PP 226: The Will to Work Through the Good and Bad with Matt Miller

Quick Show Notes – The Will to Work Through the Good and Bad with Matt Miller

“You’ve got to be willing to work through the good times and bad. It’s a marathon, not a race.”

Matt Miller is a recovering Air Force pilot and corporate executive who wanted more control over his life and income. He is now the owner of School Spirit Vending, with a franchise team of over 100+ members across 40 states.

In our chat, we discuss a wide berth of topics including school spirit, asking for help when you’re struggling, how Matt started his franchise model, the benefits of hiring a business coach and more!

In their chat, @ssvbusiness and @thekimsutton discuss a wide berth of topics including school spirit, asking for help when you're struggling, how Matt started his franchise model, the benefits of hiring a business coach and more! https://thekimsutton.com/pp226Click To Tweet

Episode Transcription – The Will to Work Through the Good and Bad with Matt Miller

Transcription not yet cleaned up but thanks for checking it out!

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. I’m thrilled that you are here listening today and I’m thrilled to introduce our guest, Matt Miller. Matt is the owner of school spirit vending. Matt, thank you so much for joining us today. Oh my gosh, can you hear that? I’m having trouble talking. I need more coffee. I’m thrilled that you’re here. Would you mind sharing a little bit of your backstory with the listeners and let us all know how you got to where you are today.

Matt Miller: First off, Kim, thanks for having me on. And hey, don’t sweat it. I mean when the house is crazy busy as yours is, I know how crazy busy mine is with only one child at home right now and a couple of dogs and I guess five cats, chicken etc. So anyway, don’t sweat that you know that.

The thing is, I think too many people out there trying to be something that they’re not for the world and kind of one of my philosophies is just you know what it is what it is, and I bet it’s the same for everybody else out there too. So, hey, I love being here. Thank you for having me.

You know what I think is happening this morning. That is that I’ve been listening to podcasts at two times speed lately and talking in normal speed. It’s hard for me now because it’s almost like I’m trying to keep up to what I’ve been listening to.

Matt Miller: I never thought of that. But I can see that Yeah.

My brain doesn’t work that fast. The best I’ve gotten to is about 1.25 maybe 1.5. But ya know, I can I can relate. That’s awesome.

Matt Miller: A little background on me. I was an Air Force pilot, I’m a recovering Air Force pilot, corporate executive, who went from flying airplanes selling advertising to vending machines, which is obviously the the progression that anybody you know, in a similar situation would follow, right? But uh, I grew up in the Chicago area, went to school at the Air Force Academy, was stationed in Texas the majority of my career and then got out back in 1998, after having flown for nine years, spent about 11 years in the corporate world, thought that I’d have more control over my life and could make some money. Money and realized that publicly traded companies that the employee or the stockholders with a priority, not the employees and just got frustrated with things constantly changing, and I’m never changing in my favor. And so I realized after getting into a really really deep hole financially that I wanted to do or had to figure out how to do it on my own. And so I tried a variety of different businesses did some multi level marketing along the way collected aluminum cans sold books on Amazon before Amazon was cool, and eventually heard a buddy of mine mentioned gumball machines at church one Sunday, and I had read Robert Kiyosaki his book Rich Dad Poor Dad and bought into his whole idea of passive income and was looking for a way to make money in a more passive way and gumball machines just made sense. So about 13 years ago, I started down that path after a couple years of just candy and Gumball and toy and temper. tattoo and sticker machines the economy crashed. And right around that time I had several young kids come knocking on my door selling stuff for the local school fundraiser. And that’s where the whole idea of doing stickers and sticker vending machines and schools came about. And school spirit vending was born actually October 10 years ago. Today we’re in about approaching 3000 schools across the country. We’ve got a franchise team of 108 or 109 families across about 40 states, and I head up a sticker machine franchise That’s incredible.

I’d never really thought about that. And my kids are constantly asking no Can I have money for Can I have money for Can I have money for and as always, if it’s not snacks in the lunchroom, if it’s school memorabilia, I’m gonna have to ask them when they get home if if you’re in my school, and if you are in my school district, and if you’re not, you’ll get a message from me later. And some money.

