Styrofoam, Steel & Titanium w/ Matt Sheehan | Ep. 162

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast David and Gary feel right at home with CEO and Founder of Exhale, a full service  home concierge business, Matt Sheehan. If you want to know how to build and scale a dream- Matt’s advice is for you, as he has been integral in at least 5 startups businesses, now sharing his expertise in Raleigh.

Links:
Matt on LinkedIn

Exhale on LinkedIn

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: The last thing you want to be is look the same as a crowded room. You want to be a little bit of a misfit on the stuff and have a whole bunch of people say no or you're crazy early on. You might actually have something that's unique if that's the case.

[00:00:14] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined per usual by Gary Voigt. What's up, man?

[00:00:24] Gary: How you doing? It's been a nice

little 

[00:00:27] David: got my NC state shirt on today. Look, I am officially, this is the first time I've ever worn a t shirt 

[00:00:33] Gary: College dad 

[00:00:35] David: is not my own Texas A& M. My son started NC state yesterday.

He's today was his first day, got up at eight 20. No four and eight 20 class. I had to text him. I was like, did you make it? He's I'm numb, man. It's pretty cold out there today, but very exciting. So I'm sporting my gear. I've never bought any gear. I have to tell you, if you live in this area and our guests who I'm going to get to in just a second, he is from Raleigh or lives in Raleigh.

So he understands. When you live here, you basically have to choose a side. There's basically, there's two main ones. There's Duke and UNC, but then NC State's kind of there. Me too. Me too. And that's basically, we learned very quickly. You're choosing your friends. If you choose a side. Then the people who chose the other side no longer or will have to make fun of you.

And it's just a thing. So we always were anti choosing sides this for 20 years now. So to me, this is like a big deal that I'm finally chose my side. Cause my son goes through here.

[00:01:31] Gary: Now

what would happen if you wore that NC State shirt but it was printed on a Tar Heels blue?

[00:01:37] David: Oh, you probably both teams would punch you. If I were to guess

Matt, would you agree with that? With both teams punches?

[00:01:44] Matt: Yeah this I come from Boston, but the South here, specifically about basketball, you got to pick a side and it's more than loyalty. It's a little sort of mania.

[00:01:52] Gary: If you're from Boston, Patriots fan?

[00:01:55] Matt: Oh yeah, even as bad as they are right now. We'll be back.

[00:01:58] Gary: So I grew up in Connecticut, and Connecticut was, you either picked the Giants or the Patriots. The jets or the

Patriots. Yeah. So I picked the

Patriots and yeah, a lot of bad years, a lot of bad years in the eighties and nineties.

[00:02:12] Matt: we go.

[00:02:14] David: not that I'm a huge, I don't follow sports. It's just not my thing. But Bill Belichick is coming to UNC. That's like this huge thing, which I know who that is, but that's as far as I go. But everybody is like all in just uproar here. 

[00:02:30] Gary: That's because his girlfriend's enrolled there. She finally old enough to go. No, I'm just

[00:02:34] David: Oh, nice.

[00:02:36] Matt: It didn't take long for that one to come out.

[00:02:39] Gary: All I had 

[00:02:39] David: son a job is what I heard the real reason he joined, but it's like UNC football is it's not really well known here. They're a basketball team. They're a legendary basketball team, but football, they're crap.

So 

[00:02:52] Matt: They're about to be well known.

[00:02:54] Gary: yeah,

they're going to get more coverage now than ever before.

[00:02:58] Matt: No 

[00:02:58] David: which is so weird like that's just so interesting. Anyway, those Bostonian tones you hear in the background are Matt Sheehan, who is our guest today, who is also the CEO of XHALE, which we're going to get to in a second. How are you, Matt? Welcome to our little show.

[00:03:12] Matt: I'm doing great. The red looks good on you, and it's easier that way than taking the color of blue that everybody knows the difference, 

[00:03:19] David: I tell you, man, if you, yeah, it took me about a year to really understand how intense that rivalry is. And I asked, I said, who's you, who's NC State's rival? And they're like it's technically UNC, but UNC doesn't care. And I understand that because Texas A& M is the same way. Texas A& M is rival is UT, and this is growing up.

