do they find you because of that? Is that your tagline? I mean, how, this is a very interesting concept. Yeah, so it's interesting that people generally work with us because they wanna build systems. They wanna build systems around, how do I find my ideal clients, connect with them and convert them? All right. And where we always start when people come in is ask them, well, where are we actually going with this business? What's the vision for this?

25:29
You know, take a look at the next three to five years and see what the plan is actually bringing in. And then we build the model working backwards to help achieve that. Because it's going to be a very different plan if someone's coming in and saying, well, I just want to get to $20,000 a month than if someone comes in and says, I've got three to five years and I want to sell this business. Okay. You know,

25:56
This is almost a skill set that is prevalent today in the wealth advisor role, working with business owners backwards. Like, when do you want to, what is your exit plan, right? Or how much do you want to have as, you know, monthly income, you know, maximizing your net tax proceeds.

26:26
of selling a business. So again, lovely, highly consultative. This is very unique. I'm thankful that you reached out and wanted to join me in the founder sandbox. Yeah, you know, let me share something with you that I think you'll actually appreciate that might be quite relevant to a lot of people here. Okay. I actually just got off a call with a buddy of mine

26:56
in South Africa. Okay. He's done really well, built massive businesses, like multiple big businesses. And he landed up, you know, selling everything and taking quite life just got too much, right? And, you know, caused some personal issues. I won't share all his, all of his stuff, but cause some pretty significant personal issues. And we got

27:21
chatting again and we actually jumped on a call and he said, you know, Matt, I've gone into this new niche where I work with CEOs of tech companies and I helped them to focus on health, right? Because companies that grow have KPIs to track and measure the growth, but busy CEOs don't have KPIs to track and measure their health. And this is do we help them track and manage it and grow it from there. And his big challenges is like, now I want to go into a new market.

27:51
I don't have any audience. I don't have any network. I'm selling a high ticket offer. It's $15,000 just for the first six months. Right. So it's a high ticket thing and I need to go out and start having conversations and finding them, connecting with them, validating what I've got this and actually start making some sales. And so we worked through that plan, worked backwards. And the first step for him is not to go out and create an offer and make offers

28:20
drive leads and drive calls. His first step is to do market research. Okay. Very smart. And understand his clients on a deep level, because if he does that now, yes, it's going to be more work now, but later on, it's going to save him so much more time because you can get the message, the positioning, the offer, you can run some tests, you can pick up a couple of clients along the way, and you can actually validate his product as he's going through this. Very helpful.

28:50
Um, yes. And it is, um, mental health month here in the United States. And this business is in the mental health space. And there are actually, um, consulting firms catering to the same CEOs of high tech companies, and there is, there are podcasts, there are articles, particularly this month around mental health and yes, running a business is highly stressful. And, um,

29:19
you need to take that time to not read tool, it's just refresh yourself. So thank you. We're gonna switch gears. I sit on corporate boards. I always like to bring my guests back to really think about in your systems today, your processes, your business model. We're all dealing with the advent of generative AI. And how do we...

29:48
bring it into our companies, either for scaling up our talent, for improving processes. It's not necessarily a cost down effort. So you have shared with me that with the 1,800 customers, one thing that you've developed over the years is a proprietary large language model that powers an AI tool, that informs perhaps these 11 different ways

30:17
of identifying your ideal business buyer decision profile. Can you talk to me about how you at the virtual edge have thought about the regulatory environment? It's a hot topic right now, right? Are the AI models biased? Or how is it going to affect my workforce? Share my workforce?

30:44
How ethical is it that we are we getting to the right people or are we excluding some segments of the population? So talk to me through how you've been dealing with AI, your own proprietary large language model and shed some light. So we're not as I think left out, you know, worrying. Maybe we're over concerned by the advent of generative AI and our business models.

31:14
Yep. And it's a great question because there's a lot of people out there. I think everyone has just jumped on the bandwagon and is screaming at the top of their lungs. You need to be an AI or those businesses is going to fall over or become irrelevant or whatever it is. So it's almost like a bit of fear mongering in a, in a way. Yes. There's fear mongering on the one side and there's FOMO on the other side. Exactly. Everyone's like, Oh, this is amazing, but like I wanted, but I don't know what to do with it. So.

31:43
You know, we've gone through a lot of AI tools. We've tested a ton of stuff out. We've implemented stuff. There's a lot of junk out there, right? People that have just thrown stuff together and trying to make a quick buck. There is a lot of really good stuff out there. Okay. What we found is that no matter what tool you use, right. And no matter what system you use, the quality of the output is determined by the quality of the inputs. Say that one more time.

