Discover how a firefighter's adaptability ignites success in the tech world as Matt Verlaque, COO of SaaS Academy, joins us to share his extraordinary transition from battling blazes to building businesses. Feel the heat as we dissect the power of customer-centric pivots and the essential flexibility needed for any entrepreneur's toolkit. Matt's candid revelations about overcoming financial fears and the surprising parallels between emergency services and SaaS startup strategies are set to fan the flames of your entrepreneurial spirit.
Strap in for a crash course in no-nonsense business planning with tales from the trenches of tech startups. We strip back the complexities of business models to focus on what truly matters – validating your idea and funding your venture without the fluff. You'll learn how our early pre-selling strategies were a lifeline, setting us on a path to clear financial goals and thresholds that guided us through the startup storm. Tune in for a masterclass in lean operations and a treasure trove of growth tactics honing in on sales, retention, and ramping up customer value.
Finally, let's talk about the quest for the perfect business coach and the impact it can have on your trajectory. In a world filled with aspirational mentors, we dissect the ingredients for coaching that moves the needle – compatibility, proven experience, and the art of coachability. You'll get an inside look at SaaS Academy's suite of programs, each meticulously crafted to nurture B2B SaaS founders at varying stages of their growth. Plus, we lift the veil on the personal growth journey that underpins every business expansion, teasing insights from my forthcoming book that's brimming with strategies for scaling success.
Discover how a firefighter's adaptability ignites success in the tech world as Matt Verlaque, COO of SaaS Academy, joins us to share his extraordinary transition from battling blazes to building businesses. Feel the heat as we dissect the power of customer-centric pivots and the essential flexibility needed for any entrepreneur's toolkit. Matt's candid revelations about overcoming financial fears and the surprising parallels between emergency services and SaaS startup strategies are set to fan the flames of your entrepreneurial spirit.
Strap in for a crash course in no-nonsense business planning with tales from the trenches of tech startups. We strip back the complexities of business models to focus on what truly matters – validating your idea and funding your venture without the fluff. You'll learn how our early pre-selling strategies were a lifeline, setting us on a path to clear financial goals and thresholds that guided us through the startup storm. Tune in for a masterclass in lean operations and a treasure trove of growth tactics honing in on sales, retention, and ramping up customer value.
Finally, let's talk about the quest for the perfect business coach and the impact it can have on your trajectory. In a world filled with aspirational mentors, we dissect the ingredients for coaching that moves the needle – compatibility, proven experience, and the art of coachability. You'll get an inside look at SaaS Academy's suite of programs, each meticulously crafted to nurture B2B SaaS founders at varying stages of their growth. Plus, we lift the veil on the personal growth journey that underpins every business expansion, teasing insights from my forthcoming book that's brimming with strategies for scaling success.
One of the biggest downfalls of new entrepreneurs is they fall in love with their solution and how they think the problem is going to get solved, versus fall in love with the problem and the customers who have the problem and be open-minded about how you're going to end up solving it.
Michael Morrison:
Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast designed for small business owners. I'm your host, michael Morrison, a small business coach and founder of BOSS, where we make business ownership simplified so that you can create a business that runs without you. To learn more, go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom. Make sure to stay tuned until the end of this episode for my recap and coach's corner In it. I'll challenge you with actionable steps that will significantly impact your business before our next episode. Our guest today is Matt Verlack.
Michael Morrison:
After spending a decade in the fire department, matt founded Uplaunch in 2016 and was the CEO through its successful acquisition in 2020. After his exit, he partnered with Dan Martell as the COO of SAS Academy, the largest coaching and training program for B2B SAS founders in the world. Inside of SAS Academy, matt oversees the Growth Accelerator Program, where he coaches early stage founders to find product market fit, hone their go-to market strategies and make their first few key hires in the business. Most recently, matt has utilized his wealth of experience in the world of SaaS businesses to co-author the book Software as a Science Unlock Limitless Revenue Growth Without Losing Control. Outside of his work at SaaS Academy, matt is a husband, father of three young boys, and spends most of his time reading, weightlifting, cycling and running. Let's get to Matt now to learn the pivots he made to create a successful business that could run without him.
Michael Morrison:
All right, welcome to the Small Business Pivots. Today we have a special guest. Tell us your name, company. I've noticed that no one can say their name like you can.
Matt Verlaque:
It's the smartest way to introduce someone I've ever heard. I'm definitely going to steal it. I'm glad to be here. My name is Matt Verlack. I'm the chief operating officer of SaaS Academy, where we train and coach software founders at a scale of companies.
Michael Morrison:
Fantastic. How long have you been doing this? I?
Matt Verlaque:
joined SaaS Academy in, I think, officially about two years ago. I was a coach with them prior to that, a client of theirs. Before that, um, I had another tech company that I founded, uh, that we sold in 2020. So, yeah, it's been a been a journey. I started out life as a fireman and, uh, abruptly took a right turn and turned into a tech founder, and I was in 2017 and I haven't looked back since.
Michael Morrison:
So as a business owner or working in the business field, you're still putting out fires, right.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, exactly, some metaphorical ones, yes.
