BDP 11 – Matt Paulson

Show Notes Matt Paulson is an entrepreneur. His journey of entrepreneurship started at an early age. In fourth grade he made a website that gave him a passive income of $25 – $100 per month. Like most of us, he went to college, graduated with a degree, went on to his masters, and finally landed […]

Show Notes

Matt Paulson is an entrepreneur.

His journey of entrepreneurship started at an early age. In fourth grade he made a website that gave him a passive income of $25 – $100 per month.

Like most of us, he went to college, graduated with a degree, went on to his masters, and finally landed a good job. After a few years working in that job, he believed that he could do so much more with his skills. He quit and went on to start his own company.

Since then he has made several successful online companies.

Market Beat; a financial media company, send out daily investment newsletter to about 445,000 people
GoGo Photo Contest; helps animal shelters raise money
US Golf TV; publishing company in the golf industry
Falls Angel Fund; regional angel fund to invest in high growth companies in South Dakota and surrounding states

In this episode, Matt talks about being a Christian Businessman in this industry, managing employees that are stationed around the world, and about his own superpower – automation.

Follow these links to learn more or get in contact with Matt Paulson.

mattpaulson.com

twitter.com/matthewdp

facebook.com/matthewpaulson

ICQ: 4370199

 

Show Description

The Business Design Podcast helps entrepreneurs design and build businesses that succeed on their own even if you take a 6 month vacation. Hosted by John Hwang and Scott Andersen, they share their successes and pitfalls and equip you to make daily progress in your business.

Transcription

[00:00:00] Welcome to the business design podcast. The podcast that helps enterpreneurs design and build businesses that succeed on their own even if you take a six-month vacation. We are your hosts, Ian, John, and Scott. We’re here to share the successes and pitfalls of many enterpreneurs like you and equip you to make Daily Progress in your business.

V1

John: can you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us a little about yourself?

Matt:  Sure my name is Matthew Poston. I am the founder of a business called Market. It is a financial media company. We send out a daily investment newsletter to about 445,000 people. I have a few other businesses GoGo photo contest helps animal shelters raise money. And then Us Golf TV is a Publishing Company the golf industry. And finally Falls Angel fund is a regional Angel fund to invest in high-growth companies in South Dakota and surrounding states. Wife two kids. I live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I think that’s it.

John: Awesome, can you take us a little bit back to the beginning. And shares a little life story about, kind of how you got to where you. Are trying to look into your childhood and a little bit about yourself.

Matt: Yeah, so my first internet business happened when I was in fourth grade. This would have been like 1995, back before nobody knew, anybody knew about the internet really. But I had a little website about SimCity 2000 and all the other Sim games. I played at cheat codes that we’d used and screenshots, and little apps that worked

John:  wihat year was that.

Matt:  It’s probably ’95, ’96, ’97 somewhere in there.

John:  Oh my God, who taught you how to write or like build it a website at when your fourth grade?

Matt: nobody. kids can learn anything if they put their effort into it. It’s easy to learn stuff as a kid. [Fair enough] Harder learn stuff as an adult. So while I really got started with HTML like on message boards, like you could, you know, putting the HTML tags, I figured oh that’s how you bold text. That’s how you italic text. And that’s how you do an image. You know fourth-grade Matth picked that up, so I mean my SimCity website hosted on geocities, and I put little ads for an ad Network that was then called Save Thought, and it had actually like free hosting from somewhere else. I get like a buck 50 if anybody ever clicked on it, and I think I was making maybe 25 bucks a month as like a middle school student, or as a grade school student. Middle School student getting checks in the mail, and my parents are like how the heck are you getting these checks in the mail, and I kind of told them, it’s like oh that’s interesting. So for my middle school years I was making between 25 and hundred dollars a month with a little website, and that that was, that was the origin story of the original. You know Matt Paulson business.

John: Did you have anything else like in high school or college that you kind of dabbled in because of that experience?

