‍

On this episode of the ‪What Worked‬ podcast, Tyler Rachal and Mike Wu sit down with Matt Graham,  CEO at Rapid Developers. Are you running into problems in your startup? Listen to this episode to hear how Matt frames his business issues as a 'who' question, not a 'how' question.

We covered a ton of great topics:

• Using low and no code tools to break into development
• Finding talent across the globe
• Focusing on your employee's strengths to build success

‍

Transcript edited for clarity:

Tyler Rachal

Welcome back everybody to another episode of What Worked. For today's conversation, we were joined by Matt Graham, who is the CEO and co-founder of Rapid Developers. Mike and I got to know Matt. I actually met him through the networking group Hampton. Matt and I got connected through there, but what I will say is that from minute one, the very first call that we did, which was based off of “You own an agency. I own an agency. Let's talk.” And what you'll see very quickly in the interview, is that Matt has an infectious personality. He is literally a ball of energy. When I first chatted with him, we were doing a video call. He was just basically pacing around his house and then outside of his house and literally doing pull-ups while we were talking. So that gives you a sense of the type of guy he is. 

‍

And I'll just say that, when you meet Matt, you quickly understand why he is successful. He's a guy that is very, this is a term that's kind of buzzworthy right now, but he's he's, has a bias towards action, he takes action really quickly and he's not afraid to try things out. And, that's the single biggest takeaway that I have from the conversation is that, Mike will talk a little bit more about the specific topics, but I think any entrepreneur loves talking to someone like Matt Graham because you leave just feeling inspired. I left the conversation being like, Mike, we got some stuff we got to try out. So yeah, Mike, were there any parts of the conversation that you kind of enjoyed the most?

‍

Mike Wu

Like you said, is someone who has a bias for action. This is a cliche, but it's so true to him. He walks the walk. He doesn't just talk the talk. He is, I think, like one of our kindred spirits, Tyler.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Yes.

‍

Mike Wu

We have a lot of things in common with him and there's probably a lot of things that we admire about him that we want to bring more into ourselves like his energy, his bias for action. But he also is big in believing that talent is global. And so that's a huge thing we do at Hireframe. And so I think that's one thing that draws the three of us together. I also personally connect with Matt because he is a fellow Harvard Business School grad who's kind of taken this  unique route to starting an agency. And so there aren't many of us that have done that, I think that I know about. And so we're both out here building these businesses. And it's pretty cool to meet a fellow grad from the same MBA program that's done that. 

‍

What we talked about on this episode with Matt was something that he has a lot of conviction behind. And it's that every problem in your life is a who problem, not a how problem. Matt shared that with us recently and it really I think made our skin warm up or tingle, but we didn't know exactly why. And so we invited him on the podcast to dive deeper into what that means and it was a really cool conversation.

‍

Tyler Rachal

We were hearing it for the first time from him, but we immediately were like, you're onto something. And we're very fortunate to have captured that in today's conversation with Matt Graham. Again, he's the CEO and co-founder of Rapid developers. If you have any needs involving, building really any sort of, digital transformation projects, web application, et cetera, they build no code, low code, products. And, Matt would be a great guy to talk to. So on that note, please enjoy this What Worked conversation with Matt Graham.

‍

We're live.

‍

Mike Wu

We're live. 

‍

Matt Graham

We're live, woo!

‍

Tyler Rachal

We're live, Matt bringing the energy.

‍

Mike Wu

Thank you so much for coming on What Worked. I know we were talking about this for a while, but we're so excited to have you here. Would you kick things off for us and introduce yourself?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, absolutely guys. Thanks for having me. Super pumped to be here today. So I'll start at the very beginning. Might be a little boring for your audience. Hopefully we can spice it up, make it fun. But I'm Matt. I'm CEO of Rapid Developers. We're a software development company. We build web apps, mobile apps, any kind of web products or mobile products for our clients. So we're a pretty large company, over 100 people helping folks all over the world, all the way from MVPs to well-established companies and enterprises. So excited to be here, excited to share my story. My story starts in kind of a miserable place, this place called Watertown, New York. You guys know where that is? 

‍

Mike Wu

No clue.

‍

Matt Graham

Okay, good. Do not go there, trust me.