Yeah, we’ve got we’ve got a whole team up in your area. So In Ohio, so anyway, you never know for not we I’m sure there’s somebody there that could. Yeah,

absolutely. And especially in Ohio, I mean, not that it’s not everywhere. But I, from what I can see with my kids in the local community. school spirit is so huge here. I mean, not that it wasn’t in my high school. I went to a fairly large High School in New York. But I was amazed to come to Ohio and find that parents and my coworkers were talking about the local high school players, as if they were NFL players, like they knew the whole roster of the high school varsity football team or the basketball team. And all the parents had the attire to go with the school. And that just wasn’t a thing. Maybe it was just when I was growing up. Maybe it’s different now. But at least here in Ohio, and I’m sure it’s similar in Texas because they know how especially football is down there. Maybe I’m generalizing but it’s huge here. You do not interrupt a high school football weekend in Ohio.

My father in went to Ohio State and man every time there’s a game, the family knows about it so completely relate.

Yeah, that was a whole nother learning curve for me. Don’t Don’t try to contact any of my co workers when Ohio State’s playing. I have still not watched a game and I’ve been here for 14 years.

That’s okay.

I actually went to college in Chicago, and I would hear about the Air Force Academy. Is that is that a you? university level? Can you share more about the Air Force Academy? And I have a reason for asking?

Matt Miller: Yeah, the Air Force Academy is the Air Force is equivalent to like West Point in Annapolis. It’s a Military College. It’s a four year degree. It’s essentially a full ride scholarship, you know, to the Academy in exchange for at least at the time, it was at least five years commitment to the government afterwards as an officer in the military, that might have changed because I’ve been out for quite a while but anyway, it was an incredible place. I had nobody in the family with a military background, but I wanted to go to school away from home and it was my way to do it. And so I did and, you know, dealt with the military stuff the first year and all the stuff you hear about basic training and you know, all the all that kind of stuff and then eventually found my place and gotten settled in and really enjoyed my time there and my career in the Air Force for the most part.

Kim Sutton: So my husband is an Air Force veteran, however, he did not go to the Air Force Academy, he, he listed on 912. And then surface his time, however, he was not college educated when he went in, and he was not college educated for more than a decade after he got out in the shift for him. The transition, maybe I should say, from being in the military to, quote normal life afterwards was a little bit bumpy. He’s a really hard worker, but the transition was really hard. And I know it’s really hard for a lot of people. Was it hard for you after you’ve Got out? Or do you think that the Air Force Academy prepared you really well for the transition back into civilian life?

Matt Miller: Well, it didn’t prepare me Well, for the transition back, you know that one of the challenges with the military is Uncle Sam kind of teaches you that, you know, everything’s gonna be alright, as long as they’re with their arm around you the whole step of the way. And so, so many people get used to that they get used to, you know, the medical benefits they get used to, you know, this quote unquote security of all of that and and then to step out in for many, it’s difficult now, I had no idea what I was going to do when I got out. I went to, I think three if I remember right, different Junior military officer hiring conferences, with companies that they specialized in finding careers for guys like me out of the Air Force. I did 60 interviews over the span of a couple of different months to finally figure out what I wanted to do. I did a ton of reading Research trying to figure it out. And it was a process. But I knew that’s where I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to have more control, ultimately, and knew that I could get paid more money as well, for my skill set. The biggest challenge for me Believe it or not, was most of the companies were questioning whether I would actually stay with them because they thought that everybody wanted to be a pilot their entire life. And here I was walking away from that, you know, to start a corporate career that had nothing to do with flying. And so my biggest hurdle was convincing the people doing the interviews that, hey, I get your concern, but I don’t want to go back to that. I’ve been there, done that got the T shirt and I’m ready to move on. And I have not sat in a cockpit since 98 when I got out, but that was my biggest struggle, believe it or not, is convincing them to give me a shot.