Michael Morrison:
So I know a lot of business owners that are listening had challenges growing up Could have been a trial or tribulation, I know for me. I was kidnapped by gunpoint by my biological father. That kind of set me in the trajectory of lack of self-confidence, things like that. So I know that I had to work on overcoming that Anything like that that you can offer to small business owners, because I know mindset is a big thing.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I can, I don't have quite the story you have there. That's a tough one to follow. Quite the story you have there, that's a tough one to tough one to follow. But you know, I think for me the the biggest like recurring challenge growing up was just around financial security. You know, I come from a single parent household. My mom is incredible, worked her ass off my entire childhood to to provide, you know, a solid childhood experience for me. But there was always that that fear, right, the ups and downs of you know, how are we doing? Are we? Do we have the security we need? Some years were good, some years were less good, you know. And so I think that it's an interesting paradox, because I feel like when you grow up in an environment where you have a deep need for security, it can, in some people, make you more risk averse, which flies in the face of some of the decisions that you might need to make to be successful as an entrepreneur. So that's probably one thing that I was able to overcome relatively early in my life was understanding how to take a calculated risk and look at the downside and then make the decision and go, because I think without that you can fall into the paralysis analysis trap and say, hey, I had a tough experience at this stage of my life, so now I'm gonna project that every other decision I make might put me into the same experience. So I think that's definitely a belief to conquer there.
Matt Verlaque:
So did you go to college? I always joke with my tech friends. I say I tried the free trial of college and didn't convert to a paying customer. I made it about my first year and it was interesting. I showed up, I went to business school, but freshman year in college it's all general education and stuff like that, and I didn't. I didn't, like intrinsically put a lot of value on being well-rounded. I showed up with the mindset of all right, it's business school, teach me how to business, you know, let's go. I want to learn, I want to sell, I want to market, I want to create, and it was everything other than that. So, um, I drank a lot of beer, played some rugby, went to class sometimes, and it uh, and it wasn't for me. And so after that first year, that's when I punched out and switched gears to join the fire department, which was in 2004.
Michael Morrison:
So the fire department obviously probably taught you some good lessons, I would think. What applicable lessons would you say those have been beneficial to you in the business world?
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, there's a few. I think one of the advantages you have in the fire department. It's also one of the disadvantages, like many things advantages you have in the fire department it's also one of the disadvantages, like many things. But you have really close relationships with the people that you work with, right, and where I started, I started out as a volunteer fireman before I got hired as a actual job, and so I actually lived full-time in the firehouse just outside of Washington DC, like as my primary resident. So it was like me and 10 other people and we were on the fire trucks every single night, which is how we paid the rent, and then we were either working or going to school during the day, and so, like, the depth of those relationships is crazy, you know. I mean, you're every night in literally a big room with 15 beds in it, right, and so how does that pertain to business?
Matt Verlaque:
You know, obviously we're not doing the same thing, but I think that the best leaders in business are the ones that can have the conversations and the relationships with their direct reports that can comfortably transcend business topics right, where the people on my team I can tell by their tone of voice if they're in a good place or not. I know their spouses' names and their kids' names and what kind of phase of life they're in and what they're up to. I know their spouses' names and their kids' names and what kind of phase of life they're in and what they're up to. And I think that if you've never had a tight relationship with coworkers like I had in the fire department, it's tough to see the value of doing that until you really need it. And I think that's one of the things that sets me apart as a leader.
Matt Verlaque:
It's not any kind of like forced intimacy discussion kind of stuff or anything like that. People share what they want to share, intimacy discussion kind of stuff or anything like that. People share what they want to share. But uh, but just knowing that the potential is there to go a level deeper than most people do with their boss or coworker or whatever Um cause, like when the shit gets hard, that's what gets you through. You know, like the everyone wants to unify behind the business goal. But when the business goal is a thing that's causing the tension in the business, the relationships with the people next to you, is what's going to carry you through, and so I think being able to cultivate that in a high stress environment really lends itself well to growing a company.
Michael Morrison:
What got you into business from the fire department?
Matt Verlaque:
I always kind of call it an accident because it wasn't a really well thought out plan. If I'm being honest, you know, there's a thousand ways I could go all revisionist history on it and make it sound really, really smart, but it wasn't that. You know the way that it happened. My best friend, Jake, was in the fire department with me when I came out of the fire academy as a rookie, I got assigned to the same firehouse that he worked out, so we were hanging out. He created a CrossFit gym in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he was living, and knew that I had done some you know coding in high school and was like you know, hey, man, can you help me out, Like my website or whatever, Cause he didn't know how to do that kind of stuff and so it's a fire department. You know we help each other. Everyone's got a trade or a talent or something like that. So I made him a website, made a few more websites for CrossFit gyms and that's how I started my first entrepreneurial adventure, which was some exceptionally mediocre fitness websites for gyms, but that evolved into figuring out marketing automation, and this was like 2015, 2016. So it existed.