‍

Tyler Rachal

No, but Watertown sounds like if you were writing a script on like a boring town, feels like Watertown would be the name.

‍

Matt Graham

Exactly that. Yeah, this is a place with more cows and people. It's basically Canada. We're like 20 minutes from Canada in upstate New York. Kind of an economically depressed place, part of the Rust Belt, lots of manufacturing companies that moved to China when I was growing up. So not a wonderful place on the earth, right? I went to college for engineering. I basically tried to move as far away as possible, but still stay in state so I could get in-state tuition, moved out to Long Island, got an engineering degree. And while doing that, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be stuck in a cubicle for the rest of my life. This is terrible. So I very quickly shifted gears, went into the Navy, spent four years down in Charleston, South Carolina. You guys know where that is?

‍

Tyler Rachal

Yes, definitely. Yeah, of course.

‍

Mike Wu

I do, yes.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, way better than Waterton.

‍

Tyler Rachal

I'm ashamed to admit it. Southern Charm is my guilty pleasure. I don't watch much reality TV. But Southern Charm is the only show I watch. So yes, I know Charleston. You're like you're nodding your head. Do you watch it? Probably not.

‍

Matt Graham

No, no, no. But all good, man.

‍

Tyler Rachal

No, you don't. No, you don't. Of course you don't. I get it anyway. So continue. You were in Charleston in the Navy. You were stationed there.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, it was a beautiful place. Amazing. Absolutely loved it. Spent four years down there and then I moved up to Boston. That's where my wife was and got an MBA from Harvard Business School. And I've always been like a hustler, always been trying to build stuff, always trying to hustle my way into something. So while I was at Harvard, I got really into entrepreneurship. I started a company. 

‍

And the thing when I went to Harvard, they're like, Matt, you fucked up your whole life here. You studied all the wrong stuff. You studied chemical engineering, nuclear engineering, all that stuff's useless. You needed to know technology, should have done computer science, right? So I'm like, great. I ruined my whole career. I studied the complete wrong thing. What am I going to do? Well, I started a company with a classmate. And that's when I discovered what was happening in technology with no code and low code. These are ways you can build applications without actually knowing how to read lines of code. And because I had an engineering background, I could understand the logic and how to do it pretty easily for me. So I got super deep into the space. We had a very big engineering team and then we had our no code team. And the big engineering team took lots of breaks and took a long time to build stuff. And the no code team shipped shit every single day. And I'm like, why don't more people do this? I don't get it.

‍

So that was my first time understanding what was happening in that industry and how much, how fast you could build. So that company, long story short, it got acquired by another company. I worked at the company that acquired it, but I was actually building Rapid Dev in the background. So I kind of fell into this and just dove super deep into the no code space. And now we've got 90 people. We're helping folks all over the world. And, yeah, it's been a crazy journey.

‍

Mike Wu

You describe yourself as like a hustler, which is really interesting, which resonates with me, having gotten to know you a little bit. But I also went to HBS, and, do you feel like you fit in at HBS, or do you think you are different in a way?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, it's weird, I felt very out of place for sure. I have a very strong entrepreneurial spirit and that's not the type of people that go to business school. And there was like a tribe, so I found my tribe, hung out with them. There's something called the Innovation Lab at Harvard where all the entrepreneurs kind of gather and work hard on their startups. So I found my people, definitely like 90 % of the people were not quite like how I operate. So I felt, a little out of place at it for sure.

‍

Mike Wu

And I only bring that up because I think you stand out in a good way, just having gotten to know you a little bit recently. You have this unique energy. You are a hustler. You're always trying to grow your business, but also personally. So I think it's really cool that you have that. That's something, out of the 900 classmates that I had in my year, I didn't meet anyone like you during those two years. So it was something that stood out to me.

‍

Matt Graham

Thanks man, I tell people even Harvard makes mistakes.

‍

Mike Wu

That's how I feel. I think a lot of us feel that way. That's probably one thing we all have in common.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Totally guys, I did not go to Harvard. I'm nervously laughing. I was gonna say two quick notes. In getting to know Matt, literal energy. How many pull-up rigs do you have or pull-up bars do you have around the house?

‍

Matt Graham

Okay, okay, here we go. 