It's been weird since the SCC, but growing up, but UT was OU and Texas Tech thought A& M was their rival, but A& M didn't care. So it was just this whole thing that no one's actually rivals anybody. But now that NC state, at least for now has a good basketball team. Things are getting really weird. Like they got to the final four and beat one of the big, was it Duke or UNC?

They beat one of them last year. So big thing. As I told my son, who's not a sports fan either, I was like, you're there a good year because everyone's frothy about basketball at NC State. So you're gonna, you're gonna be pretty excited. So we're gonna go to a couple of games this year. So it'll be fun. Anywho. Let's get down to why people are probably they're fast forward until we get to this part right here. Matt, tell me about Excel. Oh, I got it right when he took a drink.

[00:04:24] Matt: It is all good. Timing is everything. So excel's the single point of contact for our members to call for any for everything and everything they need for their home. We believe that we're built on a few principles. One of the key principles is peace of mind, and so we strongly believe that we can't solve peace of mind across your entire life.

But a big piece of stress is what happens in your home. And we believe that peace of mind will only really truly occur when you have a single point of contact for any and all services that you may need for your home. And when you have that sort of aggregated single point of contact then everything gets easier.

And and that's what has been in my head for, good Lord, I don't know, 13 years since we launched four years ago. And it's going it's going really so far.

[00:05:10] David: So break that down for me. I have a house and you are, I have a, an account with you. And then I, my sync breaks. I call you, you find me a plumber or you have a plumber.

How does that work? 

[00:05:25] Matt: Yeah. So we're a membership based business. And when you sign up to be a member of ours and you get access to a home manager. So not only do you have a company to call, you have a specific individual that you know very well. So let's just say Brian is one of our actual home managers. You'd text, email, call Brian and Brian.

And you'd say, Hey, Brian. Faucet sink that needs help. He says, I'm on it. He'll usually say what sink? Cause he knows your home very well. What sink? I'm on it. If it's one of our guys who can get there who wear our Jersey, then we'll be there really fast. And even if it's one of our subcontractors that are highly vetted, we'll get those guys out to you very quickly.

But the days of going to Angie's list or the end of the internet to find a plumber or electrician or anything else, In our world those are gone and that gives folks back a lot of time. Not only do you bring in somebody that is highly trusted we have all the subcontractors already vetted and so you get all that time back rather than hunting that under the internet for a plumber.

[00:06:20] David: So how far does that go? I need a new bedroom. Is that too far? Are

we talking about maintenance tasks? 

[00:06:26] Matt: the only place it ends is if you ask us if you say we have land we want to build a new home. I will put you in touch with five, six really good builders other than that, we do it. And that's the point is that we have done additions, several garages, we've torn up kitchens, and then we've hung a lot of paintings, we've tightened doors we've installed pools, we clean pools, we've installed new front lawns, we take care of a lot of front lawns.

So if it's under the sun and you're on your property. We do it.

[00:06:56] David: and you're paying a monthly fee for the privilege?

[00:06:59] Matt: You pay a monthly fee to become a member. That's a membership fee. And then you also pay a monthly maintenance fee. So every home is different. One of the, I get called a misfit a couple of times because we love curated businesses and every home is different. So while the world of, Hey, go to hyperscale, make every widget the same thing.

I say the opposite. I say, that's fine. But at a home, If you and I live next to a door to each other, identical homes in a year, our homes will wear differently because we have different families, different styles. I have one dog. You might have three, whatever the case is. And so we, we believe that you have to curate it.

So you have the membership fee and then you have the maintenance fee that's curated for your home. In other words, you might want a different kind of lawn service or frequency than your neighbor. And that's fine. We can handle that and we'll program that in. And that's the monthly fee. That, that hits.

And then the real, one of the key insights we heard early in the business, which I did not expect, Frank, who had a lot of surprises along the way, which is fun, is that people don't love all the different payment mechanisms that they need to take care of their home. There's cash, there's Venmo, there's ACH, there's credit card, there's all these different things.

We put all of that on one umbrella and it's the same monthly price every single month. And so we have made billing really easy for our members. In order to give them peace of time, peace of mind, and time back.

[00:08:24] David: If I don't have an ongoing service, is there still a fee outside of just the monthly fee? If you're not my lawn guy, how I don't, I don't need a plumber this month. Do I just pay that basic fee or do I always have that add on fee?