Matt Verlaque:
There was some software out there, but it wasn't commonplace like it is today. You know, fill out the form, get the emails, text messages, all that. It wasn't as well adopted as it is in 2024, when it sounds obvious. And so we built some of these automation strategies for Jake's gym because he was trying to figure out, like, how can I be the face of the business in my local community and also be in a different state for 24 hours at a time, riding on a fire truck, Like that was the problem to solve. And as we cracked that, we realized that the stuff we built could help all sorts of gyms right. And so that's how it started. We started putting together some strategies, gave them away on podcasts at first, Then we started selling them and that led us to pre-selling the software before we even wrote a lot of code just to validate that there might be a business there, which led to us building the software.
Matt Verlaque:
And then we eventually punched out of the fire department in 2017 once we got some traction. So it was just do the next right thing over and over again to just, you know, keep looking under the rock and see what's in there. And I mean man. Eventually I had two kids at the time, married, working probably over 100 hours a week between the firehouse and the software company and eventually it was. I credit my wife. She was basically like look bro, I don't even care which job you do, but if you could just pick one of them, like that would be awesome, so let me know what you decide.
Matt Verlaque:
And so we went in on it.
Michael Morrison:
Yeah Well, I know that you said a common word that a lot of entrepreneurs say, and that's accidental. It's so interesting that entrepreneurs that set out for the money are less likely to succeed. There are some that get through there, but it's the ones that have a passion or find something that they want to solve or provide that usually just get successful. It pays off in different ways, would you say. That's what happened with you.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, Look, I think it's a downfall of many entrepreneurs.
Matt Verlaque:
I think one of the biggest downfalls of new entrepreneurs is they fall in love with their solution and how they think the problem is going to get solved, versus fall in love with the problem and the customers who have the problem and be open launch and how likely you are to succeed.
Matt Verlaque:
Because the more you get you cling to the idealistic, you know version you cooked up in your head about how the business is going to work. Like you know, none of it's going to work the way you thought it would. Your first 17 attempts are all going to suck and it's not going to work and no one's going to buy it and they'll tell you they love it and then they don't give you a credit card or they show up for a month and it's not the way they want it and they quit or whatever your industry's version of that is. And so I think that the more you cling to how do I take this handcrafted plan that I spent 100 hours on and bring it to life Like it might not come to life, Right, no-transcript? The more likely you are to be disappointed in it.
Michael Morrison:
Being adaptable, I found, is something that's kind of an essential as a business owner that had a lot of startups will come to us. We do business coaching, consulting, and they'll come to us and you know they they're already picturing five years from now what this business is going to look like and I say I don't want to. You know, burst your bubble, but it's not going to look that way. I assure you. It's funny, it might still look that way, but you're just not going to be successful.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, or or it might, I don't know. I had it's funny, I had this as my desktop background on my computer for a long time and it said goals and ink plans and pencil, right. And so I think that there's a lot of value in figuring out where do you want to be from a revenue standpoint or a customer account standpoint, whatever your proxy for success is. But then making a meticulous plan in my opinion, like it really loses its value when you go more than a quarter out, right? So it's like you got to know where you want to go, but how you get there. That's the, that's the journey, that's the fun. You get to go figure it out. You know it's going to be a lot less fun if you knew all the answers up front.
Michael Morrison:
Oh, amen to that. I've got a quote that I crafted. It's my daily mantra and that is every day is an exciting adventure, with problems to be solved and memories to be made. I mean, that's just go into every day, knowing that there's going to be a problem, and it sure makes things a lot easier. So I know a lot of business owners approach us also with business plans, and you mentioned that, so I'm going to bring it up. What are your thoughts on a business plan? Did you have one? Oh, hell no.
Matt Verlaque:
Okay, yeah, I didn't, I had an idea. I was trying to make it to Tuesday, man, every week, you know I. But but that's not to say that I don't think there's value in them. I just think that there's diminishing returns on going super deep, right. And so what I usually tell people is take your first. You know swag, scientific, wild ass. Guess at what you think the solution could be sold for. What you like.
Matt Verlaque:
Figure out the unit economics, figure out where you think the solution could be sold for.
Matt Verlaque:
Like, figure out the unit economics, figure out where you think you could find your customers and essentially come up with a hypothesis is step one and have some type of spreadsheet, the minimum effective dose of some kind of financial model, where you're like, okay, this could hypothetically work Cause it helps people figure out their constraints. You know, I know that if I, if I think you know you're going to pay $300 a month for this particular service and here's my goal on what I want to earn 12 months from now, then I know that roughly my constraint on what I can spend is X and like it sounds elementary, but that's usually the depth that I will do for a new business. Like a plan is have a clue. What do you think you're going to sell it? What do you think it's going to cost? What do you want to make? How long do you think it's going to take? Who's the customer? Where can you find them?
Matt Verlaque:
And then go validate that they have the problem, validate that they'll pay for it, validate it's valuable to solve the problem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and go try to build it within the constraints you set out, Like I think that's enough. So I don't, I don't advocate running in blind, but man, some of these people are putting together like a PhD level thesis, you know a hundred pages. If it's got chapters, you've gone too far, right. Like just have an idea, do some math, have a hypothesis go prove it right or wrong.
