Matt Frazier: Leaving My Ph.D. To Start A Business And Build A Community [Podcast Ep. #6]

Transcribed from the episode audio by AI, so it may contain mistakes.

Ravi0:18Welcome to the Motivated Life podcast. I'm Ravi Raman. On today's episode, I'll be speaking with Matt Frazier. Matt has built a large and thriving community of people who care about health and wellness. In fact, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people read his emails every month. What's most intriguing about Matt is how his business got started. And that's really the focal point of our podcast today. I'm curious, about how someone like Matt could leave a Ph.D. program in applied mathematics to follow a voice inside that was calling him to go in a totally different direction, to become a writer, to become a blogger, and to become a community builder.

I find a story fascinating, and I also will share that Matt and I have been working together for the past year as he is a coaching client of mine. And really, our work has centered around helping Matt be his best self so we can give more to his community and help to grow his business. There are a lot of nuggets and bits of wisdom in this episode. You'll hear about what Matt learned by spending a full week in Seth Godin's office. You'll learn about his decision point and what it was like for him to step away from a promising career in the middle of his doctoral program in applied mathematics.

You'll learn about what he's learned in building a successful and thriving online business throughout the past seven, eight years, and we go into a lot more detail. So I really hope you enjoy this episode. And if you do, please do give me a quick review on iTunes. It would mean a lot to me and get the word out by sharing the episode with your friends. As always, you'll find further details about everything we discuss on my website at Ravi Raman.com forward slash podcast, where you can find show notes with links to all the things we talk about.

One other piece of housekeeping. I'm opening up enrollment for coaching for 2018. So if you're interested in working with me one-on-one to create something great in your career, in your business, in your life, just go ahead, visit my website. At the bottom, you can click on the link that says coaching or at the top there's a button that says work with me has all the details of who I work with, what I do, and how it all works. Now last year, this, well, this just past year, I ended up closing enrollment partway through the year because I can really only work with a set number of people in order to give them my full time and energy.

So I expect enrollment to be open throughout the month of January 2018, at which point I do think I'll be full and will no longer be able to take additional coaching clients until sometime in the summer or fall of next year. I currently have five spots available. So if you're interested, visit my website. There's an application in all the details. And if you're interested, apply, and I'll be in touch with you to hop on a quick phone call and see if we're a good fit to work together.

Okay. Well, that's all I've got in terms of housekeeping. With that, I bring you Matt Frazier. Matt, how are you doing?

Matt3:52I am doing well, Ravi. Excited to be on here with you.

Ravi3:55Yeah, awesome. Well, you know, I'm finally out of my Thanksgiving coma. How about you?

Matt4:02Food coma. You know what, mine didn't last too long week because we do the vegan thing. and it's not like it used to be. It lasts for three or four hours, and then each time I eat the leftovers to get another maybe hour revisit to the coma. But yeah, it didn't last too long this year. Well,

Ravi4:18we did a plant-based Thanksgiving as well, but ours must not have been as healthy as yours. I mean, what does a plant-based Thanksgiving look like for you?

Matt4:27It basically is a bunch of side dishes, because I always think the side dishes are the kind of interesting part. It's not like I didn't like the turkey back when, but it was sort of the same of you. You know what to expect with that, the side dishes. You know there's lots of room to do all different things. So we did a lot of the typical type things you know, like brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, a mushroom gravy. I actually made a satan loaf thing this year instead of buying one which is sort of the turkey stand-in and uh, and that worked well enough, but I don't think that was the the most interesting part.

We did a soup and kind of eggplant dip, all kinds of different things. How about for dessert? For dessert, my wife made a pumpkin pie and cheesecake.

Ravi5:16Nice. We made a vegan pumpkin pie. We forgot to add sugar to it. So it didn't quite work as intended, but with a, I forget what kind of plant-based whip we use, but if you add enough of that and stir it in, it actually, it tastes pretty good. Did

Matt5:34you have guests at the table who were like, yeah, Ravi, this vegan pumpkin pie is really good. Our

Ravi5:38dog did not mind. Duke loved it, in fact, and pumpkin's good for dogs, so he loved it. We just did it for ourselves, so we made enough for, we had four meals out of our Thanksgiving. That's the best part. Well, you know, I'm just happy to have you on because I've been, you know, benefiting from your work for a long time. So I've been vegetarian most of my whole life. And mostly plant. based now. I'm not 100% plant base, but mostly I was a strict vegan for about a decade.

Occasionally I slipped from that, but I do try to keep to it. I feel best and I care about the animals. That's why I do it. But I stumbled upon your work because gosh, I think I typed in vegan running and yours was the top hit. This is a long a while ago, probably seven, eight years ago. And I actually came across some of your training plans and saw that you were running as well and have been reading your blog and site ever since. So, I mean, I'll let you describe it.

How would you describe your business and your community and what you do?

Matt6:47Wow, that's an easy first question.

Ravi6:51I mean, it's

Matt6:53Unique in being what it is. It is a plant-based fitness community, But I think the way I would describe like, when I kind of step back and look at it It's a group of really passionate people who are interested in in a single topic, and it's a topic that tends to be one that is kind of polarizing. The people who are in are in and that makes them really passionate and excited and interested and engaged. And so that's what we do. We talk about how to be an active, fit person on a plant-based diet, whether that means moving from an omnivorous diet towards one that is more plant-based.

or whether that means if you're already plant-based or close to it and you want to become a fit person. So I try to talk to both of those people. It is probably the former maybe who are the more interested, who are kind of the sweet spot in our audience, I think. But it's really important to me, and it has been since the beginning, that it not come off as preachy or hard-sell.

Ravi7:59Vegans can never be preachy. What do you mean, man?