‍

Tyler Rachal

He's giving us the tour. There we go. This is actually this is a What Worked first.

‍

Matt Graham

This is live on the podcast. I'm in my living room right now. I have a pull-up bar in my living room guys, because if you're watching TV, you might as well be getting stronger.

‍

Tyler Rachal

There you go. Yeah.

‍

Mike Wu

So how many pull-ups do you rip a day?

‍

Matt Graham

We went on a corporate trip and my team wanted to work out with me. I'm so tired, so jet lagged. They made me rip 50 pull-ups guys. Not all in a row, not in a row, but like 10 at a time. kind of thing.

‍

Mike Wu

Dude, I mean, the amount of pullups you've collected over the course of a week has probably got to be a crazy amount. You're in the David Goggins realm.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Totally. And would say that the other note is I love how you kind of at first yada yada’ed over Harvard. I mean, you did mention you went to Harvard, but it's a funny thing for me as a non-Harvard person, the only non-Harvard person on this podcast. But I do think you're very similar to Mike in that way that from an outsider's perspective, my wife got her MBA from University of Texas, McCombs. And so I didn't see the Harvard thing, but I saw the McCombs thing. And I really understand what you guys are talking about. Everybody there seems super locked in on they wanted to go into private equity, they wanted to go investment banking consulting. And from my experience being the partner, the husband, who was coming to visit and kind of interacting with their classmates. When I would start talking about entrepreneurship, it seemed like they would get really nervous or something like that. And I always tell her that I felt out of place and I wasn't even a student. So you guys definitely must do must have felt the same way.

‍

But I think you both are very similar in the sense that you have that kind of energy, both super, accomplished but at the same time. I don't know if that's just a Harvard thing. I brag about Mike going to Harvard way more than he ever talks about it. So anyway, you guys are both impressive to me. I was going to ask, you mentioned getting introduced to the whole no code, low code  rise. What was the first tool that you started playing around with? And what was that first project that you worked on? When someone falls into something that they love, I always like hearing about that binge moment. Like when did you just find something and you were hooked on it and what did you try to build?

‍

Matt Graham

It was sort of a slow slippery slope. You start with your gateway drugs, guys, you know how this goes. So in the no code space, there's your gate. 

‍

Tyler Rachal

We don't, no, no, What are drugs?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, sure. There's your gateway drugs like Zapier, Airtable. These are like tools that you could just figure out in a couple hours. And you're blown away. I mean, this is like 2016. No code is not even a word at this point. And yet for someone who thinks like anything on the internet requires code to build, you're like, wow, how did I just build this? This is incredible. So it started because I had the startup. We needed to make certain systems automated have triggers,  actions, that's all your Zapier stuff. Store data, that's your Airtable stuff. Then you start to build a little bit of an interface on top of that. So you have web builders.

‍

So you start with those gateway drugs and then I found Bubble. Bubble changed everything. For folks out there who don't know what Bubble is, Bubble is the juggernaut web app builder in the no code, low code space. It has the largest community, smartest founders, most traction, raised the largest amount of money. It's going to win the no code market for sure. It has the best product. So I just got lucky, I found that early also Harvard guys. So they built an incredible, incredible system and it just gives you so much flexibility. 

‍

So I was always fiddling around with it. But what happened is like after our company was acquired and I worked at the company, people would just call me like, Hey, Matt, I heard you know how to do this. Can you help me build this thing? And I was like, yeah, sure. Okay, whatever. Let's try it out. And I had known someone for like the last five years who had always helped me on a ton of projects. She lived in Belarus at the time and now lives in Poland, but she was just so, so on it, she could do anything. I was like blown away. So I looped her into these projects. I was like, Hey, can you help me? She doesn't know shit about any of this stuff. But she can learn fast and she can find people to help. So yeah, this is like how we accidentally built Rapid Dev, people would just call and I'd be like, I guess we're going to start a company.

‍

Mike Wu

Very cool. And like the three of us, I think one of the ways that we connect, speaking of the start of Rapid Dev, is we like chopping it up and talking about how to grow our businesses. We share feedback, we share ideas. Matt, one thing you shared with us recently is something we want to talk about today. And it's this idea that, I'm gonna read this, I want to get it right, but it’s that everything in your life is a who problem, not a how problem. When you said that for the first time, it felt right, even without really knowing what it meant.

