Fatima Bey: 0:04

This is MindShift Power Podcast, the number one critically acclaimed podcast where we have raw, unfiltered conversations that shape tomorrow. I'm your host, Fatima Bey, the MindShifter, and welcome everyone. Today we have with us Matthew Stafford and he is out of Florida in the United States. He is the managing partner at Build Grow Scale and he has a personal story of becoming that. I'll let him tell you. So how are you doing today, Matthew?

Matthew Stafford: 0:41

Doing. Great Thanks for having me.

Fatima Bey: 0:43

Thank you for coming on Now. Briefly tell us your background and some of the things you've accomplished.

Matthew Stafford: 0:50

Yeah, so I've been an entrepreneur since I graduated college.

Matthew Stafford: 0:54

I actually purchased the business of the gentleman that I was working for right out of school and built that into a commercial concrete company that had about 25 employees.

Matthew Stafford: 1:07

We were on the road about 200 days a year traveling all over the country pouring concrete for big box stores like Walmart, Menards, Lowe's, Home Depot, A couple of other large chains, A couple of other large chains and I did that for about 23 years and kind of stumbled into the e-commerce world through an event that I went to that was put on e-commerce alone, and in that period we've worked as a store owner. I've sold millions about $15 million for the t-shirts in the first three years that I did it and then I started helping other people optimize their sites, and that's the business that I own now is Build, Grow, Scale, and we've worked for Discovery Channel, Scientific America, Mark Cuban Companies and other ones like that. But what I really enjoy is we've helped over a thousand store owners actually create successful e-commerce stores, Some of them I think 27 we're at right now that have hit the $10 million mark and about 150 or 160 that have hit the million dollar mark.

Fatima Bey: 2:29

That's awesome. So what you do at Build Growth Scale right now is you help entrepreneurs or existing companies with e-commerce, correct?

Matthew Stafford: 2:41

Yes, learn how to increase their conversion so that they can have a profitable store and build their dreams. Yes, yep, learn how to uh increase their conversion so that they can have a profitable store and build their dreams.

Fatima Bey: 2:47

Yes, yes, and that's important to note because, again, this shows for teenagers. Just because a company says we made $3 million last year, they may have spent four. It doesn't mean they were profitable.

Matthew Stafford: 3:00

Yes, exactly.

Fatima Bey: 3:01

Uh, so tell us, why did you personally for you? Why did you get into entrepreneurship?

Matthew Stafford: 3:09

Yeah, I think my answer today is different than it would have been if you asked me 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I've always been driven and I thought the reason was, you know, I just wanted to be successful. And I thought the reason was, you know, I just wanted to be successful. And what I realized in the last five or six years I've built a whole lot of successful companies and never felt successful. And so I still felt broken, that I would build something and get it working very well and then find a way to sabotage it or get rid of it because of the fact that, unconsciously, I didn't think I was worthy of it.

Fatima Bey: 3:54

I understand that, that self-sabotage. That used to be me too, and I get that. I really really get that.

Matthew Stafford: 4:02

I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through that, because it does seem to be a fairly familiar cycle of you know. The first couple of ones that you do aren't typically when you hit the one that sticks and I think a lot of that has to do with being self-employed is really it's a inner game, because you're always looking for ways. It's always teaching you where you're not showing up, how to get better, what you have to do to be good enough to compete in business, and in order to do that from a healthy perspective, it takes a little bit of practice. Yeah, I think that it requires practice and mistakes. If all I told you about were the successes, you would think that that's all it took in order to be successful, but I find that the more I talk about the mistakes, there's actually a lot more learning lessons in those, and every entrepreneur will go through them at some point in their journey lessons in those, and every entrepreneur will go through them at some point in their journey.

Fatima Bey: 5:12

Absolutely so. You said you got into it because you had feelings of unworthiness and that hindered you early on.

Matthew Stafford: 5:16

Yes, yeah, yes.

Fatima Bey: 5:18

Where did the difference happen?

Matthew Stafford: 5:29

um, I, I was at an emotional intelligence uh event where they had you there for a thursday, friday, saturday, three weekends in a row and they took us through an experience where we had to act out our father and mother and, um, just to be vulnerable, I grew up in a very violent household.