Matt8:02That's right. That's right. We're the most laid-back group in the world. You know I did like this is not something I was raised doing. I didn't even start thinking about this until after college and just didn't do it for fitness reasons. It just kind of came around ethically and said I just I had actually right after I got my first dog as an adult is when I started to have this weird feeling like, I don't know, I just didn't want to eat pigs anymore because I'd heard that pigs were as smart as dogs and it just seemed strange to me that I would eat pigs but love a dog.

and they're so similar. So I just started not wanting to do that anymore. But one of the things that actually kept me from doing it right away was the pamphlets and the stuff that the activism that I saw happening because I was in grad school at the time. And I didn't want to become that. I was so opposed to like salesy things and like trying to pressure people into stuff. And I kind of associated that with veganism. I thought you kind of had to become a militant person who was always trying to change people.

And so when I did it I don't want to say that it was like that I was reluctant or hesitant. I was happy to make this change and really excited about it. But I was afraid of becoming someone like that. So I've always been just so kind of allergic and sensitive to that that I've really really tried to make sure that that never shows up in our messaging and honestly, it doesn't take that much effort because just kind of at my core I am so that messaging just doesn't resonate with me.

So we get a lot of positive feedback from people who maybe are only just thinking about eating plant-based and maybe the only advice they take is they do a typical omnivorous diet but they start working in a smoothie that I talk about for breakfast. And we get lots of comments from those people who say they love the welcoming attitude and that it is that kind of keeps them in it. And my hope because I do hope that people will make changes to their diet my hope is that that low pressure approach keeps them around long enough and just sort of immersed, or at least at least in sight of the stuff we're doing, so that a year from now or two years from now someone says, hey, I'm going to go a little bit further with it now, because that's how it was for me.

It took a very long time for me to make that transition and I think it's a good good.

Ravi10:15for it too and you've been you've been so no meat athlete has been around since when

Matt10:22no meat athlete started in 2009 which is almost nine years ago actually That, you know, it started out as a little WordPress blog, I think within a few weeks I moved it over to, like a WordPress.com blog where it had WordPress.com and the domain name. And after a few weeks, I moved it over to a self-hosted site. And then it didn't really become a real business, and especially not a full-time one until maybe two years after it had begun. But

Ravi10:48So you mentioned you were in grad school but you were in a PhD program for applied math. Is that right? That's right, Okay. So it's not like you were just aimlessly wandering and just stumbled in. Oh, I guess you had your wordpress blog, but you were on a what seems to me to be a really different track. I can't think of two different things. You know, writing about health and nutrition versus applied math doctoral program. I mean, tell me a little bit about that transition, because at some point I'm curious for you.

At what point did you decide? Okay, this is going to be the thing I'm going to do now, because that seems like quite a big switch.

Matt11:32Yeah, well, it absolutely was. I mean, there were several points where what you're describing kind of happened, so it happened over the course of a few years, but when I was in grad school, like, although I wasn't aimlessly wandering around, I can't say I was very secure in, you know, my plans for the future. I had graduated college with a degree in finance, an undergrad degree in finance, and then didn't know what to do. I tried a bunch of things. First, I was going to start a record label, because I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, and I had a minor in music industry, so I said, I'll start a record label, and that didn't

Ravi12:11really pan out. What was your name going to be? The

Matt12:14name, actually, we were going to be a media company, and it was a former child star media. Nice. Yeah, it was a good name. We actually had a picture, like a silhouette. of Fred Savage that we took off the internet. I couldn't really tell it was him, but you could kind of guess that it was. So anyway, that didn't pan out. I was working for a music promotion company. That went under, not, it wasn't my company, but as the whole music industry got turned on its head, that was one casualty.

So I got a job doing the finance thing and realized from there that I was really, really interested in the math. That kind of underpinned the whole financial world. So I had to kind of go back to undergrad as I was working and take two years of undergrad math just to get into an applied math graduate program. And I did that. But the whole time I thought maybe I'd get a Wall Street job or something, but I just didn't really know. Really what I wanted to do was start my own business.

I knew that and I just, you know, I don't know that this was the best way to go about. It in hindsight was kind of a form of procrastination, but I kept saying if I just get this degree first it was just get this master's degree, and then it was just get this PhD then I will be like able to go start my business. I'll be, I'll get an idea for a business and I'll have the credibility behind it so that no one can can tell me no or reject me or you know, and so I part of that.

I, I knowing what I know now I just I should have started. I should have found, come up with an idea, brainstorm, found the best thing I could and just started with the smallest possible first step, rather than saying I need this degree before I can begin um.

Ravi13:47were you around entrepreneur what planted the seed that you wanted to start your business besides you know being your own boss, do you have entrepreneurs in your family, where you're, you know, I'm guessing other doctoral candidates were not thinking this way.

Matt14:04No, certainly not. They were going to work for pharmaceutical companies or go get jobs at college's teaching, And I knew for sure I didn't want to do that. You know, I actually didn't have many entrepreneurial influences at all. My mom was a real estate agent and she had kind of always, you know, in the car I would always be listening to Earl Nightingale or Tony Robbins and all just these personal development Ziglar, like just all this stuff, that kind of I don't know, just went into my head, not without, not by me trying, it was just there.

But my dad, you know, he did a typical nine to five government job And that was actually a really big influence because he he hated his job And I saw that And I saw that every Sunday he got like depressed that he had to go into work tomorrow. And uh, of course I'm so grateful And I was then that he was going and doing this for us and earning money to support the family. That's a noble thing to do. But I remember when I was a kid just thinking like it's going to be terrible to be a grown-up like I, like what happens when there's no summer vacation, like what are you, what are you living for if you're just going to work and you get one or two weeks off a year, like it?

