Stretch Four Insights Volume 1
Hi All,
Happy Thursday.
I recently completed a Writing Course called The Write of Passage. It was a five-week deep dive on growing your writing skills with a fairly engaged community of writers. The first thing born out of that was my blog and the next thing is this newsletter.
I will dive into books I am reading, conversations I am having, podcasts, recommended articles, songs, and more.
I am asking you to subscribe and hear from me each week. If you are working on anything please shoot it my way as well whether it be a newsletter, business, or anything in between.
I will be releasing the newsletter each Thursday at 9 AM PST, and I will test different times so let me know when you like to receive newsletters and things like that.
📚 "Read More Learn More Change the Globe" - Nas
Lately, I have gone down a rabbit hole on sales and prospecting books. As we scale at ModernTax, I have realized how much my sales skills need to improve. It is one of those deeply technical sales books and as we become more data-driven as a company it is a very timely read.
Elite Athletes Know Their Number
"At any given moment, you know how many calls, contacts, e-mails, responses, appointments, and sales you have made. You should track social prospecting activity on sites like LinkedIn, text messages sent, and even smoke signals (if that is relevant)." page 37
In this section author, Jebb Blount relates great prospecting skills to how great athletes are obsessive about knowing their numbers. This is heavily convicting for a founder like me whose also what I would call a form non-obsessive collegiate athlete. You should know your main numbers by heart but it is vital to prospecting. Peak performance is the end goal and understanding it is quintessential. It can be the difference between life and death in startups.
🗣 Stanford GSB or Harvard B-School or neither?
There were two interesting conversations and one somewhat confrontational one both related to what I call elite education. Elite university background and pedigree have been something that has fascinated me since I read Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs by Laura Rivera in 2016.
This week, a good friend and I had a very heated debate regarding elite ivy league universities. He and I both do not have ivy league or Stanford backgrounds, but we view those that do quite differently.
Now, I am the first to admit those degrees and networks do not guarantee success, but they do help a lot. My friend is of a completely different view. He works in sales and has for eight years. His stance is strong, people with those degrees and networks do not work as hard as those who do not and they are not special. He sees the degrees as crutches that people who have them use to not do the work. I strongly disagree, even though I likely will never receive a degree from these institutions as a founder and company builder I see the value.
Ironically I went to a private dinner at Money 2020 in Vegas and met two people that obviously had fairly different views. One is a founder and is finishing up his Harvard MBA and the other was a woman who just started Stanford GSB this fall.
Each are in their late 20s and early 30s. It was quite a different conversation. Both seemed to be ambitious and smart, but both felt that these institutions give them access they would never imagine having without.
I plan to write more about these topics. Each is quite polarizing and many people have strong opinions.
I would love to get feedback from you if you would be interested in talking about it off the record.
🎵 My Jam of the Week
This week I stumbled onto an Electric gem.
The song is Niamey by Ahmedou Ahmed Lowla.
Give it a listen.
What's Next?
Real Estate & Investing
This week I plan to kick off a real estate project I am working on with my mom. I am also working on researching emerging hedge funds focused on crypto, stocks, and NFTs.
ModernTax
This week I spent the early part of the week at Money 20/20 “Lobbyfest” in Vegas catching up with old friends, meeting new friends, a few current clienst, and new prospects, and learning what folks are planning for 2022.
We plan to close two more new deals with ModernTax this week and things are really picking up as we close out Q4. I will also finalize our SOC 2 Type II report as we just did our pen testing this week and things went smoothly.
As we grow, I am focusing more on enterprise deals and with a SOC 2 Type II stamp, I will more aggressively begin to prospect enterprises that we have spoken with. I have at least one big kickoff scheduled in November and my plan is to add a few more.
While I am on the east coast for 18 days I am planning a few dinners. One in NYC and at least one more in Charlotte. This will be for key hire targets, deal prospects, users, customers, and folks I have met while on the conference circuit this fall.
Lastly, I am starting a company-sponsored podcast called "How Tall Are You?" If you know anyone taller than 5'8 (ladies) or taller than 6'3 (gentleman) that works in startups, mortgage, fintech, financial services, or venture capital please connect me, we are looking to talk about everything unrelated to their work and the craziest things they been asked.
Other Stuff
I am working on a billionaire breakdown that I will release monthly. I will dive into highly successful billionaire stories that started at 0, meaning they need to have not come from a place of privilege.
I will start with the Forbes 400 list and focus on people with a certain score.
Lastly, if you found this interesting and know someone else who would, please forward it to them or tell them to subscribe here. It would make my day if you do!
Back to the trenches.
Best,
Matt