32:13
by listeners. The quality of the output is determined by the quality of the input. Okay, there's a saying called garbage in garbage out. You've heard of that? Yes, I have. With AI, with systems, with automation, if you put garbage in, you get 10 times garbage out. It multiplies that garbage. Right? Yes. So

32:40
What we've done and how we use it and how we help our clients use it as well is that we've been doing this for a long time. We've built frameworks, we've built methodologies, we've built a whole bunch of different stuff. Scripts, templates, frameworks, video scripts, you name it. We've built everything for every piece of the puzzle that we needed. And we used to

33:06
give this to people on a Google doc and have hour long training videos that would walk them through it. Instead of what we did now is we took that thought process, we took that thinking, we went and looked at how we train our people, what are the things that they've got to think about? And we built that into an AI system. So now what happens is that when people in the past used to have to sit and think about this hard and...

33:34
question their life's decisions sometimes and go really deep and it would take long. This was the problem, what it would take too much time to get to results. Whereas now we can literally ask them a couple of questions and it'll give them an answer based on our frameworks and our methodologies that'll get them 80 to 90% of the way there. So prompts, right? That's how you ask questions. Well.

34:01
We ask the questions and then questions feed into the framework that we've built in the back end and then it gives the answers based on our methodologies and our frameworks. So it's very specific to our process.

34:18
And it's the body of information is growing and enhancing the large language model over time. Yeah, absolutely. And the more we use it, the more we refine it because as we're consulting with our clients, then new stuff comes up as we go into new markets or as we come to people that are experiencing new things that are different from what we've done in the past.

34:46
we can tweak and update it so that it'll get them to where they wanna go faster. And what's happened for us is that what used to take our clients three months to get through is now taking three days. So if we go back to the question around regulatory, yes, is if, sorry, I don't know why this thing, I did close it, is if we are looking at how

35:14
it gets used in a regulatory way. I would say once again, the quality of your input term is the quality of your output and use it as a guideline, not as a rule. And you still wanna put your own stuff in there. So I would be looking at questions instead of how do we get AI to take stuff over for us, rather, how do we put our stuff into models?

35:41
and then train it on our models so that it becomes our own internal processes. And in a way, you clone yourself.

35:54
Okay. Yeah. And if you base it around the frameworks and models, it's going to give you much better output type, you know, we look at for, um, for us with, uh, with the coaching and consulting that we do with clients, all the questions that we used to get asked where people get used to get stuck, those disappeared. Yes. That's nine years of craftsmanship, right? With the aid of automation. Yeah. And this has literally been built in the last six months. So.

36:23
It takes you nine years to get there and boom, six months overnight success. Congratulations. That's a lot of hard work. And I would ask, are you protecting it in any way with a trademark or at least patent? Yes. Trademark. Good. Good. OK. I am a listener to the Founder's Sandbox.

36:49
I have listened to Matt, Chief Rainmaker of the Virtual Edge. I'm kind of interested in building a business to support my lifestyle. How do my listeners contact you, Matt? Awesome. Um, so very simple. I'm on very easy to find Matt Clark Rainmaker, M-A-T-T-C-L-A-R-K Rainmaker on LinkedIn, Matt Clark Rainmaker, Facebook.

37:18
Matt Clark Rainmaker, hell, even send me an email, matt at the virtualedge.com. I love it when people mail me, ask me questions, I respond to them all personally. I love connecting with people. And if there's stuff that we can do together, great. If not, that's cool too. Maybe we grow the network, maybe we share our networks with each other, connect, refer stuff to each other. I don't know, who knows?

37:48
I don't know until we, until we reach out, I think there's, there's so much stuff around, especially in today's day and age where everyone's just trying to use social media to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell to each other. Uh, that personal human touches is now more important than ever. Authenticity, right? And personalization, you know, I was going back, I was chatting to a guy yesterday, uh, as part of our, uh, sales process and he's booked to call him with us and he wants to sign up.

38:17
work with us. And we were just voicing notes in back and forward. And he's like, I love this personalized approach. He's like, I actually don't talk to anyone unless they send me a voice note. I was like, well, there you go. Yes, it is personalized. Now, I want to take us back to the founder sandbox. And I started by

38:46
talking about my mission is very simple and really helping business owners to be more resilient beyond their purpose, purpose-driven, sustainable and or scalable growth. I like to ask each of my guests, what is the meaning of those terms? Not one guest has the same definition and it's just a delight to listen to you as a business owner, eight years or nine years now into the virtual edge, helping over 1800.

39:14
companies and growing across 26 countries. What does resilience mean to you, Matt?

39:22
You know, I think all of them, if I can kind of bundle them under one answer that can expand, it means that you've got systems in place that you can track and measure what's going on.

39:38
Right. And the reason I say that, because if I think about all the times where we've had amazing highs and low lows, how do you be resilient if it's just based on feeling and energy? There's only so much willpower that a person has. That's right. Right. But if things get tough and they always do, there's always winter always comes. Right. Sometimes it's just a short little.

40:07
a cold burst, sometimes it lasts a long time. And when those downs hit, if you've got nothing to look back on and say, where did it go wrong? What worked? What didn't? Then everything lands up being emotion-based and that's a spiral, it's a downward spiral.