Just it just struck me as crazy that people would do that without, uh, without some sort of goal that you're going towards other than retirement, uh. So that's was a really, really strong motivator for me and I just always had the idea that and falsely, I mean I had the idea that working for someone else it means. Misery and is necessarily terrible. And that's not right, but it definitely is what pushed me into saying I have to do my own thing, I have to find a way to be my own boss so that I don't get sucked into that nine to five thing.

Now I know that there are a lot of really cool nine to five jobs, and not just nine to five, but lots of cool jobs working for other people. Right. But, you know, what I knew of it was just the opposite. I thought it just had to be this kind of drudgery thing that you hated. So it was that opposite force that made me say I have to find something to do for myself. So that was the driving thing. And then when no meet athlete came along, when I decided to go.

So you tried

Ravi16:08the record label thing that wasn't going to fly. And then at this point you went plant-based?

Matt16:17Well, as I was in grad school and I was just on that path, kind of waiting for the inspiration to strike as to what sort of business I would eventually start after school and also working on my PhD and trying to get out of school, That's when I went first vegetarian, not vegan. I was training to qualify for the Boston Marathon and I didn't really know how it would impact that but decided it was the right for me to do this. And that's when I started the blog, mostly as just a fun sort of experiment and because I looked around and I couldn't find information on the internet about athletes making this work and I didn't know if it would work.

This was only, you know, not even 10 years ago, but there was way, way less information about plant-based fitness back then. There were a few athletes who were doing it. It just wasn't really out there in the major.

Ravi17:03Even plant-based, you know, now that's what people say, but back then it was just vegan. Even vegan was sort of a rare thing. Right. It was like vegetarian. Yeah.

Matt17:14Okay. So the thought of doing that for endurance sports, you know, my thought was, you can't get enough protein. It's not going to work. And that's what I was trying to find answers to on the internet and I couldn't and I said like I'm still going to do this because I don't know that I'm going to qualify for Boston anyway at this point. So I just started it in the back of my mind was the thought that hey this who knows maybe this will somehow turn into the thing like maybe this is the unique kind of business I've been looking for even though it didn't resemble a business in any way.

It was just me publishing free content and I didn't know anything about you know how do you build a business based on a blog. I didn't read blogs. I didn't know anything about that. So I just started it kind of halfway from being bored, halfway from thinking maybe this will turn into something, you know, that, that I end up doing. I had no idea. But I just started it. And six months after I started the blog and made that transition to vegetarian, I ended up qualifying for the Boston Marathon.

I took the last 10 minutes off of my time. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I had taken a ton of time off, like 90 minutes or something off my first marathon time. So this was a huge ongoing journey that was also happening at the same time as grad school. I was just focused on this marathon training thing. And it turned out that this, that, and I had plateaued, and that's why I kind of said, okay, I can do this vegetarian thing because I don't know that I'm going to get there anyway.

And that's when I had this surprising improvement in my running and made it happen. So obviously that helped a ton.

Ravi18:38So you lost those last 10 minutes after going vegetarian? Or 90? Exactly.

Matt18:44Okay, No, the last 10. I had already taken 90 off and I was stuck there and that's this. The diet was kind of the last piece for me and, uh, fortunately it was all played out on my blog. During the first six months of my blog, I mean, that was, you know, maybe not the most helpful content I've ever written, but probably the most entertaining period that my blog existed was when I was on this journey and I was writing all about my runs and how I didn't know how it was going to work and all these people started following it and it worked.

And then when I, when I actually qualified it's, it was like a shift and people kind of wanted to know. It seemed like people wanted to know how I did it and how I was making this diet work. And that's when I started to realize that, you know, maybe this could become something more than just my little training journal and what I ate for breakfast diary.

Ravi19:29So what was the, I'm curious, was there a tipping point or was it a slow, steady rise in terms of your blog taking you from hobby to business? What were some of the inflection points? if they were inflection points.

Matt19:46Yeah, you know, this is actually, I'm glad you brought up that and that phrase tipping point because for the first few years, this was not far actually from when Malcolm Gladwell's book was a bestseller, the tipping point. And I had that idea in my mind, and it seemed like everyone else on the internet did too. It seemed like everyone who had blogs back then were like waiting for them to tip. Like just keep putting in the work and wait until your blog tips and hits the critical mass.

Then it will all be easy and blow up from there. And that never happened. And I know why it never happened Because I mean, as you get bigger, as, like my thought was, if I just reach enough people, what the typical point idea is, if I reach enough people soon enough, those people are going to be sharing this message and it'll reach more people, and then those people will reach more people and then it will be easy. But what I didn't realize is like is, if your content is let's say, the quality of your content or your work or whatever you're doing is such that 10% of your people drop off each month, then that means that when you have 1000 followers, you're losing 100 people each month.

So you better be bringing in 100 people a month. When you get up to 10000 followers, that number that's going out if it's 10% is now 1000 people per month. So it's not like just reaching more people means you're necessarily growing faster. It means now you're losing people faster than her before. So you had better be upping the game and surely you're going to get some benefit from sharing and stuff like that. But I think and this is kind of the mathematical side of me maybe thinking, yeah, but you kind of reach a steady state where your number of coming in hits the number that's going out.

So that whole tipping point thing I just I think that kind of tricked a lot of people into thinking if I just keep doing the same stuff I'm doing at the same quality I'm doing it, then eventually I will hit enough people that this thing tips. And I think that's a a big fallacy of one that keeps people kind of stuck and just doing the same thing that it doesn't actually work. So what it turns out is that what the the inflection points, the times when it did feel like it, I don't know if tipping is the right word, but when it said like, hey, I can go do this as a job now, was when I actually did stuff and made different things happen.