That’s really fascinating. I mean, I have my degree in interior architecture. And the reason I moved to Ohio was Because I was deciding schools here, but when the economy tanked in 2008, the bond issue stopped passing. So the funding wasn’t coming into the schools and the architecture firms couldn’t pay for the employees. So I lost my job. But I went out on so many interviews and people just assumed I was going to leave too. But you know, I Oh, the market for interior architects or interior designers is not abundant. And I had to do some convincing myself, my husband actually, when he got out he had been a structural Air Force maintenance. I’m probably saying it all wrong, but he was working on the steel or the plane got shot and he would patch up the hole is basically okay. And he actually loved it. But he was injured he was sitting there. And this is something that so many entrepreneurs can face as well. We can be sitting at our desk all day, looking at the same task, working, working, working, working and realize 10 hours later that we haven’t gotten up all day. And there was one of those days that he he realized that he had been working on this one piece of sheet metal all day and he went to stand up and he actually ruptured a disc. So it changed his life forever. But the transition was especially rough because he didn’t have the skills to go forward. So he went back to what he always knew from growing up. His family was predominantly blue collar. So it took a lot of years and lost jobs and everything to realize that there was a world of opportunity out there. And I know that’s something that a lot of a lot of vets and even not vets sometimes forget about is that there is assistance out there. And I’m not I know this is not necessarily the topic of our conversation, Matt, but when we’re struggling, there are resources out there and we can’t be afraid to use them, whether it be VA disability benefits, or he ended up using his post 911 GI bill to get his degree. Or if we’re struggling and welfare and food assistance don’t mean that you are not a good person. And it doesn’t mean that you’re sitting on your behind watching TV all day. It just means that you need a little like up So, that’s not at all where our conversate I expected our conversation to go. But you know, positive productivity, it goes where it takes us. Anyway, listeners, I’m just trying to say if you’re struggling, don’t be afraid to ask for like a, how did you go from starting school spirit funding to working into a franchise model? How difficult was that? And how long of a journey was that part of the process?

We started franchising two and a half years ago. So we have not been doing it that long. One Note that I think we might have some value for your audience is in this last several businesses that I have started, I have had people come to me asking if they could either be part of it, or if they could be a customer. And in both of those cases, that’s when I realized, okay, I may be onto something. So here I was, it was me and a couple of buddies that I’d run the idea by here 10 years ago. Go when we started this thing, and I invited one of my friends to hang out with me at a PTA event outside of Dallas, he lived a couple hours further out in the country. And he came and spent a day with me on Saturday just hanging out because we hadn’t seen each other in years. And the business didn’t even come up. I was just there working the table and answering questions of PTA moms and, and administrators and everything coming by. So James left, and about a week later, he calls me. He says, Matt, I know we didn’t talk about any of this while I was there. We were just hanging out. He said, but I want to do what you do. Will you let me and that’s when the light bulb came on. He helped me figure out you know, what would be a fair royalty and all that kind of stuff or licensing fee to teach people and so we started with a distributor ship model for the first seven and a half years or so. And we slowly grew as friends or friends of family or Others heard about us. And then I had hired a business coach several years ago. And he and I were working through things. And he challenged me to step up my game as far as growing the business and finding more people that could be a part, etc. Because there was a lot of schools around the us that we weren’t in yet. And in doing my research, I found out that in a lot of the states, we were not doing business and yet, there’s a lot more restrictions for business opportunities, and that being a franchise was really going to be the way to go. So at that point in time, not having any money in the bank and not knowing anything about it. We hired a franchise attorney and put things together, the business model is stayed very much the same. Many of our former distributors transitioned over to being franchisees, or most of them did. And so for two and a half going on three years, that’s what we’ve been doing. It’s been amazing though because it’s open the doors To a lot of parts of the country that we couldn’t have done business in before, we’ve got a huge team in California. Now, we’ve got a huge team in Ohio. Now, you know, we’re growing very, very quickly in much of the northeast and out west. And it’s just it’s an exciting time. But I didn’t have a clue about any of that stuff. When I started those conversations a little bit over three years ago.