Matt: Yeah, so most of my high school years I spent on the debate team which is an all time consuming kind of thing so I didn’t have time for a business. I worked at Burger King High School. I didn’t really enjoy it. Then I worked at a gas station my senior year and had a lot of free time to think about internet business. Didn’t really do anything with it. I really got to start in college again when I was a sophomore this talent. I went to school with 7,000 people not a lot of job opportunities though. I started doing freelance writing on a site called Associated Content, and they would pay like five to ten dollars for a 400 word article. So I started about you do 10 of them a day, something like that. I made a nice income of about 4,000 $2,000 a month doing that as a college student. Eventually that morphed into being that I could just do this on my own blog and see where that went. And like everybody else in 2007 or so had personal finance blog telling people how I’m going to get out of debt, and you know there’s a million those websites back then. And I can’t figure it out. It’s like wow people don’t really care about my content, but there are plenty of people that are going to buy links for me and people are clicking AdSense ads. So I made like four others just like it. So I had you know five personal finance websites that I’d tell blinks on the SEO agencies, and they’ll get a little bit of Adsense revenue and 2010 I grown that too. I  think we did over Pike. I think we did 139,000 in 2010 in revenue from those five little websites. Which going great until February of 2011, which is when the panda update happened and everybody that had a personal finance blog in world just got creamed. So my traffic went half overnight. I mean that was really when you’re starting to punish you know link buying too. So people stopped doing, because site-wide links were not a good thing to do anymore. So that Revenue took a real dive, but

John: just to interrupt real quick you mentioned, “we.” Is that just habit, or is there a partner? Someone you’re  working with?

Matt: No. I’ve, I’ve had team members since about [00:05:00] 2008. I and my first website that people that write for me. Now I have actual employees in my business, so not a huge team, but we’re at four employees including myself, and another five contractors. So though the whole Market B team’s currently nine people. [Wow!] So we’re growing up being kind of a real company now with a 401k plan and PTO and all those other scary words that most solo entrepreneurs don’t ever have to think about.

John:  Right are they all based in your hometown. Where you work out or where they are located?

Matt:  Sure. So two of my employees are in Sioux Falls, and then one of them is in Florida, and then my contractors are Guatemala, India, New York, Chicago, and Sioux Falls. So it’s just– people I work with– our people– people out– our employees are people, are you know mostly I’ve met in person. and Don, my guy in Florida, I’ve met him once actually, but you know I’ve been working and stuff for 10 years. He’s been doing so much for me is like, huh yeah, I better start calling you an employee. Yeah, so we’re in the process of getting him to be employed.

V2

John: When that happened in 2008. When you’re having those sites, were you working a job while you’re doing that? Or did you– call –was that like a full income kind of source of income?

Matt:  Yeah, so I graduate from college in 2008. I had a full-time job that summer. I did a master’s degree the following year. And then after that I took a job at the little web design agency called Factory 360. I did dot net web development for them, and I did that until November of ’12. And frankly I probably quit way later than I should have if I were doing it over again. <I would> have probably never took the job and just done my own thing, but you know, it’s easy to look back and see how it worked out and think I could have done that sooner. But you know that you think I got this really risky internet business. You know. It could disappear overnight. I should probably keep my job. But eventually had enough revenue for enough months in a row, or I thought well, I suppose if it doesn’t work out, I just go get another job. And finally made that jump.

John:  Do you remember that kind of period where you were feeling like I couldn’t trust this and then and then finally seeing okay? What made you get the confidence about saying I can just go get another job and whatnot what was that?

Matt:  Yeah, so I was actually thinking about quitting maybe year and half before I actually did and I think I had gotten it up to about 25 Grand a month in Revenue. But some’n happened with one of my sites. I think I got penalized actuall, something like that, but I went from twenty five to 14 the next month, so it’s like. Oh well. I mean it isn’t so stable. [Sure] But then I kind of figured out what I did wrong. I fixed it. I kind of spread the money around a few different sites, so like wow if one of these get penalized, I’ve got the other. So it was less worried about it, then

John: yeah, two years ago when we first met– micro comf yeah, I think. My recollection you said yet one employee, full time employee back then [yep] and some maybe two or three contractors is what I remember

Matt: yeah, that sounds about right.