And so when I, two years after it started is when it went full time.

Ravi22:04Let's pause there. Let's pause there because that's big. I mean, let's paint the picture. So where were you in grad school at the time?

Matt22:12So when I was, I think I started the blog just after I had my master's. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. I had begun working on the master's.

Ravi22:21Just after your master's and you're in your PhD. I'm just trying to understand what gives you that, what is that signal that has you go pull the rip cord and say, I'm going to do this full time? I'm wondering, like, was it, I'm curious for you, was it a hard decision? did it seem like a big decision or did it just seem did it seem fun i'm curious what was going through your mind right

Matt22:43I think it was an easier decision for me than anyone else around me. Everyone else around me, including my wife my parents thought it was kind of crazy that I would go quit this track that was probably going to, you know, get me a nice wall street job, that I would quit that, and you know, and and mentally quit that even before I actually did that's and and put all the all my eggs into this basket of a blog that you know was maybe making $10 a day and ad revenue or Amazon affiliate revenue or something.

I just honestly, as soon as I got a taste of a business that was working me doing my own thing, and this potential for me to work for myself and not have to, not have to have a boss and not have to go show up somewhere, that I, when I didn't feel like it I mean now there are lots of times I don't feel like it when I still have to show up But I think as soon as I got a taste of that, like that was, that was what I wanted.

So it was hard to, like, I started that, and I would sit in the back of the math classes on the internet, like learning about blogging and writing blog posts. And I just checked out. And still in back of my mind, thought that I could get this thing done. But pretty soon it became clear that if I wanted domed athlete to keep, you know, to get where I wanted it to, then I was not going to be able to be effective at grad school. so the revenue you know maybe got

Ravi24:10up to you remember where you were when you made the decision and I'm I'm curious about this because in my own life I've made you know in my transition for my corporate job I'm just curious what yours was like do you remember where you were when you decided I'm going to do this I do

Matt24:26I do remember where I was see the thing is I decided it as soon as I started getting traffic to the block it just became this thing in my head that It was like, this is what I'm going to, as long as this keeps working, I'm going to do it. But it was when I kind of, I wasn't going to do that if my wife wasn't into it. I wasn't going to just, like, cause all these problems. So I do remember the moment when she and I talked and it was like, okay, we're going to actually do this.

And yeah, I remember exactly where I was in my kitchen. And I remember, I think I sent an email to my advisor and said, like, I'm going to switch to part time or something. I forget exactly the details. But yeah, and that was a huge moment. of

Ravi25:04course all right and what happened next so

Matt25:09When what actually enabled that to happen just to go back and and this because it was such a game changer for me and one that I think I see people kind of stuck it was that it was when I actually put out a product, like prior to this point I had been getting ad revenue, which was, you know, did not pay well at all uh, amazon affiliate revenue, which also who doesn't pay particularly well unless you're in the right niche for doing that. But when I kind of got the courage up to say like I can actually be someone who gives advice now Because that was.

It was scary. Up to this point, all I was doing was saying what I did, writing about my breakfast, writing about my runs, just telling the story of my life. And when I made the shift and it was a hard one to make because it required me to kind of step into a place of like I'm going to be okay with being an authority position myself as someone who knows what he's talking about and, you know, act like it and understand that there are going to people who disagree and who criticize me, but that that was such a huge shift when I said I'm going to write a program that's going to tell people how to run a marathon on a plant-based diet and I'm going to own it.

And I'm going to because I've done it a lot now, or I've. I've done a lot of marathons, knew all about nutrition, and now I had made it work on a, on a vegetarian diet at least, and it was once. I just put out a product like that was the difference, like putting out a real product. That was mine and it worked and then I said, okay, that worked really well, I can do a half marathon version to the same thing. And once, once those two things were out, then the income from the blog was far exceeding my, my graduate school stipend.

So at least like, even if my life so you just

Ravi26:46you created the two products you're writing blogs and the traffic is just growing that's that's what's happening and okay and then you're getting enough traffic and and it's converting well enough where it's generating income

Matt27:00Yeah, and other things were happening at the same time too. Like, just, I was starting to get a sense that this was for real and I was kind of starting to maybe build a case for my parents and my wife to kind of believe me, because I had this vision forever that this was real. But I understood that. To anyone else it would be ridiculous to imagine quitting grad school for a blog like this, but I've gotten an email from a literary agent who said you know, I love what you're doing.

We would love to do a nominate athlete book and so what? Like once that was happening and I was getting a few little speaking engagements here and there. I think I and other people could start to envision like an actual career coming out of this. And that definitely helped in just making this seem like a reasonable decision.

Ravi27:41And how long was that journey from when it went full-time to where you felt like, okay, I'm now earning, I'm paying the bills?

Matt27:51I think I mean it was about three years after it went full-time to when my wife was able to stop work and you know, it felt like we were halfway comfortable. Uh, even during that time, and even still there are times when it's just really tight for whatever reason, because I still do want to grow it and I think, sure that's another thing. If I think, if I were really just satisfied and saying I should, I should be clear if I were just satisfied and saying this is a lifestyle business, I'm fortunate to have a job that I can do, that is, you know, lets me have a relatively relaxed, fun lifestyle doing things I like, writing about things they like.

You know it would be way less stressful. But trying to grow means hiring people and paying people and investing in all kinds of other ways to grow. And that leads to some crazy cash flow situations.

Ravi28:41Right, right. But what I'm hearing you say is it did take a number of years. And you were starting your blog a while ago. And it took you three years to get to a certain critical mass. Now, in that journey, and actually your journey all the way up to now, I'm curious for you, what has surprised you in terms of the growth of your business? Because, I mean, I think many people think of things growing linearly and just working in a predictable way. But life, I don't know, to me, it doesn't seem to work that way.