Matthew Stafford: 5:43

My father was extremely abusive to the children and my mom, and so I always thought in my mind the reason why I struggled with those feelings and relationships was because my parents said I love you, but then we got beat, and so I thought I just had this weird view of love. And when I went through this emotional intelligent weekend and we had to act out our parents, I acted out. My father first acted angry and pretended like I was slapping the person, and then, when it got to having to act out my mom, I actually turned around and faced the wall that was right behind me and I had a conversation that was it was the aha moment for me. I was like, oh, that's, this is weird. My mom never hit me. And then I said, oh, and my mom never played with me and my mom never took me anywhere my mom never. And I realized right at that moment that the reason I struggled and felt that way was because I had never developed a healthy relationship with my mom.

Fatima Bey: 6:49

And it took you a long time to recognize that.

Matthew Stafford: 6:52

Yeah, I was in my late 40s, so it was literally, and it's helped me determine what my legacy, or what my purpose is, is to help other children not have to wait until they're in their 40s, or three, four decades into their journey to figure out that the stories that we tell in our heads a lot of times can be very unhealthy and they're just not true.

Fatima Bey: 7:15

It's a matter of addressing them and just unlearning what we used as a coping mechanism to be safe when we were young, coping mechanisms as a coping mechanism to be safe when we were young, coping mechanisms those can be good or bad, depending on what you're talking about yeah, and at what stage of life you're in?

Matthew Stafford: 7:34

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't say that they're all healthy.

Fatima Bey: 7:37

No, but sometimes they stick with you until you're old, or you work with them for a season until you realize they're unhealthy and do something else. You know, everybody's story is a little bit different, but I'm going to ask you this because this is a part of the conversation as well. We're going to come back around to what we were just talking about a little bit, but first tell us what is e-commerce?

Matthew Stafford: 8:00

Yeah, e-commerce is essentially a website that has a shopping cart and items that you can buy, so it's a way for you to sell either information or physical products online and then make a living from it.

Fatima Bey: 8:16

So an online store kind of yeah, Anything you're selling online, you have a website for it. So why should someone young become an entrepreneur in e-commerce today?

Matthew Stafford: 8:29

Well, I honestly feel like I have the opportunity to choose, to do whatever I want, and I choose e-commerce. Every day, I get up excited. It is constantly changing and evolving, constantly changing and evolving, and I feel like, uh, it's the very best time in the world to be in business, because you can literally open a store and serve a worldwide market uh, overnight and uh, with, with the right training and the right work ethic, uh, I've witnessed people have meteoric success. In fact, I I work with, so far to date, my most successful client, and he's 31 years old now and his company will do about $70 million this year. And four years ago he was sleeping on a mattress in Montreal.

Fatima Bey: 9:22

I love stories like that. Now I'm going to go back around to, like I said, weave this into what we're talking about with e-commerce. So if you become an e-commerce person, you have your own online store, which really anybody can do these days, and anybody really can be successful with it. What are the emotional reasons that might cause someone to not succeed with it?

Matthew Stafford: 9:47

Well, one could be a false expectation of looking on social media and seeing the highlight reel of people that are claiming that they work four hours a week and have a laptop and can go all over the world. I've had a lot of people get into it, thinking that and they're sadly disappointed that just being in business for yourself requires that you show up and, most of the time, work much harder than your employees ever will even imagine doing.

Matthew Stafford: 10:19

And so I never try to paint the pretty picture because I don't think that that sets the proper expectation. You can certainly do very well, but you're not going to do that, competing with the people who are working very hard and becoming hyper successful that way.

Fatima Bey: 10:38

Right. Can you think of some emotional reasons why someone would be successful in e-commerce reasons why someone would be successful in e-commerce.

Matthew Stafford: 10:44

Um, yeah, they believe in themselves and that they uh have the attitude that, uh, they're going to make mistakes, they're going to fall down and they get back up and do it again and again until they get better. I always tell everybody, when you first start, you're going to suck and then you'll probably think it's not working. Most people give up just before it actually becomes successful because they haven't put enough grunt work into it to actually get good enough that people want to give them money for what they're doing Right.