‍

And before we dove into what it really meant, we were like, let's, let's record this on a podcast. So I think that's what we wanted to ask you more about today. Did I get that right? And can you tell us more about where this comes from?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, spot on, man. So everyone goes through life thinking like, how do I do this? How do I have success? How do I build a company? How do I do that? And a lot of problems don't come down to just how you do it. It comes down to who are you going to bring on board to help you do it? So if you view life through, how do I do this? There's only so much you can learn. There's only so much that you can do yourself. It's about making other people great around you or finding those great people who can join you and do it for you. 

‍

Everything is infinitely easier when you think about it as a who, not how. Don't think about how you are going to do it. Think about who you can bring onto the team to help you do it. And there's people out there that are much better than you, like way better than you. And if you don't even spend more than a second thinking about that, you just truly internalize and believe that you'll find them. 

‍

And the other cool thing about this, is when you are looking for that superstar, they want big problems. They don't want to join you to solve little tiny problems. And guess what? You don't want to solve little tiny problems either. You want to solve big problems. So think of it. Do you want to 2 X or you want to 10 X? You want a 10 X. So what's easier to do? Most people say 2 X, but if you find the right person who knows how to do it and is the right person for the job, they can help you actually 10 X it, not just two X it. So if you start to change your whole mindset, how do you make people great around you? How do you find these people and think about who rather than how it's like totally changes the way you run your business.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Speaking of the who, I know that your team is all over the world. In getting to know you, you seem to be really, really great at finding what I would call, insert term, but rock stars, right? Effectively you find rock stars and I think lesser, lesser known, less common places for where people think about in terms of finding that talent. How do you approach finding someone, that who, who can actually 10 X and wants to solve big problems, but you don't live anywhere close to them?

‍

Matt Graham

Let's think about it together here. So first thing is you’ve got to accept that talent is equally distributed throughout the entire world. There are incredibly talented people all over this planet. It doesn't matter where they were born, how they grew up, there are savants in the middle of rural India, wherever, every country has them. And it's really crazy because if these people were born in the U S they would be titans, they would be running massive companies, but they were born in a place that doesn't have the opportunity. So me going to them, I'm presenting an awesome opportunity for them to be able to leverage all the skills and all their talents and be part of something really big. So that gets people excited. It makes me excited too, cause I can find so many more talented people at a reasonable economic model that I just can't do unless I'm like a VC backed company. We're a bootstrap company, I don't have money growing on trees to throw at people. That's what you need if you want to find top talent in the U S to some degree. Okay. So first you got to know that there's so much overseas, all over the planet. 

‍

The other thing is don't focus on people's weaknesses. Every person comes with something that's annoying or something you’ve got to deal with. Just shut all that stuff out. You've got to find people who have a superpower, we're building the Avengers here. You got the guy with the Hulk strength. You got the guy with the brains. You got the guy who can go really fast or slow down time, right? Everyone's got one thing. What are they super incredible at? And that's what you look for. Don't look at the whole package and all the weaknesses and all that. That's your job to manage around that as like the CEO or the leader of them. You got to make sure you put them on the team and you manage how they're going to interact and deal with those weaknesses around you. But it's all about finding that player who's got the one in 10 million skill, just one skill that nobody else has.

‍

Mike Wu

Obviously at Hireframe. We help companies, bootstrap, venture-backed as well actually, help find talent overseas. So what you're saying, it totally resonates, but to be honest, I haven't recently taken a step back and thought about it the way you do in terms of just like the opportunities are quite different, just depending on just pure, I don't know, luck of pure chance of where you were born and where you grew up.

‍

And so yeah, I'm actually very inspired and it definitely fits our mission to Hireframe when you talk about finding those A players or those rock stars anywhere because they are, if you think analytically about it, evenly distributed across this planet. That's like a really cool way to think about it. I appreciate it.