We can put in the work and then we always face surprises. So I'm curious for you, you know, what were either the, oh, crap moments, is this going to work? or on the flip side, what have been just some pleasant, amazing experiences you've had in the course of, you know, running your business?

Matt29:34Yeah, that's a great question. I would say one of the surprises is that it's funny because I have two surprises that are total opposites and they both seem true to me. One huge surprise is that it worked at all. Like, it just, I just, to imagine doing that sort of thing, it always kind of seemed like that's for other people. Like, that's a success story. That's an internet marketing lie that you hear about, that you can actually do this and quit your job. There's so many quit your job products that are out there on the internet.

And I think people sense that they are mostly BS. No one can actually quit their job by doing something on the internet. So I'm kind of amazed that it actually did work. I mean, that was a just ongoing surprise. On the flip side, I've been always, I guess I'm an optimistic person. So I have always thought that just around the corner, it's going to get really easy. And that has never happened. And I think perhaps, like I said, it's this growth mindset, wanting to grow and grow.

And you and I have talked about goals being sort of elusive, right? Like if you just have a goal that says, when I reach this goal, then I will be happy. Once you get there, it turns out you're not really happy because now there's another goal that appears that

Ravi30:52it will... Yeah, the deferred life plan doesn't seem to work very well if we just push it off. I mean, goals are important, but at the same time, there's some uncertainty around them. Right.

Matt31:02So that was kind of an ongoing surprise. It kept thinking that if I just reached this new level in business income or in the business reaching this many people, you know, then all the problems will be taken care of. And then it will be easy. And that's been a surprise that has happened 15 times. times where I thought for sure next month after we do this, then things are going to be really easy. And they weren't. Or then I will be truly happy and truly fulfilled.

And then I can just spend the days doing only the work that I like. And, you know, I haven't made that happen yet. And I don't know if I will. And maybe that's something I need to change my own thinking about.

Ravi31:40What have been some of the peak experiences? I'm guessing you've met some cool people, been to cool places, had exposure in, I mean, weren't you in, like, in the news, like USA Today or something like that? I remember reading one of your articles.

Matt31:57Yeah, I mean, those moments are always really fun. I don't, I wasn't in USA today, I don't think, but we've, the cookbook that, that we just put out this past year was named by Sports Illustrated as one of their top seven health and health and that must

Ravi32:11have been what I saw. Okay, yeah.

Matt32:13Yeah, and then with that, um, people online, people magazine's online thing picked up that same story. I don't even know how this all works, but they picked up the same thing and they printed the exact same thing. So then we were in people.

Ravi32:24You weren't one of the sexiest vegans. No,

Matt32:27surprisingly, no, surprisingly I didn't win that award this year. I was snubbed. But maybe next year. So yeah, lots of that stuff has happened. That, of course, has been neat. But like that, you know, those are great examples of moments when you think, if I could get Sports Illustrated to name my book one of the top seven health and wellness books of the year, then surely things will be easy after that. But it's just like everything else. Like, yeah, the traffic spikes for a day or whatever, and the sales spike, and it's really fun, and you see it, see it being in the top 30 of Amazon books, and it's amazing, and then it's just, you know, the next day it's kind of back to normal.

So that's another good example of that. I think that tipping point thing is really kind of a dangerous thing to be in pursuit of all the time, because it's, I don't know that it's very hard to reach a tipping point. But, you know, those are just little ego-stroking, exciting things, but they don't, they don't, really, they're not substantial things. I've gotten the opportunity to go do some cool things recently. I spoke in Belgium, and it was really nice to go to that. I did a vegan Italy trip where Miyoko Shinner, who does the vegan cheeses that are now in Whole Foods and everywhere else.

Oh,

Ravi33:31yeah, Miyokos, yeah, we love it.

Matt33:33Yeah, she and I got to co-host an Italian trip, so this like 10-day Italy tour along the Amalfi Coast. in this area of Italy where they tend to eat, you know, highly organic and highly plant-based, and it was all vegan food, and it was all just amazing. So, you know, experiences like that are really cool. Honestly, the very first one that comes to mind is through this work, I got to, I've always been a fan of Seth Godin, who's the marketing author, and just such a force for good, I think, in this whole internet marketing world, and honestly the whole business world.

Ravi34:08so he's written purple cow and the dip and i

Matt34:12Don't know permission marking 20 books. Yeah, tribes, I mean just yeah, tons of books and and they're all kind of, you know, very short and readable and very, very insightful. Um, but anyway, I got to go spend a week in his office just because somehow I had gotten him to write a blurb for my first book. Uh, I think I had heard that he eats in a way that's sort of close to to plant-based and you know just whatever, and he a blurb, and then that kind of led me to being able to have another sort of in with him and eventually so, and I and I won this little contest, me and 15 others got to go spend a week in his office and something like that.

I mean, that was just such a cool thing for me. I've mentioned that I am so driven by that entrepreneur idea and he has, he has that idea of picking yourself which he talks about. That's kind of his thing, this idea that you don't need to wait for someone to tell you that you are good enough and that, uh, you know, you, you, you. Are now worthy of, of doing your thing, that you want you. Now you have permission to do your thing, so that that has meant so much to me on a personal level.

Because when I, when I heard that, like that's what started to say, make me think, hey, I can actually, I'm going to pick myself and I'm going to do this so to get you know. So there's the reward of that, to get to go actually spend all that time with him.