It didn’t even occur to me until while you were just speaking, are your machines only in K through 12? Or are you going to universities and colleges as well?

Right now, most of the work that we’re doing is in K through 12. We are beginning to make some inroads elsewhere. But that’s where our focus is currently,

actually just also occurred to me that colleges and universities have bookstores. So that would be a little bit of competition.

Yeah, a lot of it though, is about convenience, though, really, and, you know, placed in the right place. I think it would be a home run as well. It’s just we’ve got a long way to go. The world that we’re in right now, so to venture off, or branch off right now just isn’t a big priority.

Man, you said that you hired a business coach, how long did it take in your business before you did that?

I was seven years in. And it was one of the best decisions I ever made. As a business owner. I started attending conferences and that type of thing because I knew that I needed to grow you know, the speed of the group is determined by the speed of the leader and I wasn’t growing mentally therefore the team there for a while stagnated as well. And I knew the only way to change that was to change what was going in my mind and getting around people that could help make me better and that I could learn from and I ran into him by the name of Aaron Walker at a Dave Ramsey event in Nashville a little over three years ago and and that was a complete and total game changer for me. He’s a multi multi millionaire bought and sold, like eight, nine businesses in the last 35 years of his life. And he looks at things from a similar vantage point with similar grounding, but he’s just got a completely different level of experience than me. And so to have him with me on a weekly basis for an hour on the phone was a complete and total game changer. Because he was helping me and enabled me to see things that I couldn’t see with my limited experience.

I was three years into my business before I got it. I’m not say hired. I’m saying got my first coach. And I say, God, because I was bartering. And I wasn’t taking it seriously at all. I was doing the work that was expected me and listeners, you know, I’m totally transparent. I was doing the work but I even wasn’t doing that work. Like I showed up. I wasn’t doing it like a paid client would have expected, but we are both technically paying each other. However, it wasn’t until late 2006 I actually bought into my first coaching program and not until just a couple months ago that I actually hired my first coach with money out of my account. And within that first month, it’s been amazing. I’m almost Well, not almost, I’m regretting the fact that I didn’t do it longer ago. I mean, there’s financial constraints that we always have to be aware of. And we have to know what our budget is. However, I wish I would have worked just a little bit harder to have actually invested in not bartered for a coach before I did.

Matt Miller: I… you know, to be honest, I couldn’t afford it, but I did it anyway. And we just figured it out and I got really creative. Here’s something else that’s unique or interesting. You know, you got to have the long game mentality in some of this stuff because it took me 13 months of not seeing any financial return. Really, but willing being willing to continue to invest month after month after month knowing that change was happening in me. He and I were getting to know each other better. And we were working towards you know, kind of getting to that point where things were just cooking on all all cylinders. month 14 though Kim, I made back four times what I invested in the previous 13 months. But the problem is most people would have stopped after six because they would have been like, oh, man, my business hasn’t grown at all. I’m not making any more money All I’ve got is this money going out. And what you don’t realize guys it’s investing and in quite honestly, there’s no better place for you to be investing than in yourself. So in my opinion, that should be a priority for everybody in some way, shape or form. You know, for some reason coach at professional athletes and CEOs and all them have coaches and it’s perfectly normal. For them, but us as average Americans don’t. And in most cases, and, you know, we’re we’re selling ourselves short. And we’re missing out on so much, just because we’re limited to our own belief system and our own thought process, instead of having others around us to help pour into us. I’m in a mastermind today that serves in a similar capacity, though not quite as intimate. And I’ve been part of that for the last three years. And so today, I’ve got a board of directors informally, that I meet with every week for an hour on zoom in a video conference format. We’re living life together, we’re learning from one another, you know, there’s always nuggets that I take away every single week, and of course, those that I can provide for my experience as well. But in both cases, they’re completely game changers.