John: okay. What’s changed so far that you decide to hire more people or not? I’m sure you’ve grown and you’ve rebranded and other things, but like what’s, what’s the growth behind the growth? I guess.

Matt:  Yeah, so 2015 when we met. I think we did about a million and half and revenue than last year we did 2.7. So with growth you know, there’s more work to do, need more people. I think we operate 23 different websites right now. My guy, Don, manages our four writers. And I’ve got a full-time web developer now that works on stuff. My customer service person is the person I had then. Still have her. Nobody’s quit on me yet. Thankfully. But yeah, I mean it’s just the company’s gotten bigger, and there’s more stuff to do and it’s kind of stuff that you can’t really automate.

I love to automate stuff. But you can’t really automate customer service. Can’t automate programming. You know you can you know some ways… But you need somebody to say hey, I want that, go do that for me. Right. You, you need a person. So as much as I love to automate literally everything. They’re just some things that’s like wow OK. I need to hire somebody.

John: Thank you, um I wanted to talk about this master’s program that you did. And if I’m correct you’re currently on the board of a seminary.

Matt: That’s true.

John: Right. and you did you go to Seminary? Is that what it was?

Matt:  Actually have two master’s degrees. So I have an information systems degree MSIS. I got on my college same place. I went to undergrad and I was able to knock that out in like 12 months because it was really easy and designed for international students and [OK] got a 4.0. If it’s like well, I got the degree, it’s kind of wasted time, and then when I moved to Sioux Falls. I had a friend named Nate. He was a vice president at the Seminary, and he encouraged me to check it out. I took a class. I really enjoyed it. Like learning church history and just the leadership stuff that they taught. Found it very valuable and it really influences how as a businessman happens via Christian. How I manage my my company today, and how I treat my employees and that was a really good experience. So I ended up. I think I did about three years there. I ended up with uh like a Master of Arts in Christian leadership, and then I’ve decided that I don’t need any more school loans since then.

John: Yeah, thank you. I will, [00:10:00] I guess, I’d like to dive into the topic of leadership, and the founder and especially how that training, as well as your worldview has a Christian, and the the leadership in the Christian readership that you’ve been stilled with yep. What are some unique things that that instills into your leadership style? Or how you actually organize your company?

Matt:  Yeah, I think the way that I treat my employees is, is fundamentally very different than most companies because it’s really about. Caring for them as a person first and what’s best for them, and you know how that plays out and the benefits that they get, when they get paid, you know, how I treat them. It’s like, “Your mom’s sick in Colorado for a week? Ok, go take care of her and work when you can.” Instead of, “No, this is your job. You need to be here.” So there this more flexibility and just understanding of what the human condition is. And like this is your job, but it’s like not your only part of life, and you got other stuff to do then work. For me, and I get that. You know like we do birthday presents for everybody, birthday presents for people’s kids, and we just try to be really generous with our employees and treat them well. I feel like that was a good witness to to me as a Christian and just treating people in a way that honors and just respects them as people.

V3

John: Is there a leadership principle that kind of stands out as you as they say you would not be able to maybe practice this if do you run more of a kind of East Coast, West Coast Corporate environment versus something that you’re able to do now? Kind of beyond being treating your employees well and personal?

Matt:  Yeah, this wouldn’t work in a corporate like in a normal corporate structure. But you know when you get to make your own company you can design it in your image. So that’s why we don’t have a company office. I have an office, but my employees don’t like– I don’t want to be in an office with them all day making sure they’re working. I want to hire people that can work hard by themselves and don’t need me to check on them every five minutes. So the company is, is really designed around that DNA. Like myself I have a life outside the company and that is more important to me than my life inside the company, right? And I think that it should also be true for the other people that are in my company. So we are all very self-motivated people we work very hard when we’re working. And then we just kind of do our own thing on our own time. So we don’t do company parties. We don’t have company Retreats or anything like that. Because it’s my assumption is that you’ve got your own friends, your own family, and you’d rather be hanging out with them than me. And I’m not going to force you to go to some company thing just because it’s part of your job.