Michael Morrison:
That's usually where I keep it. I know it depends on the ask or the lending or the funding situation, but I don't even know that most banks even ask for a business plan anymore. So if that kind of validates your answer, yeah, it's interesting.
Matt Verlaque:
I don't know. It's one of the areas where I think everything I just said, like software in 2024, is a relatively low CapEx venture, right, Like you can start relatively inexpensively. There's so many cloud-based solutions, it's it's a lot more around knowledge at this point, um, being able to code or finding someone who can being able to solve the problem. So so, yes, the calculus may change a little bit If you have to meet certain requirements to get bank funding or get an SBA loan or you know, take venture capital money, et cetera, et cetera. But but if you've got something that you can sell, fund or bootstrap from early sales, yeah, Spend the time on that. You know customer funding is a great way to build a business.
Michael Morrison:
What did you focus on first when you jumped out into the entrepreneur world?
Matt Verlaque:
Survival. You know we so. So here's how we did it is we put together some of our content strategies. That that was essentially what the software was going to deliver. It didn't exist yet. We gave it away on a podcast, which was cool. About a thousand gym owners downloaded it, so felt like that was a win and our the first dollar we made on the internet was basically like me saying to Jake, hey, I can chain the software together for other people same way I did it for your gym. Let's offer that for like 100 bucks. And you know, maybe we do it 10 or 12 times and get some reps.
Matt Verlaque:
So 72 hours later, about 100 gyms uh, bought that thing, which was terrifying because I didn't know how the hell I was going to do it. I like got my buddies together. I was like, guys, here's some money, let's go sit in a room and like, i'm'm going to write you a checklist. You know we were just figuring it out, and so that was. That was step one. We were still on the job at that point, but from there we resold the idea of the software that we wanted to build to the customers that had bought the first thing. Right, and I think that was really important that we didn't pre-sell it, like would you buy this? Yes, okay, check. Like we preauthorized a credit card transaction, like they had to give us a credit card number to get on a waiting list and we kept on a waiting list for seven months Like it was a big ask. And so Jake, my man's, got charisma. He, he, uh, he got 61 credit cards authorized from phone call conversations. No, no demo, no slide deck, no code, no, nothing. And so at that point we had a pretty unavoidable signal that like there's demand for this thing and people are willing to plunk down their credit card in exchange for it. So that's when we started building.
Matt Verlaque:
And then we left the fire department slightly thereafter. So the first thing that we focused on was just trying to generate enough revenue to take a paycheck. You know, I'd set a. One of my favorite goal setting methodologies is I try to set the hurdles that I need to cross, you know, six and 12 months out before I get there, cause it's a lot less emotional if you do it up front. And so I had agreed with Jake and with my wife and everybody, that if this business can at least pay me 30 K personally, like a $30,000 salary a year from now, then I'm going to go back to firehouse, you know, and I would have lost my rank and so on and so forth, but I could have got back. So it was a little de-risked, you know. So, 15 months after that 12 month initial deadline, we ended up getting where we needed to get. Yeah, it was all about sales and retention is what it came down to and getting the product where it needed to be.
Michael Morrison:
You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is sponsored by Boss, where business ownership is simplified for success. Boss helps business owners create a business that runs without them, with business consulting, business loans and much, much more. Go to businessownershipsimplifiedcom to learn why small business success starts with Boss. If you're enjoying the podcast and want to stay up to date with all of our episodes, make sure to hit that subscribe button, give us a thumbs up or leave a positive review. Let's get back to our guest.
Michael Morrison:
I visit with a lot of small business owners that seem to be distracted on the next latest gadget that you have to have and what you're sharing is you focused on sales, like I have to get revenue to generate this, and I think that's so critical that business owners hear, because I hear young startup entrepreneurs and I don't mean young in age, I just mean young in business where they're focused on YouTube videos, tiktok, social media posts and it's like that stuff's not going to pay the bills.
Matt Verlaque:
You know, yeah, unless it's your demand generation channel, like, if that's where your customers hang out and you're using that as your sales funnel, then sick. But like, at the end of the day I'm a nerd, I love math there's a math formula for this. It was literally like the entire premise of the book that we're writing right now is there's only three things. If you run any type of business with recurring revenue, and even if you're in e-commerce, then it's just repeat sales drives your recurring revenue. But at the end of the day, there's only three things you can do right, you can get more customers, you can keep them longer and you can make them more valuable. That's the business, that's the whole thing.
Matt Verlaque:
And there's a mathematical point at which the number of customers that you're losing, either because they quit your subscription service or they stop becoming repeat customers of whatever you're selling, that the number of people that you're losing and the number of people you're selling to every month will eventually balance out. And that's how revenue plateaus take place. And so when you hit that point ideally before you hit that point the only three ways mathematically to get through it sell to more people, keep the people you sell to longer or increase the value to the business. Those are the only things, and so if you're early and really doesn't even matter if you're early or not all the time like your decisions to generally be focused on which one of those three levers is the thing that I'm focusing on going to pull right, and if it's not going to get you more customers, keep them longer, make them more valuable, then there's a really good chance. It's a distraction and you might want to set it down, but I think the data is what helps you stay focused.