I love the fact that you brought up that you stuck with it, because I had so many products that I threw together. That’s the best way I could put threw them together as a way to make money and I launched them. And when they didn’t sell anything I gave up. Now there were two problems with that I threw them together, because I was chasing income impacts. And I know there’s times when we have to bring in income, we have to do what we have to do so that we can keep food on the table and the power on and all that, however, I gave up on them. And it’s sort of a red flag to our audience that we don’t care. Let me just stop it. And that has drastically changed in my business in the last couple years. For the first time, in the span of my business, I’ve actually stuck with products for more than a month, even though they’re not completed. listeners. You’ve heard me talk about my book, chronic idea disorder, and my planner, they have been works in progress for over a year now. And I’m still not done but I’m not giving up. Because just as you said, Matt, we just have to keep on going because it’s out there and when we know could you feel it, Matt, even though you can see it. Could you feel that it was coming I hoped

Matt Miller: Especially with my kids getting older, and at that point in time, approaching college years, I had hoped that it would. And you know, but and it slowly but surely came together, the thing that I’ve had the benefit of that is a little harder to see in the in an online world or, or a world like you’re speaking of is the fact that I knew that every machine that got put out there was worth X on average. So if we just kept adding machines, you know, just multiply that number x by those number of machines. So I knew it would eventually happen. I just didn’t know when. And I just had to be really, really, really patient and quite honestly worked my tail off for years to get there.

Matt Miller: You know, there was times when I was I was working full time as an ad executive. I had my bulk vending route in restaurants and businesses around where I lived outside of Houston. I was dealing delivering pizzas for Pizza Hut. And I was starting school spirit vending, and I was a homeschool dad and I was active in my church. I there was no extra time I was burning the candle at both ends. I had to get really creative with the time I spent with my kids oftentimes they came with me to go out and service machines or, or that type of thing because it allowed me to spend time with them and do what I needed to do to keep all the plates spinning and and food on the table and a roof over our head. But I knew and I did it intentionally knowing, like I said a minute ago that it would just take x number of machines and the financial issues would start to go away and more time freedom and that type of thing would come but it was a process. It was a long period of time.

Matt Miller: There were many times where my wife pulled me aside and said Sweetie, I just saw you deposited you know X number of dollars, thousands in quarters in the bank. Where we as a family going to start seeing some of that, because she was seeing it pass right through. And every little every last bit was being reinvested to grow the business. And eventually all those things happened. I walked away from my corporate career seven years ago here this next month in January, and I quit my job. We moved four and a half hours away. We bought our first house out in the country where we’d have some peace and quiet and some space. And we’ve never looked back. It’s been a huge, huge blessing, but it took a lot of work to make it happen and to get where we are today for sure,

man, this is a really nosy question, so I apologize. How long did it take before you wrote yourself your first paycheck?

Matt Miller: I would have been four years or so. In SSV in vending in general seven. I started out with $100 That’s all I could afford for my first used candy and gumball machine 13 years ago, and I took the cash flow from that machine. And then I went, bought another one. And then I took the cash flow and I bought a couple more. And I mean, I literally put this thing together on a shoestring. You know, I laugh, and don’t get me wrong, there’s different situations or whatever. But I laugh at so many people that are out there talking all the time is I’ve got this idea. I’m going to go find some venture capital and then I’m going to make it happen. And I’m like, Okay, good luck to you, man. But I’ll tell you what, I bootstrapped this thing the entire way, you know, all on my dollar. And, you know, we’re still investing today. Of course, you know, the business supports our family as well, but I don’t think that ever stops, you know, in that regard. But man, it was a long time of reinvesting and reinvesting because I couldn’t kill off the baby. Before it was ready.

Right? You brought up Dave Ramsey earlier, everything that has come into our business. My, I say our my husband really isn’t active. He’s my chief emotional support. co. See, guys. So we we have one credit card in our house and as a $300 limit, and I we try not to use it. I mean it very rarely gets used, but it’s there. I mean, Dave Ramsey would say get rid of it. But it’s there because we are actually trying to finally buy our house that we’ve been in a lot land contract in for four years. So for our purposes, it helps the credit score, but I totally get whatever comes in, you know, has to be reinvested. So the money hasn’t always looked as great as it did on the profit and loss on the p&l. I mean, a great amount of money has come in but a great amount of money has also gone back out to be building and growing and getting better software to be able to free up some of my time. Time and build the team to free up more of the time. So I totally get what you’re saying. It’s been a struggle, but it’s been a fun struggle. I look at it as I’m climbing a mountain. And the closer that I get to the top, it’s gonna be steeper, there’s gonna be newer challenges, different challenges, but it’s definitely an interesting trip, not going to say fun, because sometimes it’s not fun. But as long as we enjoy the trip, and can laugh at things like bloopers, and pet glitches, then it’s definitely worth the journey. If you could do anything, sorry, go ahead.