‍

Matt Graham

And I love working with, with agencies that really are on the ground in these places because in general, I love recruiting. I love talking to recruiters and recruiting agencies because it's such an interesting skill to me. How do you have 10 different people interview the same candidate and all 10 different people have a different judgment? And so when I find a great agency, it's really, really powerful because you can trust their judgment. There's no AI, there's no computer, there's no spreadsheet formula thing that can really tell you if this person's great. There's just something in your head that is the summation of all your experiences, thousands of interviews, hundreds of conversations that allows you to have an insight about a person that the other nine people can't, don't come to, or don't arrive at. And it's all probability. Like you're not right all the time, but going was with folks that know this industry well and know this business. Nine out of 10, they're right versus the next guy who's more like 50/50 and just taking a flip a flip of the coin. So I learn a lot from the people I work with, the agency, you guys, when like I'm looking for people and then I try to do the best. I'm still not great just because I don't have that many reps so much of this experience-based, but trying to get better and better.

‍

Mike Wu

Yeah, I think you're warming the hearts of many recruiters out there. That recruiter appreciation, I feel like they're underappreciated. I know the recruiters at Hireframe, when they see this, they're going to really appreciate you saying that for sure. And especially coming from someone that's technical in background and who you might want to put AI onto it or put some software and process around recruiting. Of course that helps, but yeah, there is this human to human aspect to it that takes experience, it takes reps like you said. 

‍

Tyler Rachal

I sincerely appreciated the comment. Hireframe has plenty of competitors, and I've seen just like anything else right now in business, people are trying to apply AI to our space, which I do think there's a lot of great opportunities to do so. And of course, everybody is using AI technology to some capacity, but I do think that you're spot on in the sense that there really is an art form to recruitment. And there's something about really getting to know - you've you work with a lot of talent in many different global markets. And there's a real advantage like anything else. If you farm the same place for a long time, you work the land, you start to really develop it, you start to bear the fruit of that. And that's what I see. I always see people say, Hey, we can do this with AI and we can spin up something. I can hire the best people in Argentina by applying AI to the problem and I can do it in seconds. And there's just something that you're just always going to miss by not really focusing. 

‍

I'm curious, something that I've seen with you, Matt, and I don't know if you have any specific examples, but, I'll put it in e to a personal example for Hireframe. Mike and I, as founders, we're very focused on a couple of super important goals for next year. KPIs, et cetera, right? And for example, one of them is I know that Mike really wants to dive deep into SEO. And we've had a lot of debates between the two of us around how do we do that? Mike is like, should I commit to learning it myself? Should I hire a consultant? I feel like every time we talk to you, we come away with an incredible sort of idea. And I always like seeing the way your brain approaches these problems. So if you bring it back to it's a who problem, not a how. What are some examples where you knew you had to learn something, knew you had to apply it to your business. So how did you solve for the who, not the how?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, totally. When we started our business, we were very dependent on just being a Bubble vendor. So we build apps on Bubble. That was the first platform. Now we build apps on lots of different platforms. But in the beginning, we were very dependent on a system of deal flow directly from Bubble. And you need SEO. You absolutely need it. But it's  also similar recruiting. It's kind of a bit of an art. There's some science and mechanics behind it, but if you want to be really good, there's definitely art and a lot of creativity behind it. and so like, tried to dive in a little bit. We had an awesome agency. Actually we worked with, and whenever I work with somebody, I'm trying to learn. I'm not hiring you just to do the job. I'm hiring you to teach me how you're doing it as well. So I can learn as much as possible through that. They really did a great job. They did the foundational stuff, the basic motions you have to do to kind of get our website from like literally zero to something much better. 

‍

And while I was working with them in parallel, I'm just always looking for talent. Sometimes I don't even know what I'm looking for, I'm just meeting people. And if I think you're talented at something, I'll be like, okay, let's see how we can find space for you on the team. And part of the challenge, I think for anyone who watches this is that all sounds great, Matt, but how am going to do this? Well, unfortunately, it's just like, got to talk to people. You got to get to know them. You got to be curious and you just got to have a good memory and brain for connecting the dots when you meet folks and making notes in your head about it. And you kind of have to have a sense for opportunity. 