Fatima Bey: 11:19

You have to just kind of fall down a couple of times and get back up to realize which way to walk.

Matthew Stafford: 11:26

Yeah, I can tell you that I have not ever, in the thousand store owners that we've worked with, I've never had one tell me that they never had an issue or that they never thought that they were, you know, a week from failing or all of these different things that have happened during their journey, until they got to the point where their business was sustainable and it was, you know, able to provide for them to build their own dream, yes, so I already asked you why someone should start an e-commerce business, and completely agree with you the freedom of running your own business is great.

Fatima Bey: 12:01

The drawback is you don't have consistent income, but can that change? Can they create an e-commerce business that does eventually give them consistent income?

Matthew Stafford: 12:18

give them consistent income. 100%. Yeah, I 100% believe that, and I mean the reason why you're in business is to make money. Profit's not a dirty word, and if you can't make money at being in business, then I also say that it's cool to be an entrepreneur too. Not everybody's got the makeup to be an entrepreneur, but you can work inside of someone else's system, where you'll thrive. I have a bunch of people that were store owners didn't enjoy the 30 things that they had to do. We now run an agency that helps people optimize their e-commerce store. So the thing that they were really good at. We have a bunch of clients and they can help them with that one thing that they love doing every day. We have a bunch of clients and they can help them with that one thing that they love doing every day, and they don't have to run an entire business, but they can just be very good at what they do, or what they enjoy doing?

Fatima Bey: 13:03

How should someone, a youth who says you know what, maybe I should try an e-commerce store? How should they go about?

Matthew Stafford: 13:14

choosing what their thing is, that they're selling. I don't think that you have to love what you sell. I just think you have to love the process of figuring things out, being a problem solver and being willing to go to show up every day and work.

Fatima Bey: 13:31

That's really what I think it's going to take to be successful. I think loving what you sell is helpful, but I totally agree with what you're saying about loving the process, because you can love what you sell but hate the process, and that'll that'll ruin everything for you too.

Matthew Stafford: 13:42

Yeah, In fact, my my most successful client ever that I was talking about earlier. Um, he had been selling the products that he sells for two years, before he had ever even ridden in a truck that used those products, so he had already, I think at that point he was close to $14 million in sales and had never even experienced what he sold.

Fatima Bey: 14:06

So if someone wants to get into, let's say I am 17 and I want to get into e-commerce and I like baseball caps. I got a whole wall full of caps. I love caps. I want to get into e-commerce and I like baseball caps. I got a whole wall full of caps. I love caps. I want to sell baseball caps, but I want to do mine a little bit different. Whatever that difference is, how do I start?

Matthew Stafford: 14:27

There's a lot of free resources. I really think that I agree with Tony Robbins it's not how many resources you have, it's how resourceful you are. And YouTube, our blog, all of the things like. We don't really work too much with startups. We work with people that already have an established business and increase it and grow it. But we put out all kinds of information for people just starting so that they can build with a solid foundation right from the very beginning, understanding the optimization principles, so that eventually they can grow the store to the point where we could work with them. So there's lots of free resources. There's YouTube, with the LLMs like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. There's zero reason why you can't have the resources if you're resourceful.

Fatima Bey: 15:23

Google AI Studio is something I'm very and, claude, and I actually like Copilot too. There's a lot of different AIs. I use ChatGPT a little bit less actually, but there's a lot of different AIs out there that ChatGPT a little bit less actually, but there's a lot of different AIs out there that are just phenomenal at helping you, and all of them-.

Matthew Stafford: 15:40

They're literally the world's smartest assistant. They literally are, if you look at them to do the work for you, then you're probably gonna not get great results. But if you treat it as an advisor or like a coach or a mentor and you tell it the result that you're looking for, it will help you, and it's. We use it every day.

Fatima Bey: 16:02

I'm a living witness to that. It has helped me a lot.

Matthew Stafford: 16:06

I definitely can. I've watched it with go ahead.

Fatima Bey: 16:09

Go ahead.

Matthew Stafford: 16:11

I was going to say. I've watched it with several of our very successful store owners and it doesn't necessarily they're not using it to eliminate people. They're using it to make the people that they have a lot more quality output and a lot more resourceful.