John: Right that’s really interesting actually. I’ve been thinking about that quite a bit as myself, and I have a very similar philosophy. Can I dive a little bit more into, I read also on LinkedIn that you publish an example of your sop, standard operating procedures. What are some practices like that? And can you first of all describe what that is to our audience, and then why that’s important? And then a follow-up question to that would be other– any other practices or disciplines that you like to introduce to your company that makes it more productive or more creative than what it does?

Matt: So as I mentioned, you know I really want hard-working self productive people that can do work right on the first time. So I guess first, you know we were huge believers in automation. So I think if there’s anything that can feasibly up be automated, that we have to do more than once a month, we should automate it. So I’m a software developer. My employee Rebecca, she’s a software developer. So anything involving data or anything that could be automated is automated. So really the only tasks that are left are stuff that people have to do. And anything that is something we do more than say once every couple months that can’t be automated, we create a standard operating procedure for just so that the employees know exactly how I want it done,

what steps to follow. Like say if we were to a set up a new website, we’re going to publish financial news on it, like here are the 38 steps I want you to do. I want you to install these plugins, this theme, I want you to do these settings. I need you to set up this site map, and do all these things. That way I can just say, “hey we need this new site set up” to Rebecca, and then she goes and does it andvI know it’s going to be right. I don’t even have to check it over anymore because she knows exactly what to do. And she knows that it’s important that gets done right the first time. So she will check over her own work and make sure there aren’t any mistakes. You know it and the reason we do that stuff is because I don’t want to spend a bunch of time managing my employees. So with the SOPs in place, they know what to do. They know how to do it exactly the first time. We screenshots all that stuff, and then I just don’t have to do as much management because that written documentation is in place.

John: So in terms of additional practices like SOPs, like these great practices that ensure quality as well as consistency and whatnot, are there any other practices that you guys introduce, that you’ve introducing the company to ensure to encourage that?

Matt:  Hmm good question. I think automation is probably the big thing because if a computer is doing it, computers’ always going to do it the same way. And their just not very not inconsistent. So like a lot of our customer service responses, they are all boilerplate text, and, [00:15:00] you know, just shows in their information. So instead of my employees saying, “Hi name. I’ve reset your password, your username is this, your new password.”  You know, there’s just one button that says click here to reset this person’s password and send them an email.  So it’s like you know that they’re always gonna get the right email with the right password and it’s going to be a decent password, and they’ll be able to log in and there won’t be mistakes.

John: Right. In terms of your businesses let’s kind of circle back a little bit about your personal practices. How you evaluate like ideas, also things that you do on a daily basis that you would maybe make yourself a little more productive or consistent? So let’s first start there, but can we first start about like, I had a question in mind I always want to ask you. You have so many, first of all, sites, right? You have 25 + sites. How do you know or how do you determine or decide like what kind of site to start? And how it was that process like?