It’s just it’s so fulfilling. And it’s a lot of work. And I think one of the struggles that many in society have today is we we have this microwave mentality. I see it in my kids today. You know, I still like to listen to terrestrial radio, some when I’m in the car, but man when they’re driving and they’re in charge of the stereo, the minute that a commercial comes on, they’re flipping to another channel and it drives me nuts but you know today with Netflix, and with all the On Demand TV and podcasts and on demand, everything, everybody’s attention span is about 30 seconds. And a lot of that thought process translates into business as well. And people think that, you know, they can just roll over and put a website up and be sitting on a beach with a laptop and days. And it’s not true that doesn’t exist. The only real secret in anything in life is work and working hard for an extended period of time. If you want something that’s gonna last, you know, we joke about or talk about the tortoise and the hare, that children’s story that we all read when we were growing up, and we all want to be the hare. But the tortoise won the race. It wasn’t flashy, wasn’t glamorous, and he just took his time, but the reality is he won. And I think the thing that’s enabled us to have the success that we’ve had is I have been the tortoise And there’s not a whole lot of accolades, most of that work is being done behind the scenes that nobody ever sees or knows about. But ultimately, our goal is long term, not just short term profits. And it sounds like that’s the same case with you.

Oh, man, I’m so glad that you brought up the tortoise and the hare. Because I tried to jump from the tortoise to the hare at one point and it nearly killed me in my business. I grew way too fast, team wise and client wise and couldn’t handle what was going on in the business. So clients were unhappy team was unhappy because I didn’t have time to connect with them. I had to hire fast and usually you the recommended advice, listen or read anywhere and you’ll hear more times than not hire slow fire fast, but I was having to hire fast so I was paying more than I could afford. And I ended up losing money. Even though I had 30 new clients in a period of a month. I had to take on so many new people. that it costs me probably four times as much to grow that fast. It’s sort of the same as, you know, going on The Oprah show before you’re ready. If you’re still in your garage, and producing your product, when you go on Oprah better watch out, because you’re going to get such an influx that your chances are, you’re going to have more unhappy customers than happy ones, because you’re not gonna be able to keep up. Yeah. So that the whole journey has prepared us for each stage of growth, not just growth, and I totally get the instant gratification. It’s sort of coincidental what you do, but people put their money in, they want to get their product immediately. But it’s not how it works in small business ownership. You don’t just put in an hour for most people, you don’t put in an hour, and then all of a sudden win the lottery. And it’s not like lottery winners either. You know, a lot of them even by the big ones have invested in lottery tickets their whole life before they win the mega millions. Yeah, but even some of those aren’t ready for the huge influx of money and so many of them went Got bankrupt because they’re just not prepared.

It’s it’s a mental thing as much as anything else. And if you’re not prepared, you will squander it. And that’s oftentimes why second and third generations of successful business owners, you know, end up destroying all that they’re, you know, father and mother or grandparents or whatever put together because they didn’t have the struggle, which means they don’t have the thought process and the frame of reference to handle the business when it ends up getting to where they’re leading it. And it’s not their fault. But there’s a lot to be said for that for sure.

Kim Sutton: I’m glad you brought that up, too. You have three children, do you see any of your kids working in your company or taking it over?

Matt Miller: My kids have worked in our company since day one. In fact, one of our mantras as a company is families, our foundation and my kids have been involved from day one. In fact, my son Zane, who’s 21 now and as a junior In college at Hillsdale College, he was our first graphic designer at 10 years old. And since we do custom stickers and custom sticker designs for schools, there have been thousands of those designs that have been done over the last 10 years.