Michael Morrison:
Honestly, I love that. I haven't heard those three put together like that, and so you said that's going to come out in your book.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, yeah, the book's called Software as a Science. It's coming out, probably late Q3 of this year, but yeah, the whole premise is simple. The creativity is what gets you started, right? Anyone who started a company know that you got to throw a whole bunch of stuff at the wall figure out what sticks, try some stuff. It's not going to work like we were just talking about.
Matt Verlaque:
That's cool and you can get through a little bit of revenue that way, but it will stop. And the only thing that gets you through that initial call it $10,000 or $15,000 a month in revenue is a scientific approach to scaling your company. The creativity will get you started, but the scientific approach is what actually lets you scale into doing five. You a chart and a date of when you're going to hit that revenue plateau, based on how many customers you're getting, how long are they staying and what are they worth to you. Like, that's the math. And then the rest of the book is just taking all of our frameworks from the coaching company that we've been running for the past seven years on how to affect in a positive way each of those three and sharing it with the world.
Michael Morrison:
Does your software still cater to gyms only, or have you expanded?
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, so we sold that company in 2020. Um, it was a very lucky thing. It was about four weeks before COVID destroyed the gym industry. Um, so the company did a lot better as part of a larger group, right, um, than it would have if it was just me and, you know, my 12 friends that were, um, they were running it. So, so that was fortunate for the business and for us obviously as well.
Matt Verlaque:
Um, so, yeah, they're still focused on gyms. So the, the company that acquired it, um, they're, uh, basically a fitness software aggregator. So they do a lot of work with YMCAs and JCCs and the nonprofit space. They do a bunch of like membership management stuff for martial arts studios, uh, crossfit gyms. You know other, uh, independent, uh, fitness studios. So so, yeah, it's, uh, it's in different, what I would call sub markets of the fitness space and there's a martial arts edition. There's like a fit pro trainer edition as well as the original like CrossFit focused edition. But, uh, but yeah, it stayed within its sweet spot. And that was a lesson too, because, man, we tried to branch out super early. We were trying to do photography and all this different kind of stuff, and that was when we were kind of in the hurlocker of that year and a half where we were making zero dollars, was because we tried to branch out way too far way too fast instead of going deep on the market. That we knew loved us, and there's a good lesson on focus in there too.
Michael Morrison:
That's a huge lesson. So what were some pivots that you learned along the way? Because that's kind of what we address on this show.
Matt Verlaque:
The overall message that I have coming out of that grind, that first year and a half, is that there's no shortcuts. You don't get to skip the parts of business you don't like if you want to win right. I didn't particularly like doing sales, and the strategy reflected that. That our, our initial strategy was going to be we're going to, you know, do this innovative thing. Where you're going to. We're going to only sell through partners. We're going to bring these subject matter experts on. They're going to, they're going to build their campaigns and our software and they're going going to go sell and we'll do this rev share.
Matt Verlaque:
You can convince yourself of a lot of stuff on paper, right, let me make something look great on paper. And the reality was we were outsourcing all of the critical activities that we needed to do in order to survive, and it wasn't until I hired a business coach, which is now the company that I'm a co-owner in and that I run in SaaS Academy. I was a client there first, and so I showed up to an event in Canada. I went up there like three days after I signed up for some business coaching because I was like, look, we're getting ready to hit this 12-month deadline. I don't want to lose, so I'm going to at least go, try to get smarter and see if I can figure it out. And I went up there and I sat in that room and I realized two things. Number one, we were the only people with that weird business model. And number two is like I was the brokest guy in the room.
Michael Morrison:
It's the only one not getting paid.
Matt Verlaque:
So I said someone here is dumb and I'm pretty sure I know who it is. So we came home and changed everything and so, like, not for nothing, but a lot of the times the way things are usually done are that way for a reason, and so I think you'd be really selective about where you innovate, like trying to build a business where you don't have to sell and you can outsource sales and marketing to other people. Well, like, in hindsight it sounds stupid, but we thought we were super smart at the time and so I think you know that that was a huge pivot. I came home from that event and I was like guys, we're changing everything, we're going, we're shutting down the photography thing. We broke relationships with other partners that we had One of them we merged his business with ours because he was serving gyms, and we came all together and we said only gyms, let's go Until we're making more than a million dollars a year. I don't want to talk about anything. That's not a gym, let's go.
Matt Verlaque:
And it was 12 weeks after we made that decision where we rebuilt our marketing funnel, rebuilt our sales funnel, dialed in our demo process, figured out our activation, tightened up the language. So it was just for gym owners, all that kind of stuff. And then we grew every single month double digit percentages until we sold the company. That was the unlock and we even teach a framework on it. We call it the scaling credo and we didn't come up with it. It's, you know, relatively, I feel, like common knowledge, but we call it the five ones. Right, you'd have one product, one market like one acquisition channel, one sales motion for one year and just if you do those five things, it helps you keep the focus on and, you know, stops you from punching out of strategy before too early.