Matt:  Sure so. I probably get, you know, one to three opportunities per week for people that want me to invest in their businesses be partners with them stuff like that. And I realized I only have a limited amount of time to spend on new stuff. You know, I’ve got a four-year-old boy and an eleven month old daughter, a wife; and they all want attention. So if I want to do something new it’s probably going to happen at the expense of them. So anything that I do has to be a really, really good opportunity and something that like I can’t possibly say no to. So when it look at an opportunity, it’s one, do I want to do it ? Am I excited about the opportunity? I’m excited about the space? Do I think it could be something cool? Two, is there a unique skill set that I have that is going to really add value to this business or this website that the other people working in the websitevdon’t have? So like with GoGo photo contest like what I brought to the table was email marketing and then help with software development. Like our only marketing strategy is to. Go to e mail animal shelters and say, “Hey, when everybody other animal shelter like you has run this thing they’ve raised five to ten Grand. How about you do it too?” And like they don’t know how to do that. So I found a database of animal shelters. We send him email once a month, and you know we get three to four hundred animal shelters that run contest a year because I brought that marketing strategy to the table. They run the business, I don’t have to put a lot of time into it, but I brought that to the table. I brought some decent accounting practices to the table. I helped write the initial code base. But now they run it. And they’re– my partners are Jason and Stevie in that business. They do a great job with it. I don’t have to think about a lot. So I look for opportunities like that where to really bring something to the table initially, and then they don’t have to do a whole lot later on. Because I’m going to be busy with something else invariably. So let’s see, those reply the top criteria. Well, and do I like the people obviously. So [right] am I excited about it? Can I add something? And do I like the people? And even then I can maybe only say yes once a year.

V4

John: What would you consider your superpower? And if you were say I- what I can bring to the table? Email marketing. And you mentioned accounting practices and whatnot.. But what would you say always your are your strengths and your superpower?

Matt: I think my superpower is automating stuff through software. Like my main business MarketBeat,  we publish one to two thousand financial news stories a day, and they’re all written by computers.

John: you say are 1 to 2000?

Matt:  That is correct.

John:  And the computer writes the Articles.

Matt: Yep.

John: How does that work?

Matt:  So we take structured financial data and turn it into human readable content. So if you think how the game ad libs works. It’s kind of like that. It’s more complicated, but like, this company announced their quarterly earnings. It was this amount per share. They had this much revenue compared to the analysts consensus estimate of this much. Here’s how, compared to last year [right] report all these different data points. And we can make a very readable, quite decent, 700-800 word article. Nice company logo and some charts and some graphs in there. And if you like to look at my domains on Reddit like people are interacting with these like they’re/were articles written by people, and like commenting about them like that were real articles written by people. So they’re, they’re pretty good. I’m pretty proud of them.

John: So automation. That’s what you’re saying is your superpower. What contribution to you becoming good at that? Like what do you think like work or ingredients or influences that help you develop that skill?

Matt: Oh, yeah. One, you know, I know how to write software. And two, I’m kind of lazy. So like I’m lazy in the sense that I don’t want to do work that I don’t have to do. If there is a task that looks like uploading this piece of data, this website; yes, I could do it by hand everyday, or I could write a script to do it. So I’m always going to write that script. Or anything that the process that’s repetitive; like I don’t want to do it over and over again. I don’t want to like commit myself to doing the same thing every week or every day, and just you know if there’s any crazy way that I can make code do something I’d much rather have the code do it than me. Because one, I’ll probably forget to do it. And two,  I just don’t want to.

John:  Right. Great qualities that for good programmers, so I’m going to ask at Tim Ferriss question that he does and the question is: who is the one person that comes to mind when you hear the word [00:20:00] success? I’m going to follow up with why? So who is there a person when you think of success who’s the one person that comes to mind?

Matt:  Good question. I guess you know it’s really, um, a question, you know, how do you define success? And it would be easy to say like Mark Cuban or somebody like that. But I don’t know Mark Cuban, but I can’t– sure he has a lot of money, but does that make him successful person? If you’re going only by finances, sure. But I don’t think that’s how I would judge whether or not somebody successful in life.

I think it’s: they have their stuff together, for one. And then two, are they like a well-rounded individual? Do they have healthy relationships? Are they a good person? Do they care about other people? Are they generous? By that measure like, I have no idea if any of the people that we, you’d comonly hear as the answers, like Gary V or Mark Cuban or anybody like that, would– I don’t know those people. I don’t know what they do. Like I can tell you like my friend Nate, who is– works at the Seminary. Great guy. I can definitely say he’s successful. Got a wife. Yeah. Treats her well. Has a kid. He treats him good, well. Does his job well. Generous guy. You know that that is really more how I see success than whether or not you’ve got a million people following you on Instagram. Who cares. You know if you’re doing coke every night, and your life’s a mess, like that’s not successful to me.