Fatima Bey: 16:30

So let me ask you this I'm 17. I love my caps and I just started my online store called Caps and Thangs and nobody's buying and it's failing and I put all this money into it, even if it's drop ship. Okay, maybe I put some money into it, but what do you do when it fails? When you start your business and it doesn't go as planned, what do you do it?

Matthew Stafford: 16:57

fails. When you start your business and it doesn't go as planned, what do you do? I'm going to say plan on that, plan on it not going as planned. Again, like we were talking about a little bit ago, when you first start, you're not going to be good at it and you have to remember you're competing with other people who have been doing it for a while, and so there's a lot of examples of how to do it correctly. And if you're willing to just keep trying the people who just keep trying, they always make it. They just never fail. If that's not the option going in, that you'll figure it out. Whatever it takes, I believe that you can't fail. The only way you can fail is if you quit. Right, you got to stop trying.

Fatima Bey: 17:35

That the only way you can fail is if you quit. Right, you got to stop trying. That's the only way you can fail. So when someone is feeling like a failure because that just doesn't go with the territory, everything's not going to work the first time, does that diminish who they are as a person?

Matthew Stafford: 17:51

No, absolutely not.

Matthew Stafford: 17:53

I truly believe that the stories that we tell have a lot to do with when we were growing up as to whether we feel like we're good enough or if we're capable.

Matthew Stafford: 18:05

And, to be honest, even when I wasn't failing I was doing very well in business I still felt like that, and that has always hindered the success of the business that I was running until I addressed those issues first. So if you are trying and trying and trying, it's not working, there's typically somebody who could give you some advice or who could walk you through some things that would help you with that, and so what it really requires is for you to be willing to be vulnerable and expose yourself and say, hey, this is what I'm thinking, this is what I'm trying, it's not working. And I've never not been able to find a mentor that wanted or that didn't want to share what they did to be successful. We understand the journey and how hard it is, and when someone reaches out and asks for help, I do all kinds of calls like that and try to provide value in the attempt to get them to the next step.

Fatima Bey: 19:12

Now. There's only one way of doing everything to be successful in e-commerce right step Now there's only one way of doing everything to be successful in e-commerce, right?

Matthew Stafford: 19:18

No, yeah, I mean really, when you think about it, every single thing that you look at, that you touch, that you interact with, it was sold by someone, it was built by someone, so it's endless. It always amazes me to see how people make their money and what they sell and what they do and their story behind it. A lot of times, your story of the failures is going to propel you to the success of the business, because people can relate to the failure more than they can relate to the success.

Fatima Bey: 19:49

Oh, that's a really good way to word it and I completely agree. So here's to me the juiciest part of the conversation Tell me, share with the audience what you were telling me about your future plans.

Matthew Stafford: 20:03

Yeah. So just because of the childhood that I grew up with and the difficulty that it caused me in the first four decades of my life the first four decades of my life I really have a deep sense of gratitude for being able to figure out those internal stories, and my goal is to build a center where I can help children like big brothers, big sisters, maybe underserved people or ones that don't have the resources to get the help, to learn sooner how to correct those stories and have a healthy self-esteem early on in life so that they can do better for the world, and I think that there'll be a huge ripple effect from that.

Fatima Bey: 20:51

So how do you plan on doing that?

Matthew Stafford: 20:53

That's a very good question. I'm still in the process of figuring that out myself, but I do know that it will be a place where they can come and learn how to develop a healthy story about themselves. I coach other entrepreneurs and so I've helped take them from the mindset where they're failing to the mindset where they're thriving, and I think that our youth can learn or unlearn much faster than we do as adults, because I had 40 years of confirmation bias of believing those stories, and so for me it's taken five years of really deep work to unwind it, where the children that I've worked with can do it so much faster because they have a year or two of confirmation bias and their brains are much easier to adopt a new belief, and I say that because that used to be one of my big hangups and I would be so much further along in life had I really truly embraced that earlier on.

Fatima Bey: 22:15

There's a lot of reasons why I ended up that way.