Michael Morrison:
So a lot of small business owners are hesitant of coaches consulting for various reasons. I've not heard the same from anyone. What would you say the benefit is for a small business owner, you being a business coach style? What would you say the benefit is? How does it work and why would someone hire a business coach?
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, I always start this conversation by telling people what it's not right, and so the first thing I level set with anyone I talk to is if you're hiring a coach and asking the question, how is this person going to generate ROI for me? Like you're approaching it wrong as the consumer of coaching and you're not ready to have a coach, because what you need to think as the entrepreneur is how can I extract my ROI from this relationship, right, and can this coach help me get there faster? The onus is on the person being coached. Now that doesn't mean that coaches get a free pass, right? I do think there's a decent number of coaches out there who haven't done the thing that they're coaching people on, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that it's really important to thoroughly vet who you're working with, but, assuming that you've done that, the way that I think these relationships work is that the role of a coach is to ask you the questions that you didn't know to ask, to get you to crush the limiting beliefs that you may have, that you didn't even know you have or you wouldn be able to overcome on your own, and to you know, show you the path so that you can learn through the mistakes of others instead of having to make every mistake yourself.
Matt Verlaque:
You know, I think that we as human beings sometimes put a lot of value on like I'm tough, I'm gritty, I can, you know, whatever nose to the grindstone for years, whatever nose to the grindstone for years. But like it's actually not smart to do right. Like I love hard work you know what I mean. I I love doing things the hard way. It makes me feel like I'm, like I'm productive but but honestly, it's kind of dumb. You know, if I can learn from the mistakes that thousand people have made before me and I can get the same result without having to go through all that stuff, like it's a basic concept of the time value of money, if I get the same result in 2025, instead of 2028, it's a lot more valuable to me and my customers and my team and my family and everybody around me.
Matt Verlaque:
So you know, I just call it paying for answers is really what it comes down to. And you get through mentoring, relationships through coaches, through advisors, whatever you got but got. But oh man, there's just we're. We're not flying to mars here. Like, whatever your business is, you know, it's 10 art, 90 science, and people don't like to admit that, but that's the reality. Like if you're running a car wash, you're not the first person to run a car wash, and there's probably people out there who are really good at running car washes. You probably learn a thing or two from Same for software and everything else. Go get that knowledge and win fast. So that's what I tell people. But a coach can't put it on a plate for you, right? They can't feed it to you. And when the business wins, it's the founders win. The coach could draw the map and be proud of that, but the founder is the ones doing the work.
Michael Morrison:
Yeah, they're the ones doing the work. So, as a business coach myself, I see a lot of business owners hesitant, and so one of the reasons is they don't know how to find a business coach. Do you have any suggestions on that? Like, what should they be looking for?
Matt Verlaque:
in a coach.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, the biggest thing you should be looking for in a coach is a track record of someone who's achieved the things you want to achieve no-transcript. And then I also think that there's a personality element to it where you've got to be able to, you know, communicate in a way that serves both of you. But on top of that it's just something I've done is like I've hired all sorts of coaches. You know, I'm not a proponent of coaches just because that's what my business does and I got a coach for everything. I'm a fitness coach, a mindset coach, a business coach, now all sorts and what I always do is I try to set down my expectations when I join, because a lot of the time some of these relationships might be six months of not feeling like I'm blown away and then hearing that one thing I needed to hear at the exact right time that made me a million dollars, you know, or help me get the next big deal, or whatever you know. So for a lot of it too, is it's not necessarily frequency as much as it is uh impact of just having that person for that right decision.
Matt Verlaque:
You know, I had one conversation when I was negotiating the sale of my company that significantly changed my approach to how we were doing it and increased the exit value. I had, you know, one conversation that early time in Toronto at that you know we call them intensives at that intensive. That made me go home and change the entire business model. Without that, I promise you, we wouldn't be on this podcast right now. So a lot of the time it's just, you know, there might be 11 seconds of dialogue with one person one time in one room on one day. That changes the entire trajectory of the business.
Matt Verlaque:
And I think that you know, if you enter into a relationship like this and and you expect to constantly be, you know, blown away with the genius stuff every single minute Like, also like building the business man is the dirt, like you just got to get the shovel and get after it sometimes too, and sometimes it's boring and it's repetitive, and you got to go do a thousand sales calls and you're like, well, the hell am I even doing here? You know, like it's sometimes it's just hard, and so I think you gotta be ready for that too. So I don't know, I, uh, I just I look for coachability more than anything else, um, in a client, and I hope that the clients are looking for experience um in the coach.
Michael Morrison:
You mentioned a few things that I'm a big believer in. I was encouraged to be a business coach two decades ago for one reason and one reason only, and that is because I've actually owned businesses, and you mentioned that. You know where have these people been? Where I want to be? And I was kind of shocked that he told me that most business coaches have never owned a business, which to me surprises me, like how you could coach somebody through a business.
Michael Morrison:
And then the second thing is often tell our clients that are in any of our coaching sessions we're not going to have a hip, hip, hooray every single time. Sometimes you may hear something you already know, but feel confident that you know you're working on the right things from someone that's been where you haven't. So, cause I know, for a lot of business owners we have self-doubts Am I working on the right things in the right order at the right time? That kind of stuff, cause everybody else seems to be leapfrogging me, you know, except for and I'm just stuck. And so you said some very powerful things. So how would someone work with you?