[00:08:39] Matt: You will always have the maintenance fee. So let's just give you an example. I'll just make some numbers up. So our membership fee in this area is 199 a month. So for that, you get home manager, you get access to our technology, our trades. We'll do things like guardian care. We'll walk your home every other day for up to three weeks a year.

That's included in the one 99. Okay. So you have a suite of membership benefits and then let's just say that you have, you hire us for everything. Easy numbers. I'll just say 12, 000 a year, lawn, pool, house cleaning, HVAC, making cereal. We divide it by 12. And that's 1, 000 a month. So in that case, should you not ask us to fix something that's more on demand, it would be the 1, 000 plus the 199, be 1, 199 a month.

And then you call us for anything else you need, what we call on demand, the more one off tasks. And we'll add that to your next monthly bill. Fascinating piece is 1 percent of our invoices are opened and looked at every month. You say that's weird. It's because everybody already expects and they know the number.

Okay. We've taken that mystery out because we've spread it like peanut butter across the year, and we've decoupled it from the actual service. And that's a little insight that we found that has made people just given time back and generates trust.

[00:09:53] Gary: I have a 

[00:09:54] David: from a business, go ahead, Gary.

[00:09:56] Gary: So it sounds similar in a way to a home warranty company that you would pay a monthly or a yearly premium for, and then it covers a certain amount of things inside your home. Now, when it comes to the single point of contact, that's similar, but when it comes to the vetted contractors or people that work for you and instantly coming and having knowledge of your home. That's completely different because it seems like the warranty companies are only there for basically seeing what they can and can't do and who can do it cheapest. So a lot of times they don't have the best, reputation for coming in and fixing things quickly. But the idea of the service with the monthly fee versus a yearly premium, do you have I guess discounts on services added on because Premium they're paying like, in other words, do they get like a lower rate for simple plumbing stuff? If you're, they're using a contractor through you,

[00:10:50] Matt: Sometimes they do. Oftentimes they do. But we also bill ourselves not as the cheapest alternative in the town, right? Or the city because our members want high quality first. And they want the sort of convenience of having a trusted expert and all that, but we're very competitive on.

On pricing, if I can rewind Gary, just for a minute, I always rustle back against we are like home warranty bear with me for one minute. I'll tell you

[00:11:14] Gary: Oh, and you should, cause trust me, the home warranty companies are, I don't hold them in very high regard. We've used them before and i'm not a huge fan. So

[00:11:22] Matt: I'll share a couple stats with you, but home warranty companies make money like most insurance companies are, and I credit them for having a good business model. They charge a premium and they make money by doing as little work as possible on that premium. Okay. That's their gross margin.

We're just very opposite. Now you call us to change the light bulb. We love when you call us to change the light bulb. Doesn't mean we always charge for that. But our model is very different. That's one. Two is, home warranty companies are generally very small in scope, like the systems and the appliances.

We handle everything. So if a stair breaks, you don't call your home warranty company for that. You would call us for that. We have a lot of our customers who also have home warranty. But very different from that perspective. One, one I believe NetPromote's score is. The one other sort of detailed net promoter score is the I think the best metric to use for consumer facing business We use it.

I have used it for years and ours just clipped 75 which we'll get into that in a minute, which is really high home warranties aren't even close. They're like in a 15 20 range. And so from that perspective I think we're drastically different if you do have a problem with a fridge and you have a home warranty program You're lucky you have that but most years you don't need it and it's not really 

[00:12:35] Gary: Yeah, that's the only factors like major appliances are in florida here ac and stuff like that garage door stuff like The bigger ticket items that you know will be covered You Seems to give you a little bit of satisfaction with having a home warranty, but a lot of the other things, yeah, they just, they're more annoying than effective.

[00:12:55] Matt: Yeah, I'd add one more point as is we look at all those systems, garage doors, appliances, and we get ahead of them. So we're heavily proactive. And so we're trying to make sure you don't need that day. We never argue against you having a home warranty program. But if it's the door, the garage door, let us look at it.

Twice a year, make sure it's greased, it's tested, all that so you don't have that day. And generally we can do that fairly efficiently and low price and it's not a problem. So we're on one hand very different than home warranty programs.

[00:13:23] David: So where did this idea come from? So it's been in your head for 13 years. So nine years before you took the plunge, what was the instigator?