John: Right. Right. Would you dive in a little bit more kind of like maybe other other aspects that you consider that defines that person as well rounded or has their stuff together. What are some other thing to come to mind is things are important for successful person, attributes every successful person?

Matt:  Yeah, I think, when we think of traditionally successful people and you look into their lives, they tend to be very unbalanced. I mean you have to work real hard for a long period of time to be successful. And oftentimes that comes at the expense of like personal relationships, and family, and friendships, and how you take care of yourself. So for me, you’re being successful… It’s a lot of things, but it’s, you know, do my parents hear from me every week? Does my wife feel like, that I love her? Or do I spend enough time with her? [Right] Am I getting off the computer at 5 p.m. and actually like sitting down to play with my children and my playing Legos with Micah  every night. Am I taking him to church on Sunday? You know, or do I have quality conversations with people that are my family? Do I have friends? Do I take care of them? Am I a generous person?

So like when I was fine to Vegas today. There was a lady sitting next to me on the plane. And she told me that she comes to Vegas and like hangs out with guys and does massages. I’m pretty sure I sat next to a prostitute one the  plane. And it’s like oh well, well, I guess that’s your life. I’m not– It’s not my job to tell you otherwise. But you know if you’re flying to Vegas multiple times a year to do that kind of work, like are you… Gotta kind of wonder, like what other problems they would have in life in terms of their relationships. [Right] it’s just I don’t know how you have a have a successful by doing that kind of thing.

V5

John: You written a lot of books. How many books have you written so far?

Matt:  So, there are eight books with my name on them. I’ve written six of them. Two were ghostwritten by some longtime friends of mine. Those books were ok, but they just don’t feel like they were the quality of my other books. So I probably won’t go write another one, but I’ve got it out there with my name on it. Ultimately the goal was– I have a friend named Steve Scott. He has sixty books on Amazon. He makes Thirty Grand a month in book royalties. I thought well maybe I could do that and make some nice passive income that way that’s kind of separate from Market beat. And I got it up to about eight grand a month by publishing five books last year, and it was okay. My– I mean, it’s decent money for anybody. But when you’ve got Market beat throwing off a couple million dollars a year in revenue, its just not at the same scale. And for the amount of work it took to put all those books out. It just wasn’t generating enough revenue. And it kind of became a distraction for Market beats type. So I decided to put the brakes on it. I think I have one last book project. It’s on Amazon now, but it’s officially coming out like next month. And then I’m going to be done probably for the rest of the year. And then maybe next year I’ll write like another investing book that I can use as like a lead Magnet. Or just stick it on Amazon anyway because my Market Beat audience will like it. But I’m definitely not writing five books again this year, and do not want to do that. But I may do one more next year. Ready to go for this year is just do the podcast startup Q&A. I’m doing like a video show where I answer people’s questions really trying to make it a little bit different than most podcasts. Just because it’s one, it’s video it’s not audio. And two, its really trying to be a multi-channel thing. So it’s on Facebook. It’s on YouTube. It’s on Stitcher. And get it over RSS give it out on iTunes. And really get it anywhere you want to consume it. And that’s one little way I’m differentiating. Two, there’s no guests. I don’t do guests because there are enough guest podcasts. like yours. And I don’t need to do another one. Which is kind of funny because now I’m getting like cold emails saying, “hey this person would be great for your podcasts.” Like great. Clearly you’ve never [00:25:00] listened to it because there’s never ever any guest on it. And there’s never going to be a guest on it. Because I don’t want to organize getting people on my show. I was just too much damn work.

John: Yeah. Yeah,

Matt: so I don’t do that.

John: Can you tell me a little bit about the benefits that you’ve gotten by writing books? And how that’s raised your profile as well as your personal brand? Was there any kind of intention or intentionality or something that you were thinking about as you were working on those? In producing those and leading into your podcast now while you’re doing it.