Ravi35:24well a week with set goden i mean are there a couple things that struck you in maybe things that you didn't know about how what he does or how he works

Matt35:35There were a ton of things like that. He, he, he, he. He did magic tricks for us. He's into magic and they were really good and to this day I don't know how he did them. He cooked us. He cooked his vegan meals every day, which was amazing. His office is really cool, of course, But, honestly, what it was was that his way of looking at the world, the lens that he sees opportunities and, you know, potential problems through that. His goal, I think, was for that to rub off on everyone who was there, just from being in the office for whatever 10 hours a day for seven days and just having everyone talk to him about their situations and hearing the same themes come up.

Uh, mostly that's what it is, is I? I feel like after that, I could see the world kind of through not not his eyes, but through the lens he's looking at, at least. Uh, so that was, that was probably the the most helpful thing. So your

Ravi36:29business now from 2009 here we're on 2017 and you've built up quite a following i mean if you were to take all the members of your community and have them fill a stadium. I mean, you'd easily fill, like, I don't know, Yankee Stadium or more probably in terms of your community. I mean, so that's just really interesting to see. What's it like? I mean, what is your week like, do you have a normal week? What does it like to run a business like that? What do you spend your time on?

Walk me through what that looks like.

Matt37:02Sure, And it just changed a whole lot, Like for the first, I would say, five years. The only way that I could see this happening was, as me, being like the central figure and the quote-unquote influencer, and I've really gotten away from that in the past few years. I've kind of started to realize that that wasn't making me happy at all and probably wasn't a good fit for me. Like I'm someone who gets bored with things, as maybe you have sensed. I get into stuff and I get really obsessed about doing it in the best way I can, but that that leads to burnout and that leads not to 20 year hobbies, right, I mean I jump around from one thing to the next and I dive into something like I mean I've never done anything in my life as long as I've done no meat athlete as far as job or interest or hobby or anything.

So that, uh, you know, that makes that, that that influencer model, sort of hard, because to be good, I think, as as an influencer or I don't, I mean that word seems to imply all this just driving spending. But I mean more like, you know, being the center of attention and someone who people are paying attention to on social media and via your blog and via your podcast, you know, that requires, to be good at that, because there's so much noise now, it's just so crowded in all of those places.

I mean, to stand out, like, you need to be good at packaging your content, and I think that can go a certain way. And that's what these guides and e-books and, you know, quit your job overnight thing. Like, they're telling you how to package content and how to package ideas so that they spread or so that people, so that they resonate and stick. But underneath that has to be the person who is just obsessed with this topic and who just loves what they are doing. And it's all they think about.

And, like, and I was that for those five or six years, when I was new at eating plant-based and so into running and getting into ultra-running and running 50-100-mile races. And that was my life. So it was so easy to translate that into writing. But, you know, I've go through, and this is not surprising, and I'm not embarrassed about this at all, that that much, like I got to a point where I had kind of done what I wanted to with running. And I've gotten to the point with plant-based diet where I don't have any plans to change it, but, like, I don't feel like I need to evolve my eating anymore.

Like, we're kind of at a nice, comfortable spot with eating. And I don't have to think about

Ravi39:29eating. There's more to life than what we eat. Exactly.

Matt39:34Believe it or not. So, you know, so I just, those aren't the things that are going through my head as I'm falling asleep at night. I'm thinking about all kinds of different things. And sometimes I am thinking about those things. Sometimes I'm thinking about business itself. But, you know, I think the people, the person who can sustain that kind of being, center of attention. You know, there's someone who I don't think is quite like me. Or maybe that's why you see people started and then kind of burn out because they are like me and they get into it and then they realize they can't keep doing that.

So anyway, I reached the point where I couldn't write another blog post about where you get your protein. Like, you know, you can do that so many times. But, and surely there are new ways I could do that that would be helpful for the business. But I just can't get myself to go do that. I just can't do that anymore. and so I still do the podcast once a week and now and then I still write a blog article and I'd like to get back to that I hope I will find another season of life when I am just coming up with tons of new content ideas but so much of it now for me is yeah

Ravi40:39I saw you wrote an article on Goals in the New Year which people should people should check out yeah

Matt40:44Right and I like and honestly that's. It's not a coincidence that that's the topic I wrote about, because that's the type of thing that I'm genuinely interested in in these days. So, like you know, I can see myself getting back into writing maybe more personal development-type topics, just because right now that's more interesting to me than the ins and outs of how we should eat plant-based. But anyway, the shift, I would say, since I kind of stopped wanting to be that central figure it has been.

How can I now run a business? And that means relying on other people and having other people, you know, transitioning from, no-mead athlete being Matt Frazier's personal blog and the, you know, Matt Frazier's voice in a blog, how can we make no-meathlete not be that? How can it be just a play? Like, I mean, I named it nomade athlete and forever now when I get introduced to talk to whatever, people say, here he is the no-mead athlete Matt Frazier. And that was never the point. Like the point was, let's make something called no-mead athlete where people who are athletes can, whatever, connect, get information, and it wasn't about me.

I was not, and I'm still, I never was. Well, it

Ravi41:55Seems like you built a community. It's not what's interesting. I'm a member of your community too. It seems like you've really built a community. It's not just from you, It's people coming together, whether it's on Facebook or Twitter, and there's more conversations around things. I'm curious, given what you know now, the evolution you've had from documenting your own story, your journey as a runner, your transition to plant-based diet, to now you know, a business owner and interested in personal growth and that kind of stuff if you can go back to your former self and give yourself the Matt Frazier of 2010 or 2009 and give yourself some advice, or maybe even 2008 earlier what would you say?

Matt42:47First, I think I would be encouraging and I would say, you know, as corny as it sounds like you're not wrong for thinking big, because that was that was a huge thing. It was just like I had. I had a lot of nights in those early years where, like it was starting to become a real thing. I would have nights where I'd wake up at 2 am And like somehow, when all the all the facade and everything was kind of down all the stories I had in my mind about how this was a real business, when they had all you know gone away because I had just woken up and it was sort of like here's reality.