[00:13:33] Matt: So just I'll leave the answer with my background. So I was one of the early folks at Redbox. You probably still see them out on the sidewalks and in front of CVSs and Walgreens and so forth. So I was one of the, I was the 10th guy there. We were I don't know, a hundred kiosk, hundred kiosk, 4 million business.

I left it. Six years later, we were a 2 billion business. And when I left it, I said, Hey, it's time for me to go look at other problems to solve. We're in a hundred year old house in Chicago at the time, and we have a dripping faucet. I realized that day that my dad passed on the handyman skills to my brother but not me.

And so I messed around with that faucet for, oh hell, I don't know, I, I have three hours. I made it worse. And then what happened is I went into this little abyss of the internet trying to find a plumber to come help us. And I lost two days of my time. Gone because I had to wait for multiple people to show up.

Three people blew me off, just never showed up for the estimate. And two days of my time just went buh bye. And my parents taught me that sort of time is our real currency. And so for me, it bothered me and I started, I'm still a pen and paper guy. And so I started to draw and my wife knows that sometimes I'll go into a tunnel, I'll come out in two days.

And what I came out with was, why can't we get ahead of this? And why can't we give people a dedicated resource for for home management? And so that was the original idea. And then a publicly traded company out of Winston Salem called and they needed somebody to help turn the company around, it was named Primo Water.

And so I had this sort of fledgling idea. On home services that I need to go raise money and then I had this publicly traded company calling say, Hey, can you come help turn us around? And I said, let me okay, let's I guess we're moving to Winston Salem. So that's what we did. So that I put this idea on ice, if you will, until exited the water company about seven years later.

And I said the word retirement to my wife because we're on a podcast. I won't actually give you her her response, but she chuckled at me, had a few expletives and called me crazy. What are you going to do all day? Please don't be around the house and in my way all the time, which I appreciate.

And and so I started to dust off on all the comments and thoughts over the time that I had on home services. I realized it hadn't got all that much better. I give a lot of credit to Angie's list. For digitizing the yellow pages. Amazing, right? It's a long time ago and I think the world has matured and evolved a lot.

And I don't believe 10 years from now that people will be managing all the disparate trades by themselves because a lot of technology, a lot of subscription mentality has grown over time. And I think it's perfect for us and a model we bring in. So yeah, it sat on the shelf for And and then when my wife frankly gave me a kick in the rear end on, go build something again she gave me the license to, go hunt again.

And that's what we're doing.

[00:16:28] David: So where did you get started? Did you start with a tech platform? Cause obviously you, people come to your website, they have a portal. You mentioned, did you start from let's go grab a bunch of trusted Workers, handymen, plumbers, et cetera, like this, you're not handy yourself, so you couldn't dive in and help people.

Cause I'm the same way I'm useless. How did you get, how'd you get started?

[00:16:50] Matt: Yeah. So I believe this is not my first rodeo. So this is probably be my seventh startup or fifth startup over time. And what I've come to believe is you should build in styrofoam before you build it in steel long before you build it in titanium. And now the styrofoam idea is put as little investment in upfront before.

You truly understand or in order to understand if the consumer value proposition is right. So back in the Redbox days just as an example, we would have these automated kiosk ideas, but the way we tested them was a person Behind a branded table at a grocery store, asking questions like, Hey, would you trade in your unused gift card?

We built businesses out of that. So it's a full circle. This idea, we put very little tech. In fact, the first two years of the business, we put a whopping $23,000 into tech, everything was off the shelf because the idea is it's about people trust. Tech will help tech will accelerate. But I believe that frankly, a lot of the mistakes that have gone wrong in home services where folks said tech first, make it a tech play.

But actually that's not what consumers want. Consumers at some cases want an app, but a lot of cases they want a trusted person they can call who knows their home. And so we're actually more of a service. I believe we're highly scalable. We're a service business powered by tech. So I call ourselves a tech enabled service.

Very little money and tech upfront. We have a couple core beliefs from a resource perspective. One is the people wearing our jersey should be home managers, so your single point of contact and handyman, those folks drive my trucks, wear our jersey, fully branded. Everything else is really expensive to get into, so we're gonna outsource all that, but we're gonna vet them proactively upfront.