And Zane has probably done at least half of them. His sister Sarah is a designer for us now and she helps out with some other stuff for the couple of podcasts that I have myself.

Matt Miller: My youngest, Rebecca is kind of an informal office manager here and and helps out with shipping and a lot of that kind of stuff and loves work and trade shows with me when I do them. So they have all been a part very, very active from day one.

That being said, we’re not grooming any of them to come back and do this. It needs to be something that they want to do. I don’t believe in, in in charting their course for them. And that’s ultimately up to them and God where they feel led to go so we’ll have to see about that. But we have definitely leveraged being entrepreneurs in the education of our kids. And they are so much further along in certain areas of their lives because of the environment that they’ve grown up in for sure.

Kim Sutton: I’m actually in Cliff ravenscraft. Next Level mastermind. Are you familiar with Cliff?

Matt Miller: I took his course two and a half years ago. podcasting A to Z cliff is an incredible guy. I run into him at conferences throughout the year. And yeah,

Cliff is amazing. He was in his family business. He was doing insurance sales, right. And he was amazingly good at it. But it just wasn’t where the passion was right. And then he got out listeners if you’re not familiar, along with Matt’s podcast, definitely check out cliffs podcast, but it’s been last night. He actually did a Facebook Live. I’m not gonna date this but I will put a link to the life in the show notes, which by the way you can find at KIM SUTTON comm forward slash two to six and Matt, he was talking about About how the first year of his business, which was maybe just a little bit after you started yours, I think he made maybe 11,000. And it was a struggle. He said he was talking about how he and his wife would alternate months of when they would break down crying, just because of frustration, and I totally get it. It’s never my husband crying, though it’s always me. But he persisted. And he saw that month when it doubled. And then the next month, the income doubled again, or no years, sorry, the next year doubled, and then doubled again. And he kept on going and it kept on going. And he hasn’t consistently doubled every single year, but they are reached the year I think he said 2015, where he was actually able to take the majority of the year off. Yeah. Or he did a couple sessions of podcasting A to Z. And his income actually stayed level for the whole year. Even though he was outside of the business. He was actually focusing on his health which is amazing that you could take the whole year off and focus on getting in better health for himself. And now he’s back at it, and he’s seeing the growth again. And it’s such an inspiration. listeners, if you haven’t heard anything, this whole podcast, Matt, I don’t mean to speak for you. But I think persistence is key. And a coach is key.

Matt Miller: No doubt.

Matt, you brought up your podcast above if you could share more about that with the listeners?

Matt Miller: Yeah. About I actually had dinner with Cliff ravenscraft at Social Media Marketing World. This would have been two and a half years ago, I believe, after the conference was over out in San Diego. And he mentioned I didn’t know him at the time. I had seen him speak that week. But anyway, we talked and he mentioned this course and he mentioned that he had another one coming up in about a month. And I had been thinking about podcasting for our franchise team. So actually, I have four shows, believe it or not, but two…

Kim Sutton: Oh my gosh. How do you manage that?

Matt Miller: Two of them are private. Two of them come out once a week each of them and there are only three For our franchise team, and they talk about what we do internally, I bring on external guests as well as interview our successful franchisees share best practices and all that. So that was the main motivation behind it to begin with.

But then I realized in the school fundraising space that there was nobody talking to all the different companies that were out there like mine, and giving them a forum to go deeper into what they do and how they do it. So I started what’s called the school zone school Fundraising Ideas podcast two and a half years ago, and we’re approaching 100 episodes.