I would have these moments like what am I doing? Like how am I possibly going to do this? So what I would do is I would go back and say like it's going to be okay, You're right, The fact that this is giving you energy and that you were that into this, you know you can rest assured that you will find a way to make that work. So that's one of them. I think, sooner than I did, I would advise myself to, sooner than I did, kind of embrace the uncertainty and understand that people are going to dislike what you do.

If you are doing something that matters at all, that makes a difference, then pretty much by definition, people there are going to be people who strongly dislike it, and if there aren't,

Ravi44:06did you face that did you get more than just the random internet trolls commenting?

Matt44:13No, I wouldn't, not more than the random internet trolls, but, but those random internet trolls for me, like, I don't know, I feel like I made a lot of decisions in the first 25 years of my life that were designed to, like, avoid a random confrontation or something like that. Like, I really just shied away from that, and I still shy away from those sort of things. I don't, I don't like confrontation. I don't get in arguments and fights about diet or anything else. So when I would write a blog post, you know, the first time there was a negative comment, and I don't know when it was, but maybe three or four weeks into writing the blog, when someone wrote something really negative, like, that ruined my week.

And it made it hard to write the next post without every line I wrote I wanted to like put some little addendum onto it that made sure I covered all the bases so that nobody could possibly find something wrong with this. And it turns out that's a really, really boring way to write And maybe it's a cliche, but they say, if you're trying to please everyone, then you're going to please nobody. So that's the advice I would give myself is like, like understand that that if you are, I mean really you should take, not if you're just getting tons and tons of negativity and that's all you're getting, that's a sign that something's probably wrong.

But nowadays I, as much as it still hurts me to see negativity and I try to kind of shield myself from a lot of it and just sort of like one of the luxuries of having people who who work for the business is that I can have someone say, like I don't have to see a lot of negative comments anymore, I can have someone distill the meaning of it so that I can hopefully adjust based on what it is without me actually having to attach a face and a name to this person, because that's where a lot of that pain comes in.

So, you know, nowadays, I really take one-star reviews and negative comments as a sign that I'm doing something right, because if you're not getting any of those, then you're doing boring stuff. I mean, it's really always

Ravi45:59doing a note. Well, you're making people feel something. Right. And which is, I think, the point of any creative work. Right, exactly. Make people feel something. So those are two interesting things, you know, that things are going to work out and also this idea of confrontation and looking at the feedback, but not letting it, you know, right, steer you off course. Is there anything you wish you would have known, even from a business perspective, because I know you're into the science of building an online business and how it works in the mechanics?

Is there anything you know now that you wish you knew earlier?

Matt46:39Yeah, there absolutely are. I've mentioned one of them already. That was the, the idea that there's not really a tipping point, that you're not, that you're going after. I mean, just realize that you're not. I don't know, I mean, maybe you might be the exception that finds that, but operate as if you're not, and I think I think then you will. Yeah.

Ravi46:55my next blog post is actually my tipping point so i'm i'm banking on it oh good good

Matt47:01Um, honestly, like, I guess, to get a little bit more technical or detailed um, two things that I think I did wrong for a long time in the business itself were I didn't, I didn't know that I should focus on one thing to me. To me, I like, when I made one product and it worked, the answer was and this did allow me to go full time, but it was when I made a marathon program, that that worked and brought in I don't know five figures and that when I launched it low five figures, but five figures, and that was a that was a big moment for me.

Um, the immediate answer for me was well, I should make a half marathon version of that, and not to cheat anybody, but to say like, hey, this would apply almost as well to a half marathon, I can make some minor adjustments and make a new product and that kind of worked. And then from there we said, well, let's do a triathlon version of that. And then people wanted T-shirt, so we got into that and we the affiliate thing was working and we got. Into that. So, like, what I ended up doing was having 15 different revenue streams none of them, though, like really you know, strong enough to power a business without the help of all the others.

And I really don't think that's the best way to do things. Granted, I guess it diversifies you, which is nice. But I really think what you need to do is find the one thing. Like I said, we've kind of alluded to this a few times. There's a lot of noise out there. And if you find something that works, that actually works, I think you should find a way to get it to more people and do more with it. It takes a lot of work to make a new product.

And when you do that, it probably eats into the sales of your first one. So I think if I could go back, I'd make products at half the rate that I did and focus on making, you know, finding customers for them, finding, getting them to the right people and coming up with every possible way I could to sell them in a new way or, you know, to new group of people. So that's one. The other one, and this is such an, I think, an easy thing to do is focus on recurring revenue.

If you can get a customer who is sort of an automatic customer or where the default is that they stay a customer unless they take an action and you don't make it hard for them to take an action. Of course you're not trying to trick anyone or take anyone's money, but if you can just get someone to enter a monthly thing, monthly program, with you or it's a recurring revenue and they can easily cancel it any time, it's just so much more reliable and steady than once that first e-book sold and I had a bunch of people who had paid whatever $18 or $21 for an e-book.

Three months down the road it was like, okay, well, we're out of money again. So what are we going to do now? And if from the beginning I know it's hard, because to build a product at all is a difficult thing but if you can find a way to be offering some sort of recurring revenue, you can at least start to build stability, And I think stability in a growing business is just so, so important. It will prevent you from having to take on debt when you're not able to, you know, pay the payroll this month and just it'll just start to let you plan things the way a real business should be planned.

And that's that's kind of the maybe the overarching and not the overarching failure. But the thing that I have done wrong that I wish I could go back and change is I wish I could go back and let myself know that this um, that this would become what it has, that it would become something that is way, way bigger than a little thing that allows me to not have a boss, because when I started it that was. Kind of the. That was the hope. That was all the hope was.