Matthew Stafford: 22:17

Yeah, same for me. My pattern, because of the trauma that I dealt with when I was younger, was I'm the only safe place for me Exactly safe place for me. So when things started working really good, I would literally push people away because it didn't feel safe when they got close and that's hurt my success in a lot of different ways. In relationships, I think our relationship with ourselves is a mirror. How our relationship is with money, was with other people is with our physical health, and so as you get healthier mentally, your relationships and all those other areas work better and you'll be successful a lot faster. Whatever success means to you, I don't think success just means you make a bunch of money, because I have a lot of friends who make a lot of money and they're very unhappy and I wouldn't want their success.

Fatima Bey: 23:11

Right, that's not really success. So, with this vision that you have, if people have ideas for you on how they can help, can they contact you?

Matthew Stafford: 23:26

I would believe that I went through an experience probably a year ago now. I was at a conference and the guy asked the question. He said I've always thought of myself as being very smart and successful. He goes. But then I started asking, or I started looking at other people are way more successful than me. He said what if I change that mindset to? What if I wasn't smart? Then all of a sudden, now everybody's ideas. I'm open to other people's ideas and since I've done that, I've had a lot of people have really good ideas that they probably shared with me lots of times that I wasn't even aware of when I thought I was smart, and so I believe that lots of people will be able to give me good ideas to help make this come to fruition a lot sooner and be more impactful.

Fatima Bey: 24:19

Yes. So I'm going to say to listeners right now if you have ideas you heard his desire and his idea and his, his idea If you have a way that you can help him and I do mean anything at all, it could be you have an expertise in a particular area. You could loan your expertise to him, it could be money, it could be things If you have any way that you think you could help him his website will be in the show notes contact him and have a conversation. I love to support people that are actually trying to do something for our youth that helps them in a really deep and genuine way. So I'm hoping that you know the whole world is listening right now and can see what they can do.

Matthew Stafford: 25:03

I was just going to say yeah, I definitely feel like we're put here on the earth to make it better for the next generation and have an impact, and we typically do that from pain to purpose. So the pain that we've went through and endured and learned how to navigate, we can help other people not have to go through the same thing.

Fatima Bey: 25:27

One of the worst feelings is feeling like you're alone and you're the only one who's gone through and suffered through what you've gone through, and that is never, ever, ever, ever, actually true.

Matthew Stafford: 25:37

The problem is not enough of us are opening up. I think social media promotes that too, just from the standpoint of, you know, the youth is so used to seeing everybody else's highlight reel, but yet they still feel the inadequacies and their flaws. And so they're comparing their worst self with everybody else's best self and mostly fake self, yeah, and it just accentuates where they feel like they're failing, when truly they're not.

Fatima Bey: 26:09

I agree. So before we go, I want you to speak to the youth of the world. What advice do you have for them today?

Matthew Stafford: 26:19

I genuinely think you're our future and so ask questions of people who have lived longer. I know when I was that age, I wish I would have done that more, because I did. I had the mentality of you know, I can figure it out myself. And the truth of the matter is I've always figured out things better when I collaborate and had more impact when I didn't try to do it on my own.

Fatima Bey: 26:45

So tell the audience where can they find you.

Matthew Stafford: 26:49

Yeah, my website is buildgrowthscalecom and my email is matt at buildgrowthscalecom. Feel free to reach out by email if you think I could support you. I'd be happy to and look forward to, you know, helping some of the listeners.

Fatima Bey: 27:05

Well, Matthew, thank you once again for coming on.

Matthew Stafford: 27:08

Thanks for having me.

Fatima Bey: 27:18

And now for a mind-shifting moment. Today I'm going to do something a little bit different. Instead of me making a statement at the end of the episode to help shift some thinking, I want you to mind shift me. I want you to tell me what you're thinking. What did you get out of this episode? Was there a moment that really hit a spot for you? Are you thinking about becoming an entrepreneur? And this kind of pushed you a little bit more? What did you get most out of everything that Matthew said? He said a lot. I want you to go to FatimaBaycom. Go to the podcast page and send me a message. What mind shift happened for you, or how can you shift my thinking about this podcast? Go to FatimaBaycom. Go to the podcast page. Thank you, you've been listening to MindShift Power Podcast. For complete show notes on this episode and to join our global movement, find us at FatimaBaycom. Until next time, always remember there's POWER in shifting your thinking.