Matt Miller: I think if I remember, right, a month ago, though, I started the show that I’m most excited about called sowing seed, the sowing seed podcast, sowing seed dotnet. And in it, I talk about faith, family farming and financial freedom, all the things that I’m passionate about, and that really are my focus in my life and the episodes right now. It’s twice a week. I think I’m Come out three times a week here shortly. And the goal is for me to actually be an Alexa briefing here on the Amazon Echo here after the first of the year. So hopefully that’ll be set up here by the time this goes live, but anyway, they’re just short five to seven minute episodes. It’s just me there’s no interviews, and it’s just me talking about life and my perspective on things and I’m just I’m really enjoying it. It gives me an opportunity to share my thoughts on things that I’ve never had a chance to really talk about before and instead of just purely talking about vending or fundraising all the time it gives me a lot more freedom to talk about the things that are important to me outside of those we raised chickens out here we’ve got a huge garden so I can talk about the farming aspect and all that of homesteading. Of course I can talk about the family can talk about financial freedom and business and then of course, talk about my fate too. So really, really, really excited about that. Really Enjoying that portion and within the next year so that’ll be the foundation for a book and and some other things hopefully as well.

Matt, please share the name one more time and listeners again it will be in the show notes at KIM SUTTON comm forward slash p p two to six.

Matt Miller: It’s called sowing seed, not seeds, but seed sowing seed podcast at sowingseed.net or on iTunes.

Awesome. I have to clear out some room on my Mac because it’s absolutely full of podcasts right now, but I will be one of your next subscribers.

Matt Miller: I’d love it. That’d be great.

Kim Sutton: I mean, quite literally, my Mac screams at me every time I move them.

Matt Miller: In fact, something I can send you, Kim, when we’re done, as I’ve started using, are you familiar with what a chat bot is?

Kim Sutton: Yes, actually.

Matt Miller: Well, actually, you have a chat bot on your website. Yeah, now that I think about it, I set up or we’ve got a chat bot as well. It’s called Pete the podcaster. And I’ll send you the link. It’s pretty cool technology and it’s letting people see how that they can subscribe and see how they can follow and leave reviews and that kind of stuff. And that’s my me dipping my toe in the water with that technology as well. It’s pretty cool, man,

Kim Sutton: Totally off topic. But I want to thank you for bringing that up because I just remembered listeners, when you activate a new credit card, you always have to remember to go back and update your credit card number all the places that it’s being used in my paypal card pays for my chat bot. And I just remembered that I got that notification that it was about to be disconnected because I hadn’t updated with the new card number yet. Positive productivity does not always mean perfection by any means. Man, this has been an absolute pleasure. And I hope that we run into each other at a future event Actually, I’m going to Social Media Marketing World in 2018 If by any chance you’ll be there.

Matt Miller: I will be there I’ll be a podcast movement as well in Philly so

Oh, fabulous. Oh, I’m planning that’s on my calendar to my husband is scared. He’s gonna have a few he’ll probably have a Good couple of months of 2018 where he’s got all the kids to himself haven’t helped them. Where can listeners connect with you online, get to know more about you and possibly get involved with everything that you’re doing?

Matt Miller: Well, aside from this, the podcast sowing seed dotnet if folks have interest in the vending side of things at all cam, I recently wrote an E book. It’s it’s short, but it’s effective. It’s a live your dreams, the top 10 reasons why you need to own a vending business. And it’s just, you know, my 13 years now of experience in vending, most professionals don’t look at vending as a real business or as an option for a side income or a full time income like it’s become for me. But anyway, they can go to SS v business.com slash positive. We’ve got a landing page set up just for your audience and they can go there download that for free and if they want to start a dialogue about what we do and potential opportunities in their area, we can do that. Otherwise Hope that ebook ends up being a blessing to them, and at least gets them thinking, if nothing else,

Kim Sutton: thank you so much. And again, listeners that all the links that have been provided will be in the show notes man to the last piece of parting advice or a golden nugget that you can share with listeners today before we say goodbye.

Matt Miller: I would just tell folks, you know, if you haven’t gotten started, or if you’re in the middle of stuff and are discouraged right now you have to keep with it. You know, it’s not going to stay that way. Things change on a dime in today’s society. And the thing that I’ve learned over the years and you mentioned it earlier, Kim is persistence and work are the two keys that I see time and time again, separate, successful entrepreneurs and people that are success in any endeavor from others. You got to be willing to work through the good times and the bad and just realize that it’s a marathon. It’s not a sprint.