Matt: Yeah. I mean certainly. It’s, it’s, it’s a long-term, ballgame of personal branding really. I do the personal brand and stuff, one, because it helps other people. I won’t be doing it if it wasn’t valuable content that other people could consume and find Value in. Because, I mean, I get the million people that want to talk to me on Skype, meet me for coffee, whatever, and I just don’t have time to do that. But it’s like oh here’s a book that has everything that I would tell you when we’re having coffee. Go read this. Here’s a copy so there’s that. And two, its, you know, I think there’s just an economic value in knowing a lot of people. And like you know maybe we don’t have any business we can do together, maybe you know somebody that I could get a real business benefit out of. So it’s just–  it’s maybe it’s good to know John for that reason and maybe it’s not for the current business. Maybe it’s not for the next business. Maybe it’s for the one after that. Like I know that Market Beat isn’t going to be the only business I ever start and I don’t know what the next one is going to be. But I feel like by having a pretty wide Network like I’ve got enough connection through us. Like oh I need somebody who would be good at this … one with the esoteric thing. I can ask around and chances are somebody that I know is is going to know somebody that knows how to do that.

John: That’s great. I lied again, and I’m going to ask you another question this one that has to do with how are you able to be so prolific and consistent with your work? What is their secret around that?

Matt:  Like how do I produce so much content or what?

John:  Producing content not for Market Beat, because you’re automating a lot of those, but in terms of your personal productivity? To how prolific you’ve been with number businesses you started, number people you’ve been able to help, the books that you’ve written, and the pockets you continue to produce …  so little time, which I’m sure that you’re actually very guarded with that.

Matt: Yeah,

John:  you seem to be producing multiple X’s that most people wouldn’t be able to do that time.

Matt:  Yeah, I got really good at writing. And a way that I did that was in college I wrote for my campus newspaper. And then it was really doing a freelance writing in blocking. I was doing probably four articles a day for like three years on my website called American Consumer news back then. And I just got really good at pounding stuff out and that allowed me to like write a book in 21 days. And just produce content at a speed that most people can’t. And I think it’s just part of–  it’s just how I’m wired. I’ve been told I’m really quick at doing work, and I don’t know how to replicate that, but it’s just must be unique gift that I have.

V6

Matt: Can I tell a micro comf story.

John: Yes, please .

Matt: So two years ago when we are both at micro comp, I wasn’t here last year because my wife had a baby like the same week. But two years ago we were here. this was one of the first conferences I went to. And I was telling all, everybody about my business, and it was called analyst ratings Network then. And so many people botched it up that I changed the name of the business. So like I would say, “Oh the business name was Analyst Ratings Network. This is what we do.” It’s like, “Oh your thing, analysts Network or ratings Network or analyst… Like what is it again?” It’s just like, “Oh, this is a really terrible name for my business.” So I changed the name and I changed it entirely because everybody messed it up at micro comf. So I blame micro comp and you, John, for changing the name of my business two years ago. Which was great because now I have a fantastic name for my business, and I got their domain. And they got the trademark. And you know Market Beat is just a really great name, and I can, can thank you and Christian and a whole bunch of other people for messing this up forgetting that name.

John: There you go.

Matt: Well. That’s been background story.

John: That is a wonderful background story. Thank you so much for joining us today, and where can people find out about you and get your podcast your website and all these other things sure so.

Matt: I still have a personal website, which apparently is like now an old-fashioned thing to do. But if you go to Matt Paulson.com: m a t t pa uson com. You can get the latest podcast episodes there. Got a person or emails with some stuff I send out on there you. Can check that out. Twitter is at Matthew dp. D is in dog. P as in pony. Facebook is facebook.com / Matthew Poulsen. I have Myspace page. You can check me out there. And then of course my icq number is for 3701 99. Think anybody’s use icq in 15 years, but I think it’s funny to share that.

John:  That is terriffic. Well. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it

Matt:  right. Thanks John.

John: Yep.

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