So that's our team is some of our folks were in our jersey and our outsource folks. Very little tech. 

[00:18:45] David: So how did that first year ago, we call that first, when you get launched, we call that the slog. How did that go for you? Were you able to find those 17 or 20 homes, those first few homes, and that was really easy and you've just been running ever since, or was it a bunch of, who are you go away?

[00:19:03] Matt: Oh, it's a mix, man. When you tell people that you're building a membership model to handle all services under the roof, I call my ourselves a misfit a little bit ago. They're like, you're doing what? I don't understand. And sometimes still today we get that and because it's, not the first time we've gone against the grain or fought the status quo.

And so every time you do that, you have more questions than you have people saying, Oh yes. More often than not people say where you've been all my life now. Let's sign up. But still we get that I don't understand you're gonna charge me every month for a dedicated resource and we'll get him in time so so yeah, We certainly had a bunch of wine a bunch of lunches a bunch of Hey, let me go meet somebody new we launched this business three months after we moved here So the water company was in Winston Salem.

We moved to Raleigh. Just, we picked this as our home. And but I didn't really know anybody in Raleigh when we launched the business. A lot of, as I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs get challenged on their first market because it's home. It's not really home for me. In fact, I know a lot more people, it's probably still today at Boston, Chicago than I do in Raleigh.

But yeah, it was a lot of organic talking to folks and then we saw a referral engine start. Right out of the first 17, like two of them were referrals, we said, Oh, that's a pretty good small small subset, but a pretty good show of referrals. And then it started to take off after that we've done very little marketing, a little bit of press here and there a little bit of Google ad testing.

And now we're leaning into some channels, but early on the slog is a great word for it, man. And it is, you don't exactly know which way is right or which way is wrong. And you're going to give it a shot, test a lot and trudge your way through. I love the slog. It's the right way to say it.

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[00:21:15] David: So where are you guys now? Are you on a runway? Are you self independent? Like you're making revenue and supporting yourselves? Where are you guys in that

[00:21:24] Matt: Yeah, we just actually passed the profitability mark. We've done a lot of testing. And so that's a big moment for us. This is in my mind a very big business. I'm not necessarily a lifestyle guy. And so we're gonna go take a real shot at this and give a shot to make sure it's big. So we had a long vision of that.

overhired early. We now have put more tech in than we probably needed to. And all that was because we believe we're going to go build a very big business in, 40, 50 markets in the country. So to spend like we did up front to really give this a shot where we weren't, it wasn't about utilization.

It was all about testing. Then then yeah cross and profitability metric for us is a really big idea. Yeah. We are now leaning into expansion. So we're having some national regional or national conversations about expansion with channel partners. And the only reason we're there back to the styrofoam point is because our net promoter score has got hot so high.

That I feel very good that Frank, even if that dips a little bit, it will still support our vision of being the premier home service company in the country. And then our yield of walking a house and a home with you. So the way our model works is you call you do a consult with, say me, 25 minutes on a zoom.

I'll send somebody to your home. We'll do a home review. One of the important metrics on our business is how likely are we to get that member after we walk to their home. And in the last 12 months that yield is 76%. So when you have a 75 percent NPS and a 76 percent yield rate, while small I think we've got enough going on in the positive, up to the right direction than not.

And I said, all right, now's probably the time to, to go. And again, not my first rodeo. That's a mistake I've made in the past is either going too early. I see it all the time. There's people almost overbelieve in their business and they just go and they get way out over their skis. We've tried not to do that.

But I. Pretty confident now we have at least a majority of the solution or it's time to go. So that's where we are now just cross profitability, having distribution conversations about what that might look like. And that's a really exciting part because we have been in the slug. It's not just a year.

It's several years. We're like, what the hell are we doing? And is this right? We just lost a customer. We screwed that up yesterday, but more in a positive than the negative mark. And we love the business and think we're doing something pretty unique.

[00:23:45] David: So you've been lifestyle up to this point. You've been building it off your own savings or friends and family, that kind of thing.

[00:23:51] Matt: Yeah, my wife and I put a bunch of money into to to get off the ground. And then we raised a small friend of family. Rounds two plus years ago. So we brought in, just about 2 million of outside capital, friends and family. And and that's got us to this point. And then we'll be likely raising if our distribution conversations, expansion happens, continue to go at the pace they are right now, then we'll be raising outside round here in the mid to near term.