‍

So there was this company in our space that raised a bunch of money. And I know how the VC game works. I can spot when a company that raises money is not going to work. So I kind of knew that that company is not going to kind of work out. And I would keep an eye on people that work there and get to know them and just see what are they up to? What are they working on? and become friends with them, honestly. And when that company got to the point where it was getting acquired by somebody else, things weren't going that great. They decided to sell. I actually swooped in, I was like, maybe I should buy the whole company. But I found a guy, one of the guys there working, he was basically one of the founders at the company, he did an incredible job. 90 % of the value was because he created it and it was all through SEO. And so I had known him a little bit and decided to take a bet. Let's take a risk, can you work with us. He didn't want to transition to the company that acquired them. He didn't want to work for them. He wanted to do his own thing. And he didn't want to work with us full time either. Totally cool. Let's just work part time together. Let's see how this goes. 

‍

He ended up being an awesome guy. Not just great at SEO, but just genuinely a cool dude to hang out with. And I flew to him, he lived in a different country in Europe, and I just was on my way. I'm like, dude, I'm coming over. I'm sleeping on your couch, slept on this fucking dude's couch. We didn't actually sleep. We just stayed up all night, hung out brainstorming ideas. We had a great time. We've hung out a couple times since. But dude, this is the kind of guy that's a 10 Xer. He took our website, he tripled the number of inbound leads that we got on our site. I couldn't have done it in a hundred years. I couldn't have done it with a bunch of different vendors. I found a guy, one in a million, that really actually had a good heart, wanted to do good work, and knew a lot about our industry and how to do it, and he crushed it. And he did some really innovative things that most people told me, like, Matt, don't do that. You're gonna kill your SEO, you're gonna kill your website. That's a really bad idea, don't do any of that stuff. And I'm like, I don't know. This guy seems pretty smart, guys. I feel like he knows what he's talking about. And he just sold the company that he did the same thing for. So I'm pretty sure this is going to work.

‍

Mike Wu

That's awesome. So you understood in this situation, the how was like, how do I do search engine optimization or some marketing, some digital marketing? And the who was this guy that you found, your friend, your colleague, your partner that helped you, that came from a similar industry and you kind of just built that relationship with him over time. And then ended up sleeping on his couch. That is awesome. Do you have other examples of this who versus how mix that really solidified?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah. Yeah. My whole life, when I look back, after I went to Harvard, the first thing they said is, Matt, you studied all the wrong shit. You should have studied technology. Second thing they said is what got you here was you being great. What's going to get you to the next level is making people around you great. So that was like one of the first days, I really internalized that and understood that. I'm like, man, I'm not that great anyways. I don't have much hope here for myself. The best I can do is get some other great people to work with me.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Who said that to you?

‍

Matt Graham

It was one of the professors in the first onboarding session, one of the first days when I was there.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Shout out that professor. That's great advice.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, I know, man, totally changed my life. So, I think that's always been in the back of my head subconsciously, but just think about how I started Rapid Dev. Okay. I worked with this incredible woman at my startup. She did awesome work. And then the startup got acquired, we just kept in touch. We would do random little side hustles and projects together. So that's probably the life changing example of this, she runs the majority of the company. Most of the people are under her. Most of the people speak a language I don't even speak, guys. I can't even interact at a very deep communication level with a lot of people on our team.

‍

So she runs everything. It's incredible. Right. And I couldn't have done it without her. So that's like the best example of the who. And I think a lot of people who have founders, co-founders or other partners in their business, they get what I'm saying. Like when the magic happens, you can totally feel it. There's a huge gap between the a plus plus players and a plus plus team. And then everything else, like that other 99%, you know, it doesn't matter if it's A or B or whatever, it's all sort of the same. But when you have the magic happening, it's like, it's a substantially different feeling and outcome. so that's like one example. I can go on with another one that was also a fun story.

‍

Mike Wu

Please do.

‍

Matt Graham

So, okay, this one's cool too. I met this guy like two years ago. He's just like a born sales guy. My goodness, this guy could sell anything, get me to give him the shirt off my back. So he was trying to sell, he's in my space. He got a hold of me somehow and was trying to sell me something. And  I'm like, okay, all right, he's doing a pretty good job selling me, but I know what he's selling is dog shit. So I got his number and I called him and said, dude, you're selling dog shit. So I'm not going to buy what you're selling, but I really like you. You're a good guy. So we just stayed in touch. Our personalities clicked. We had a lot of fun just chit chatting and getting to know each other, sending each other funny stuff and interesting topics over time. And then he eventually reached the point where he was transitioning. So he realized like what he was selling, it's not going to work. And he just didn't have enough experience in the industry to foresee that, like what I could see. So he ended up deciding to leave that company. 