Matt Verlaque:
We have three different programs at SaaS Academy, so we're only we only coach B2B SaaS founders, which goes back to that exact premise of our business is never going to coach someone in something we haven't done. All of our coaches, all of our C-suite, all of our owners we've all founded B2B SaaS companies. Most of us have sold at least one right, so that's, but that's our skill. It's not e-commerce, it's not B2C. We don't know how to build the next Instagram. I love that journey. It's not my journey. So we only coach people who are doing that. So that's number one.
Matt Verlaque:
Within that, we've got three different programs. We use revenue as our proxy for business maturity, so we've got an accelerator program, which is for people who are in the market but haven't yet crossed 10k a month in recurring revenue, and so we help them narrow down their customer, get their sales motion figured out, find product market fit. But that whole program exists just to graduate people into the academy, which is our primary program. That's the one that I joined as a client in 2018. So the academy is sick like you get paired one-to-one with an executive coach, so you work with the same person every single time, meet with them every few weeks. In addition to that, there's calls, there's in-person events that you go to, like the one I went to in Toronto. That program's deep and then we take you all the way up to $250K a month in revenue is kind of where the ceiling of that program lies.
Matt Verlaque:
And then on top of that we run a high-level mastermind for clients who are doing $250K a month and up, clients who are doing $250 a month and up, and that one it's called our SaaS Boardroom and it focuses a lot more on legacy and impact and scaling up into the eight-figure range and beyond to help the founder become the person that they need to be to continue to grow the company. Because the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership number one is the law of the lid right the business ain't going to grow more than the founder grows. And so when you get to the boardroom level, we're focusing on how the founder grows, so that way everyone else's dreams get to fit inside the vehicle that that founder's creating. So those are the three programs. That's how they work. The early stage, one is, is a cohort based group coaching. The other two are are one-to-one, and and boardroom has the mastermind component. So it's a variety of stuff, man. We've we've iterated a lot over the years.
Michael Morrison:
You mentioned a lot of good things there. One of them is that you have business coaches, and so if someone's looking for a business coach, that could be one of the questions that they ask is do you have business coaches yourself? Cause I find that super important I have business coaches, just like you have business coaches. The second question would be what are your accomplishments? Have you owned a business? Have you exited a business? For me myself, I always encourage people to ask about their failures too and how they came out of it. I was a partnership in a very large business that imploded from within because of a cancerous partnership, filed a bankruptcy. The company and I was just asked last week well, that doesn't really make sense, that you're coaching others, and I said I would rather learn from someone that's failed and how they came out of it than someone that's never even had their feet dirty. If someone's looking for a business coach, those are some things that you can use to qualify Anything you would add to that.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, if they don't have a story about when they failed, they've either not tried very hard or they're lying, like that's what it comes down to. There's not a way through where you get to just be the golden child and everything works all the time. So if you haven't gotten knocked on your ass, then you're probably not being real or haven't pushed hard enough where I would want you coaching me. That's the way I look at it, like I want to know all the shit, I want to know all the dirt. All the time you got your nose broken and the you know the time filed bankruptcy and whatever it is right, like because everyone's got that stuff, man. So I don't know. I just feel like if it's not, if it's not hard and you haven't been challenged in that way, then yeah, you're either not open to talk about it which is a flag for me or you haven't pushed that hard.
Michael Morrison:
If somebody wanted to follow you, getting in touch with you. What's the best way to do that?
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, so there's two ways, right? If you're a B2B SaaS founder sasacademycom, that's the way you know. If you want to participate in the coaching program, obviously I'm a big believer in it because it helped me. I was squirting water for a living and didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I was able to figure it out.
Michael Morrison:
I've never heard it put that way. That's funny.
Matt Verlaque:
That's it. So, yeah, we're at sasacademycom for that, and then, yeah, for me, mattver, stuff starting to get more comfortable on camera and, I don't know, getting ready to get this book out. So that's the plan.
Michael Morrison:
Well, that was my next question. So where can they find that book On your website, or is that part of the SaaS Academy?
Matt Verlaque:
It'll be everywhere. So for now, until we get the book website stood up, you can find it on mine once it comes out. So, stood up, you can find it on mine once it comes out. So, yeah, I just head to maverillaccom. It'll be all over there and as we get a little closer to launch, we're going to get it all all squared away with a website and the whole nine yards.
Michael Morrison:
So, final question if you were in front of a room, in a room in front of small business owners, what is that one nugget, that one piece of advice that you would, that would be applicable for all of them?
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, know your numbers. That's my piece of advice for everyone. If you don't have a scorecard where you're tracking weekly data, start today. That's what it comes down to, because you said something in the beginning that I loved, which was talking about, basically, the entrepreneur's shiny object syndrome. Right, buying software and doing this, and I'm going to try this thing. Tiktok, tock today and I got to go buy this new, whatever project management tool tomorrow.
