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

正在做。太好了，謝謝你邀請我。

Fatima Bey: 0:43

感謝您接受我們的訪問。請簡單介紹一下您的背景以及您所取得的一些成就。

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.

法蒂瑪先生：3:54

我理解那種自我毀滅的感受。我以前也這樣，我懂。我真的懂。

馬修·斯塔福德：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

確實如此。你說你之所以開始做這件事，是因為你覺得自己不值得，而這在早期阻礙了你。

Matthew Stafford: 5:16

是的，是的，是的。

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?

馬修·斯塔福德：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

嗯，一種可能是在社群媒體上看到那些聲稱自己每週工作四個小時、擁有筆記型電腦、可以走遍世界各地的人，這種期待是錯誤的。我遇過很多人，他們也這麼想，但最終卻很失望，因為自己創業就需要你到場，而且大多數時候，你的工作量遠超你的員工的想像。

Matthew Stafford: 10:19

所以我從來不會刻意描繪美好的未來，因為我認為這並不能設定正確的期望。你當然可以做得很好，但你不會這樣做，因為你要與那些努力工作並因此獲得巨大成功的人競爭。

法蒂瑪先生：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

你必須跌倒幾次然後重新站起來才能知道該往哪邊走。

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?

馬修·斯塔福德：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

一個年輕人說“你知道嗎，也許我應該試試電商商店”，他們應該怎麼做呢？

馬修·斯塔福德：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.

馬修·斯塔福德：13:42

是的，事實上，就是我之前提到的我最成功的客戶。嗯，他賣這些產品已經兩年了，甚至在還沒上過裝這些產品的卡車之前，就已經……我想當時他的銷售額已經接近1400萬美元了，而他甚至從未體驗過自己賣的東西。

法蒂瑪先生：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

它們確實是世界上最聰明的助手。如果你指望它們幫你做事，你可能不會得到很好的結果。但如果你把它當作顧問、教練或導師，告訴它你想要的結果，它就會幫助你，而且它確實如此。我們每天都在使用它。

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.

法蒂瑪先生：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

不，絕對不是。

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?

馬修·斯塔福德：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.

馬修·斯塔福德：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?

馬修·斯塔福德：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.

法蒂瑪先生：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

對，這不算成功。那麼，有了你的願景，如果有人想幫助你，他們可以聯絡你嗎？

Matthew Stafford: 23:26

我記得大概一年前我經歷過一次。當時我在一個會議上，一個人問了這個問題。他說我一直覺得自己很聰明，很成功。他說：「但後來我開始問自己，或者說，我開始關注那些比我成功得多的人。他說，如果我改變這種心態會怎樣？如果我不聰明會怎樣？然後突然之間，我就能接受所有人的想法了。我樂於接受別人的想法。自從我這樣做以來，很多人都有非常好的想法，他們可能和我分享過很多次，而我以前自認為很聰明的時候甚至都沒有意識到這一點 所以我相信，很多人能給我提供好的想法，幫助我更快地實現目標，並產生更大的影響。

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

問題是我們當中很少人敞開心扉。我認為社群媒體也助長了這種現象，就從年輕人的角度來看，他們已經習慣了看到別人的精彩瞬間，但仍然覺得自己不夠好，不夠完美。所以他們總是拿自己最糟糕的一面和別人最好的一面，而且大多是虛假的一面來比較，是的，這只會加重他們覺得自己失敗的地方，而實際上他們並沒有。

法蒂瑪先生：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.

法蒂瑪先生：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.

馬修·斯塔福德：27:08

謝謝你的邀請。

Fatima Bey: 27:18

現在是時候轉變思維了。今天我要做點不一樣的事。我不會在節目結尾發表聲明來幫助大家轉變思維，而是希望你們來改變我的思維。我希望你們告訴我你們的想法。你們從這期節目中獲得了什麼？有沒有哪個瞬間真正觸動了你們？你們有沒有想過成為企業家？這期節目有沒有帶給你們一些動力？馬修的每句話為你們帶來了最大的啟發是什麼？他說了很多。我希望你們造訪 FatimaBaycom。造訪播客頁面並給我留言。你們的思維有了哪些轉變，或是你們如何改變我對這期播客的看法？造訪 FatimaBaycom。造訪播客頁面。感謝你們收聽了「MindShift Power」播客。想要了解這期節目的完整節目筆記並加入我們的全球行動，請造訪 FatimaBaycom。下次再見，請永遠記住，轉變思考的力量是無窮的。