[00:24:19] David: Nice.

[00:24:20] Matt: Which is cool.

[00:24:21] David: That's very cool. Yeah. A lot of, I find a lot of startups and they're usually younger, which is that's a mixed bag. I love the excitement of a young person, but I think it's often beaten by the experience and temperance of someone who's older. I'd say probably, and I've said this before, I a big chunk of our startup clients are actually in their forties or older. And I think they, that gets forgotten a lot, but so you've come out this you've built it where I think it's so interesting and nice to hear is you've gotten all the way to profitability before you got any money. So many people again, like the younger ones that it's, I have a great idea. I know it's great.

Everybody tells me it's great. My mom says it's great. My buddy says it's great. It's great. So I'm going to go and raise money. And they're doing that like almost right out of the gate. Usually it's to hire someone like me and we usually tell them don't like you were saying we usually say build the cheap wix site to see if anybody cares Then and you can back that up with some money a couple thousand dollars here and there Some google ads to see again.

does anybody care then you can build what we would call smoke and mirror site Which for us is a beautiful site Highly designed it looks like it's a full on company But everything behind it Is air table and some contact forms,

right? And you're doing phone calls on the Excel spreadsheets, right? We recommend that usually can do for 10 ish thousand dollars, really high designed some stuff like that. And then if that's working and people are still caring now you can sign up and make money, not a lot, but you can make some. Now you can really start investing in. Those automated tools, which is where we come in, or you can do some low code stuff nowadays, even though there's some pluses and minuses there. And I find that people, they just want to jump ahead. I was talking to a guy today, actually who we're going to be having on the podcast next month, but I was chatting with him, I've known him for 10 years and he's yeah, I had an idea. And so he's a developer. And he's so I built it. And he's and he built it before he knew he had a customer.

Cause it's just, I can do it.

I'm going to go and do it. And then look up and see if anybody cares. And that's, and when you don't have the tech, I think that's actually an advantage because you're going to go further before dropping big bucks on someone like me, who. Might not need, you might not need me yet, right?

Most two sided markets, which I would, this is a classic this is almost a three sided market, but you're connecting. You're sticking yourself in the middle to be a

third, but you've, you're connecting fixers with people who need things fixed. You can do most of that with a sales spreadsheet and a phone for a really long time. And people just skip right over that. And I couldn't encourage that more. So very cool. Obviously you did not follow my advice since I just met you, but it's

very good. 

[00:27:10] Matt: No. Listen you come to this with some level of wisdom and I can tell, you get a lot of gray. I got a lot of gray in the beer now. One thing is, we're fortunate that we've had a decent amount of success so far. And so we had the capital to give, but, back when I was 25, I didn't have that.

So if I had this idea, I would have been raising money early. I would have tried, I think, to get to the, to the proof point as cheaply as I can. Yeah. But I didn't, I couldn't have got this off the ground like I have today. So that's some of it is a necessity piece. But generally speaking, I thousand percent agree.

Try to take the path with the least investment. Just because you have investors and once you have investors, you have some level of, Hey, I owe them something in return. And it's a good burden to have, but it's a bit of a burden. And you have to show speed and things like that.

So if you can wait if you can't, I get it. And a lot of, listen, I have a 16 year old son. I think he has a pretty good entrepreneurial mind. And I said, listen, back in the day you had to be a certain age to be a CEO. I think that is changing now, if you're 20, 21, 22, go launch a business, but it doesn't mean you've had the ability to make the money to put it into the company.

So that's why like crowdfunding is fascinating to me recently. 10 years ago was nothing now is a very active space, and I think that's really helpful for the overall economy. But generally speaking, building styrofoam as much as you can reduce your risk. You can do it faster. You could do it on your own and then move from there.

[00:28:32] David: Do you, so crowdfunding got really hot, especially in North Carolina, five, eight years ago, crowdfunding this crowdfunding that they were all going to be all these platforms and all these states were getting involved because Kickstarter was there and, they wanted to make it more democratic so you didn't have to be an accredited investor, all this stuff. And I haven't heard much about it really since maybe. That died out three, three issue years after it got exciting. And then I don't hear about it hardly at all anymore. And it always seemed like a pretty viable way of getting money, especially when you don't have any, because most people don't have rich family and friends to give them money and they don't want to do the bank for whatever reason.