Matt Verlaque:
Like, guys, the numbers are what wins. Now, it doesn't mean you got to be a mercenary. I'm not saying money's the only thing that matters. Like, I think money's a scoreboard, right Of being able to run a successful business, but in order to make good decisions, you got to know the numbers, and so I even have a template I give away on my website. You got to know the numbers, and so I even have a template I give away on my website. You can go find it, but it's called the precision scorecard. Like I care so much about this, I'll even give people a spreadsheet, but every single week, track all the weekly data all the way up to. That's what you need to focus on fixing, and it should ideally roll up to get more customers, keep them longer, make them more valuable, right? So if you don't know what's up funnel of those three levers, you're guessing, and that's a really painful way to grow a business. So that's the one thing. Got to know your numbers.
Michael Morrison:
You're speaking gospel truth to me. I'm a big believer in financials and understanding your financials, your numbers. But you can't for most business owners. I always remind them you can't make good decisions without accurate, clear numbers. They have to be accurate too. You can't just be guessing. I know a lot of business owners will say, oh, we probably profit, our margin is probably 18%, and I'm like show me the numbers, because what you're saying, I guarantee, is off 100% and that's one of my catchphrases with my own team is like and I just tell them upfront that I'm going to say this.
Matt Verlaque:
They don't think I'm some like huge a-hole or whatever, but I tell them, like I'm always going to ask you to prove it Like, tell me a thing and it's funny, I saw thisin post from my friend, kevin dorsey um, he's a like prolific, um leader of sales teams, but he, um he said that he installed this phrase in his company. What was it? If you can't explain it, you can't claim it right. So, like, if something, um, if something was going well, and they're like oh yeah, close rate through 20 this week. Why they're like, uh, I don't know cool, don't care, you know and so I can't claim that one.
Matt Verlaque:
That was Katie, but but it's a, it's a good one. You got to have the numbers that track the behaviors and you figure out what you changed. You know it's a. It is a scientific method at the end of the day. Um, so I don't know.
Michael Morrison:
You said you have a newsletter. Do you have a podcast?
Matt Verlaque:
You mentioned that earlier. Yes, uh, sas Academy has got a podcast as well. Um, so my business partner, johnny, and I co-hosted, and so it's a. It's a little bit of Johnny and I riffing and answering questions from some of our clients, but then we're also doing a lot of uh guest stuff like this. We're bringing on the best leaders in SAS to uh get their brains cracked open and out there for the world.
Michael Morrison:
So, uh, so yeah, it's on the SAS Academy website. It's literally called the sass academy podcast. We're on apple and spotify and youtube. So yeah, we're, uh, we're hitting on all fronts, man, very cool. Well, as a business coach myself, I encourage all of our listeners to go follow you, listen to your podcast, grab your newsletter. Our coaching methods align and those are true because they work. Just different styles, you know different industries, but I encourage everybody to go follow you. So I appreciate your time today. You've been a wealth of knowledge and we'll see you around soon.
Matt Verlaque:
Yeah, thanks, man Appreciate it, man Take care.
Michael Morrison:
Welcome to the recap and coach's corner, where I recap the overall theme of our episode today and then challenge you with one actionable task, aligned with what we learned, that will move the needle in your business. Today we learned that success in business isn't just about having a plan. It's about staying adaptable, understanding your customers and embracing the journey with resilience. I love how Matt shared how a game changer in your business could simply be shifting your strategic focus to your customer's focus rather than your company focus. I know a mouthful. Matt shared that a common problem holding most business owners back is that they are too focused on the solutions they want to provide their ideal prospects, versus focusing on the problems their ideal prospects actually have. In order to know what that is, you must have a plan, and that leads us into our coach's corner.
Michael Morrison:
In our coach's corner, I'm challenging you to take one action on your business that could lead you to moving the needle in your business Review your company plan and ensure it's not just a rigid blueprint, as we talked about, but a living document that can pivot with a changing landscape. Pivot is the key. As business coaches, we see way too many business owners make a one to five year plan and never pivot from it, leaving them frustrated because they are not making headway. The nothing changes if nothing changes quote is very applicable here. So, after reviewing your plan, you'll discover one of the following One, you need to make your plan less rigid and more adaptable. Two, you don't have a plan because it sounds complicated and you don't know where to start. Or three, you need a simpler plan with a step-by-step process. Or three, you need a simpler plan with a step-by-step process. If you've discovered any of those to be true, your actionable item this week is to update your plan, if you have one, or download our free visionary worksheet.
Michael Morrison:
Our visionary worksheet is a simple, step-by-step plan that will help you define goals and clarify your vision so that you have an easy to follow plan. Download today by going to businessownershipsimplifiedcom and click on the freebies under the resources section to download our free visionary worksheet. You can also find the link to our free visionary worksheet in the show notes description. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. Please don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast. If your business is stuck or you need help creating your business to run without you, go to our website, businessownershipsimplifiedcom, and schedule a free consultation to learn why small business success starts with boss. If you have a guest or topic suggestion for our podcast or just want to talk anything small business related, email me at michael at michaeldmorrisoncom. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.