15 Years of Business Knowledge in 15 Minutes

Compounding is what happens when every dollar you make today earns you more dollars tomorrow, and every day after.

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That puts you on an exponential growth curve.

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[VISUAL: Exponential curve]

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Natural-born entrepreneurs have a knack for understanding this.

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Let’s say you’re that kid in school who uses his $10 dinner money to buy sweets, sell them to the other kids, and end up with $20.

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Do you spend that $20 on a new toy?

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Or do you buy MORE sweets the next day, and sell them again to make a profit of $40? And again the next day for $80?

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If you carried on reinvesting your money into sweets you’d double your profit each day until you either:

• Run out of new customers
• Struggle to carry enough sweets to school
• Get shut down by the school

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You can understand so much about how businesses try to growth

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• Maxing out your own time? Hire more staff (pay other kids to sell sweets for you)
• Running out of customers? Expand to a new market (sell in other schools)
• Want to benefit from economies of scale? Negotiate new deals once you’re big enough (buy sweets for 10c each from a cheap wholesaler, instead of from the corner shop)

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Better than making $10 a day doing the paper round, right?

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Building a business is the fastest way to take a ride on that exponential curve, but it’s not intuitive to think in terms of exponential growth.

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99% of people have a linear mental model of wealth accumulation that’s based on stockpiling money they get from their employer.

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Go out, get money, bring it back to the nest.

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Then go get some more.

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Grow the same amount this year as you did LAST year, maybe do a little bit better.

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[VISUAL: Linear growth line, on the same graph as the exponential curve.]

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That’s linear growth.

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You can work your way to becoming a millionaire that way, with a decent corporate job. But it’ll take you years and years of nine-to-five works.

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Instead, you want to focus on areas in life where you benefit from compounding effects. A

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Here’s the model I’d recommend to most people:

1. Make a product or service that people want
2. Make money from it as soon as you can

1. Build a system that lets you expand your product or service to a LOT more people
2. Use the money and experience you’ve gained to do more of that thing at a bigger scale. Reinvest the money in manufacturing, expanding to new markets, hiring more staff, R&D, marketing to reach more customers, etc.
3. Rinse and repeat.

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This is your vehicle for business success.

But you can’t do all of this unless you implement the next point: “Make Time for Deep Work”.

You need two core abilities to thrive in the modern economy:

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a) the ability to master hard things

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b) The ability to produce output at an elite level of quality and speed

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The only efficient way to get those things done is to set aside at least a couple of hours every day for deep, undisturbed work.

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Those hours will be the engine of your progress.

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You get more done in 1hr of deep work than other people will do in 8hrs of scrambling to reply to emails, agonising over social media posts, and taking random meetings.

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Here’s how I do it:

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[VISUAL: Matt working, maybe a screen-recording showing hours blocked out on his calendar]

I put aside 4 hours for deep work first thing in the morning.

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Phone in another room, only work tabs open, really sinking into intensive deep work:

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Here’s what I work on:

1. Business planning
2. Writing
3. Learning a new skill or important topic like, let’s say, AI prompting.

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Then I take a break, go for a run, recharge my mind.

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Then I come back to take calls and answer important emails.

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Notice how I’m batching all of the “shallow work” and communication into one part of the day, so it doesn’t spill over and distract me during deep work hours.

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Finally, I escape into nature, to make sure I’m recharged and rested for the next day.

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Is it hard to get this routine started? Yes.

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But hard choices lead to an easy life. Easy choices lead to a hard life. ]

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Put the time in your calendar. Stick to it.

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Of the things I make time for during deep work, the most important might be the third point - learning new things.

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The most successful people in business are always learning. They turn every interaction into a learning experience.

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[VISUAL: Elon Musk touring factory, Steve Jobs reading.]

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To succeed in business you need to be constantly studying your industry, learning new skills, and going deeper on topics you’re obsessed withobsessed by. That’s what keeps you innovating, and could be the key to your next business success.

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[VISUAL: show graph going up linearly…]

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It’s easy to say “just try to improve by 1% every week”...

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[VISUAL: scratch out graph line]

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…but that’s not what it’s going to feel like.

That’s because gradual improvement actually looks like a series of s-curves on a graph.

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[VISUAL: show graph going up sharply…]

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You’ll learn some new skills, and suddenly you can do all sorts of new stuff and your productivity/creativity/success skyrockets.

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[VISUAL: …graph plateaus]

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Then you plateau and gradually get less success because you’re stuck in your old way of doing things.

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To progress you have to challenge yourself to improve, commit to learning more right now…

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[VISUAL: graph goes up sharply again]

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…to break through to the next level.

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That’s what’ll keep you competitive in life and business.

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So at this point you understand the power of compounding, you’re putting in the deep work, using it to aggressively learn and stay ahead of the curve.

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None of it means anything if you’re not taking violent action.

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I consistently see this trait in the most effective, wealthy, powerful people I meet.

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They’re always looking for ways to get things done as fast as possible.

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They’re not rushing - they’re moving very fast and with extreme precision.

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While the competition takes six months to get to market, they’re up and running and learning from their mistakes within a couple weeks.

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Here’s how to make a habit of taking violent action:

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If you think something is going to take 6 months, ask - how could I get this done by the end of next week? What does the minimum viable solution look like?

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Your progress will speed up dramatically if you focus on what’s doable in a short period of time, do that thing, and build on your progress next week…

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…instead of spending months planning but building zero momentum.

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The main thing that stops most of the entrepreneurs I coach from taking action is analysis paralysis.

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They put off the big decisions.