40:28
takes and when exactly. And you're going to focus and the human brains are designed to focus on the negative. That is true. Right? That's why the news is so had got so big and why they so negative all the time, because that's what captures attention. And so when we look at this, if you look at the numbers, it takes the emotion out of it. And we went through a downturn, uh, last year and

40:57
last year or year before, I don't know, these years are kind of starting to blur a little bit for me when things happened, you know, you move so- You had a winter, let's say. We had a winter, okay. And we look back and we're like, what is actually going on? Why is the stuff not working that's supposed to be working? And we're like, well, I've got a great idea. Why do we pull up all the numbers and take a look at where the gap is? And we look through all the numbers and we're like, okay.

41:24
That's exactly where the problem is. That's what's not working anymore. Let's just fix that one little piece. And guess what happened? Went straight up again. Okay. Remove the emotion, look at the data and just go back and focus, right? Exactly. Because it's a lot more easy to be resilient when you're looking at the numbers and the numbers are showing an upward trend.

41:48
It's difficult to be resilient if you're looking at your bank account and your bank accounts going down, but you've got no reason as to why it's going down or where the points are that things are breaking.

42:00
Right. Then you just living, you're addicted to opium. It's what we call it. Hope is not a strategy. So purpose-driven, I think your own story. Um, I don't want to steal your, your thunder, but your purpose. Um, I remember when we first started our conversation the other day, it was like, I really want to know your origin story. What makes you do?

42:29
you do today? What? The Britcha Wedge. And you said freedom. So what's it? Yeah, purpose driven. Can you tell us a bit about the freedom element? Absolutely. We've got one life, you know, and maybe I can even, I can share a story that hit home for me in a big way. And so a wealthy

42:59
wants to go out on a day of fishing. And he's sitting there on the pier, goes out fishing with one of the local fishermen in a small little boat, single motor. They have a great day, catch a lot of fish. They come back to the place, sitting, having a beer. And the businessman says to the fisherman, he's like, you know, that was amazing. You could do really well at this. You know, if you did this once every day, you could buy another boat. And the fisherman says, hmm, that's interesting. What then?

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He said, well, if you continue to do that, then you can have two boats, then three boats, then a whole fleet. He says, hmm, that's interesting, what's then? He said, well, then you can actually buy a warehouse and you can start running imports and grow the business even then. You can own the whole dock. And he's like, hmm, that's interesting, and what then? He says, and then you can sell it, make tons of money and retire to the beach and come fish every day.

43:58
Brilliant. Thank you for providing another lens of success and freedom within the business world. So, I guess the point is, the freedom is we've got one life to live, do the things that make you happy.

44:20
Fantastic. Final, second to last question, sustainable growth. I suspect what you're gonna, your definition, but tell me in your own words, what does sustainable, scalable growth mean to you? Systems, measurable. Yep. Measurable systems, what do the numbers tell us? Based on the numbers, we can make the right decisions and take the right actions. Don't go feeling, go with decisions, make data-driven.

44:49
And then, you know, at different stages of a business's growth, different data is going to be important. So if you're starting out, you don't need all the systems and numbers and KPIs that a corporation has. Right. You need to know how many people are you reaching out to a day? How many are starting conversations? How many are you getting on calls and how many are converting? So where's the broken points in that? Right. And Matt, that, um,

45:18
I didn't ask this question before, but the types of companies that you serve are from startup to scale up. Talk about the different profiles of your clients, right? Yeah. So most of our clients are, they've got a small team, you know, under 10. And you know, they're doing anywhere from two, 25,000.

45:47
in a month. So it's at 300,000 a year to a million. So about 300,000 to 3 million is sort of like the first group of people that we work with. And then we also work with companies with large sales teams, eight, nine figure businesses that have sales teams that are in the B2B space looking for very specific clients. So the principles are exactly the same, slightly different implementation strategy.

46:16
Um, but the process works. In fact, we often find it's easier to work with the bigger companies and the bigger sales teams because they get results 10 times faster, right? Right. Cause they've got a validating. So, yeah, well, everything's probably bringing a lot of knowledge already of the, um, ICP, right. The ideal customer, right? So there's some, and everything's already proven, you know, we have to build anything. They just need to go get more. Right. Well, thank you. Last question.

46:46
Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Yeah, it was amazing. It was the second time I'm talking to you and the second time I heard a phone talking to you. To my listeners, if you liked this episode with Matt Clark, sign up for the monthly release of the Founder Sandbox. We learn here how to build with strong governance, a resilient, scalable and purpose-driven company to make profits for good.

47:14
And I'm absolutely delighted that we had Matt with us today from the Virtual Edge. And he literally is on the Virtual Edge. He's on the other side of the world, but caters to a lot of US customers. So thank you very much and wishing you all a great day. Bye.