If you're 22, you don't have a choice. They're not going to give you

[00:29:16] Matt: Banks won't give you money anyway, right?

[00:29:18] David: That's fair. So they go and end up in the VC space, which. Is can be a pit of vipers or the best thing ever, right? But crowdfunding always seemed viable, but you're saying but again, I haven't heard much about it You're saying that's picking up steam.

You're hearing more about that now.

[00:29:32] Matt: I think it's I didn't know much about it until I started digging into about six months ago. So this is still new for me. And I think it's much more active than any of us know. I think it's a small percent of the world who actually knows it's there. But as I, to the point, oftentimes crowdfunding comes after some level of institutional.

It's not just like an expanded friends or family thing. So you might, in some cases you do better in crowdfunding when you've brought some institutional money in and you want to cap off your round which means you've got to go institutional anyway. So I think there's some pros and cons. I think it's much more than it was 10 years ago.

It but even me, I, run a few businesses and it was almost brand new to me six months ago cause I heard about it, but it's much more active and people are making, people are raising not just 20 grand. Like 25 million and things like that through crowdfunding. But I don't think they're on PR as good as it probably needs to be. .

[00:30:22] Gary: First, I think you just gave me a marketing idea. We're going to send out some videos with puppies and Sarah McLaughlin songs in the background.

[00:30:30] David: Please hire us to develop.

We don't want to have to kill these puppies.

[00:30:34] Matt: Love it. Tell me how that goes.

[00:30:37] Gary: but seriously, we're going to wrap this up with a question. We ask everybody based on your experience, What would you say are the three best pieces of advice you can give to a startup or a new entrepreneur?

[00:30:48] Matt: Yeah, there's a ton, but I think I'd probably, yeah, narrow it down to three. So the first I would say is passion is more important than intelligence. When I speak on stage, I always have this black slide and it's white letters, passion more important than intelligence. And I say that because I think in order to make these work and because the slog is often long and difficult, then you have to love what you're doing.

And if you're doing it from a logic perspective, we all have to understand TAM and all that. But you have, you better bring passion because you'll be up early and late figure it out and you have to have the wherewithal to stand through those slogs. So I think that's number one. Number two is find your center of gravity first.

And so the way we, I have always done that is find your purpose, your values and your vision. And when I was running a public company, I had an investor, we were going through a tough few quarters and he said, real boats rock. And it was awesome. And when he said that, I realized that if you have a center of gravity, your boat, your business can rock a little bit, but but you'll be okay if you truly understand who you are and are centered.

I think the last thing I'd say is be super thoughtful and fast about making changes. But be really sturdy on the stuff that means that the world and that sounds like a speaking out of both sides of my mouth But on one hand like if the if a person isn't right on your team move on them very quickly because they're gonna destroy it Be thoughtful about it and then move fast and then sometimes Being stubborn which my wife hates because she calls me stubborn.

I say thank you dear for the compliment She's that's not what I mean I do think that we have to understand we've got that generally right, but sometimes wrong is where do you cut bait and walk, make a change, whether it's people, model, technology, whatever it is, then sometimes, though, you have to be sturdy on what you believe in.

And I just read a book by Mike Maples, which is Pattern Breakers. If you guys haven't read it, it's fascinating. It just came out couple of months ago. One of the things he says about the things that have become truly good are those that are right. and non consensus. He says because most of the really big ones got a lot of no's.

So I say being a misfit, we've got a lot of what are you doing? Like you can't do that. You're going against Jeff Bezos rule of just picking one category. You're doing everything under the sun for the home. I think you need to be starting some stuff and you're going to see stuff that the rest of the world doesn't see.

And if you allow them to change you on that, you've lost the uniqueness, but you got to understand the difference between what you cut bait on and what you just. Take to the grave

[00:33:13] David: Love it.

[00:33:14] Gary: If anybody wants to learn more about Axial or about you, Matt, where can they reach out?

[00:33:18] Matt: Yeah, go to exhaleathome. com and you can actually sign up time with me right on our website.

[00:33:24] Gary: We'll put the link in the show notes too.

[00:33:26] Matt: Cool. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:33:29] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net.