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The simplest solution I’ve found for this is Mel Robbins’ “Five Second Rule”.

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If you find yourself hesitating on something you ought to do, count backward: 5-4-3-2-1.

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When you get to 1, act. Make the decision. You usually know what the right call is - make it.

Working hard and taking violent action doesn’t mean anything if you’re tackling a different business or problem every month.

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Once you get a little taste of success you’ll suddenly have a LOT of opportunities flying at you.

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And you’ll need to learn to say ‘No’.

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That’s because the greatest bottleneck to your success is your focus.

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You need to choose one thing and go all in if you want to drive that compounding effect.

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If I was just starting out again, here’s what I’d focus on, in order:

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Step 1: Build an Audience.

Step 2: Audience + Newsletter.

Step 3: Audience + Newsletter + Paid Community. Now you

Step 4: Audience + Newsletter + Paid Community + Course

Step 5: Retire to a farm with lots of land, cows, chickens, and a pig.

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Lesson six is particularly close to my heart, because it took me years to understand.

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A healthy body equals a healthy business.

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Hear me out here.

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VISUAL: fat Elon Musk, other unhealthy businesspeople

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Yes, can absolutely scale a business to millions in revenue while destroying your mind and body.

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But it will be painful every step of the way.

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[VISUAL: Matt at a low point]

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Trust me, I’ve done it, and it left me feeling miserable and empty.

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But entrepreneurs who’ve got their shit together mentally and physically are basically invincible.

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Imagine how much more efficient and clear-headed you’d be if you:

• Exercised every day
• Limited alcohol to once a week
• Ate healthy food
• Got 8 hours sleep every night
• Never smoked, got into debt, watched porn, looked for shortcuts in life, or mindlessly scrolled Instagram.

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You’ll have focus, clarity, stamina - and happiness.

A strong network is the source of almost ALL of the great opportunities I’ve had, and will help you in every single area of business and life:

• You’ll be able to make great hires because of your contacts
• You’ll easily find co-founders for the same reason
• You’ll learn about opportunities before anyone else
• And you’ll have an endless source of advice and wisdom from your inner circle.

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There are really just two secrets to building a great network:

• First, help people. Go above and beyond, be open-handed, don’t expect anything in return. Word will spread and goodwill will come back to you from all directions.
• Secondly, do great work. Interesting people will always notice, and be attracted to you and your projects.

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This brings me to the part of network-building that’s so important it gets its own point - “remove energy vampires”.

Constructive criticism and pushback is EXTREMELY important to have in your life.

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Warren Buffet called his business partner Charlie Munger the ‘abominable no-man’ because he’d always call Buffet out if he thought he was making a bad decision.

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Charlie was a pain in the ass in the best way possible - you want those people on your team.

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What you DON’T want are what I call Energy Vampires. They make everything feel like it’s a problem room. The room feels smaller when they’re around.

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If they’re in your life or your business, everything will slow down and stagnate.

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You can identify negative people with this simple test.

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After meeting them, do I:

• Feel full of energy?

• Feel drained?

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The 1st ones belong in your life. The second do not. Ruthlessly cut out Energy Vampires.

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The next lesson is about what I’m doing right now - telling a kind of story.

Ever noticed how so many successful people are great communicators?

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[VISUAL: Supercut of these people]

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Steve Jobs, Elon Musk (see Twitter), Jensen Huang, Sara Blakely…Sheryl Sandberg…

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That’s because you rarely get success without being a good communicator. Specifically, you need to be either a great or at leastminimum a decent storyteller.

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• Sales is storytelling
• Hiring is storytelling
• Leadership is storytelling

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To get people on board, you need to tell them a compelling narrative about how your product, service, or company will fit into their life.

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• Co-founders.
• Team
• Investors

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…inspire these people enough with a compelling narrative, and you won’t need to ‘give orders’ - they’ll ask you “what do I need to do to make this happen?”

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To improve your storytelling, you need to do three things:

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First- Spend more time listening than talking, so you understand people’s specific pain points. Your story should address them head-on, and offer an alternative.

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Second - Spend time reading and listening to high-quality communicators. Watch Steve Jobs’ keynote speeches. Sam Altman’s Stanford classes. Take notes. - what

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Third: Make a point of speaking your mind, finishing your thoughts, and being precise with words. You’ll find a new internal clarity, and trust me – people will sense it.

Finally, if you want freedom, build systems.

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Ignoring systems is how you stay small as a business, with you as the founder working 15-hour days trying to do everything by yourself. Basically being a glorified, inefficient employee.

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The master framework for systematising your day-to-day work and avoiding that hole is what I call my AED System: “Automate, Eliminate, Delegate”.

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Here’s the idea:

First, review all your tasks to see which pointless ones aren’t serving your goals, or growing your business.

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Get rid of them, instead of wasting time automating it, or wasting your own employee’s time and your own cash by delegating it.

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Next, if you can automate a task instead of getting someone to do it manually - automate it! There are dozens of no-code tools you can use to do this.

• ConvertKit for setting up automated email sequences
• Hypefury for scheduling tweets
• Zapier for advanced automations like posting to social media every time you publish on your blog.

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Finally, delegate.

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If I find myself repeating a task that can’t be automated, I record a simple Loom video describing how I do the task, then delegate it to an employee.

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It’s especially important to delegate tasks that drain your energy.

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That’ll leave you with a list of tasks that only you can do, and which are 100% worth your time.

There are a ton of other system-building techniques I’d recommend if you want to build a stable foundation for your business and personal life.

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For the full rundown, watch this video about “how I make $730,000 a month working just 4 hours a day”.

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