It was like, I'm going to find a way that that gets me out of the working world. And what it has become is the work that I really love doing and that I want to grow and I want to, you know, that's kind of my life's work. It has become that, at least for this, this decade or two of my life, it's my life's work. So there are so many decisions like, you know, not taking on debt or creating recurring revenue or putting accounting practices in place from the early days that are right, just so many different process.

I mean, for the first seven years of this business, I just layered like one non-working thing on top of another, on top of another, just covered up problems with new little quick fixes that I thought. And because there was always that thought that like a couple months from now, this will all be easy, and then I will have time to go back and get this all worked out. But what I would say is get it straight from the beginning, like when you have those decisions, do it right the first time, and just treat it like a real business like it deserves to be.

Even if at first your vision for it is just this is going to be my little side hustle thing.

Ravi51:37What I hear in your sharing is you had a sense of a goal and it took you a few years, but where you ended up was way beyond your expectations and that's pretty neat. The other thing in the recurring revenue, recurring value, ongoing value point you're making is, you know, I've experienced a similar thing in terms of how I coach. When I work with people over longer periods of time, you can just go deeper. When you work, you know, my guess is people who are part of your community, you know, you're able to offer deeper content or have different level of conversation with them than someone who just buys a training plan.

Matt52:14Yeah, absolutely, And that is a huge thing, Because I remember when I would have people would buy that e-book and I would then want to update it. I didn't even have any good way to do that short of updating the whole PDF and then emailing our list, and I wasn't in those early days, I wasn't even set up to to email our whole list very well or know who had bought it. So, yeah, to have an ongoing relationship, you know that's, that's where you're going to help people to actually make change the most, which

Ravi52:37is which is what you want yeah well what's on the horizon for you looking forward

Matt52:41Well, Ravi, you have taught me, uh, to sort of not not be too married to anything in the future, so that's something I'm working very hard on, uh, which is just just to kind of of relax and sort of see what happens. A lot of new opportunities have opened up in this past year, the biggest of which is that I started another company that makes a supplement, which we call complement, because the idea is that it's not like a complete you know overdose of all these things, like a typical multivitamin is, but it's just a few things that vegans need.

Ravi53:14I've been a customer, it tastes really good. My wife and I both, we just shoot it, we just spray it in before dinner.

Matt53:21yeah that's it

Ravi53:23basically for people who are listening it's got all the stuff you need on a plant-based diet what b12 d dh a EPA yeah

Matt53:31right and that's it nothing else b12

Ravi53:33yeah b12 um and you just spray it once a day has like a cherry berry kind of flavor and that's it yeah all vegan exactly

Matt53:42So you know that that that, of course, was a huge new endeavor for me, like, because up until now, I mean no meat athlete selling t-shirts and e-books and information very, very different from starting a company, that a supplement company, um, and and it's been a fun way to grow. So I don't know, I'm really excited about that. I'm really excited about uh, taking, as I mentioned, like my interest doesn't really lie right now in in like really thinking about the newest hack for making a plant-based diet work in your life.

I like that. It's fun, it yields a good blog post or podcast episode now and then, but I don't think that's where I can, like, add the most value to the world anymore. So I think I've learned quite a bit about this, like the stuff we've been talking about, how do you create something that matters? And I really want to kind of apply that to help other plant-based businesses and, you know, just kind of use, as I've made so many great relationships in now nine years in this space.

It's a very small world, this plant-based space. And I'm just kind of looking forward to being a connector and kind of seeing how I can help other people do stuff. So there's that I have a first book before the cookbook came out and that's kind of due for a like a refresh, I think. So we'll probably do a redo of that and a re-release of that and I would love to get out. We have these running groups. One of the great things that came out of that Seth Godin Week was that he helped me, I kind of.

He always said the definition of a tribe or basically that it requires that the members of the tribe are connected to each other, that they talk to each other. They don't just talk to the leader and hear from the leader. They are connected to each other. And that, when I went to his office in New York, it was like, that was what was missing for me. I wanted to have a tribe, and I wanted people to be connected and not have to have me in the room or have the conversation involved me and just, you know, let this thing spread on its own.

So we created all these running groups around the country and the world, and we have some in Australia that are great, and there are some in crazy places like Oklahoma City where you just would not expect that to happen. There's one in Denver that was quite good for a while and they in the past two years. Unfortunately, I've kind of like I just haven't given those the attention that they deserve, because they are my favorite part of this whole business and I know they can work, I know they do work.

So I'd I'd love to get back to to those and and really helping those move along, uh, because they're they're just a really fun thing. So I would love to get back to that just for for personal reasons, not because it really helps the.

Ravi56:06business directly at all yeah well it's okay to have fun too that's fun for you that's awesome you know uh looking far to whatever comes on the horizon for you, whether it's business or more business-oriented training or the running groups. I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your story and your journey with me and with everyone. Absolutely. People can connect with you, nomeetathlete.com, and I'll include all the various links.

Matt56:35Yeah, that's right. And I'm at no meat athlete on Twitter. Yeah, thank you for having me, Ravi. I think this is wonderful what you were doing with this podcast and the messages you are putting out into the world. So I'm very, very grateful to be a part of it and to be a listener of it. Great.

Ravi56:50Have a great day.

Matt56:51All right. Thanks.

Ravi56:53If you're enjoying the podcast, please rate, review, and also share the episode with your friends. You can get more information about everything we talk about on my website. Just go to ravi-raman.com forward slash podcast and you'll see links to all the things we've talked about as well as a full archive of all episodes and the show notes. I really appreciate your listening. Have a great day.