‍

And then because I kept in touch with him, I knew he was transitioning and he just eventually got bored. And I'm like, dude, why don't you just come and hang out? Like just start working with us part-time, keep looking for a job. I can't really afford your level of expertise anyways. Let's just see, you can add some value in the short term. And this guy crushed it. He completely doubled our sales. Imagine if you could bring someone on board at your company that could double your sales in six months. That's crazy. I mean, we were already pretty big. We're like very well into seven figures and he was doubling it. So that is not an easy thing to do, especially in our industry.

‍

Mike Wu

You mentioned how you met him, it sounds like you met probably over LinkedIn or email at some point. Is this guy also based in Mass or somewhere in the States?

‍

Matt Graham

Okay, so this is the crazy part. I flew to India for seven days to hang out with this guy, with him and his family. You really get to know somebody when you fucking fly to their house. And it's not even like, let's say you wanted to come to America, like you go to New York, Boston, whatever. No, you don't go to Watertown, New York when you come to the USA for the first time. So I went to like the equivalent of Watertown, New York in India. When I talked to Indians other Indians I know and I tell them what town I went to they're like Why the hell did you go there?

‍

Mike Wu

Alright, so I think this is like, we are uncovering something, a new unique quality that you have, which is you get on a plane. People talk about get on the plane mentality and attitude, but you truly get on a plane. You're crossing continents and oceans. You're going to India. You're going to Eastern Europe and sleeping on couches with random people's families. This is not something everyone does, but I think it speaks to how much you truly believe in this who versus like the how. It couldn't be more true to you, I think. I don't know what else you could possibly do before you cross them line, probably, to prove how much you believe in the who.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, guys, especially in 2024, nobody does anything in person anymore. So when you have someone who's running a pretty successful company that says to you, I'm flying to you, get ready. Here we go. It's inspiring for them. And you get, I get to know people so much better. When you talk to people, you know this tiny little sliver about their life, you know how big their life is? Their life is huge, massive life experience, you know this tiny little tiny thing. And so there's no reason not to be curious. And you could have endless conversations together to get to know people. Like when I flew to see him, I had a great time. I learned a lot about India. I learned about him. I met his parents. They're lovely people. And I learned why he's one in 10 million. I learned how he grew up and I understand him a lot better now. 

‍

I understand also why he has certain weaknesses and how that goes. And I can be like, yep, that's just how it is, man. We're not gonna worry about that. We're not gonna change that. We're gonna get you in a situation where you can truly be absolutely incredible. Like people will write books about how fucking crazy awesome you are.

‍

Mike Wu

That's incredible.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Yes, absolutely. And I'm going to play back a little bit of what I think I've heard from you. and you tell me what's accurate, what's inaccurate here, but this is how I'm understanding the way your brain works. And it is truly remarkable. I love seeing it in action. So first your’re obviously identifying what the problem is and how you're going to solve the problem, which you tell me where that comes from, but it's got to be some confluence of all these different parts of you, ingredients, your background, engineering background, HBS, exposure in business, the way that you think sort of problem solving, right? So you're, is it fair to say that the first place you start is really knowing what the problem is and understanding how that problem needs to get solved. Is that kind of fair for just that first part before we get to the who?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, I think a good example is SEO, like we talked about before. I don't exactly know what we need to be doing with SEO, but I understand that you have to do SEO and SEO is within your top three acquisition channels for your business. Even if it's not right now, you understand professional services, especially development services. All those rely on heavy SEO as a top three acquisition channel. And okay, now I understand the problem is I need to get more acquisition through that channel and get that going.

‍

Tyler Rachal

So you have that dialed in, then you figure out, okay, the who. Who do I need to help me solve this problem? I don't know exactly how I'm going to solve it, but you know generally what you need to do and you figure out the who. And this is, I think to what Mike was just saying, where it gets really interesting seeing the way that your brain works a part that I think you gloss over 

that I think many entrepreneurs struggle with a lot. It's that next step where you found the who and it's how do you very quickly start working together? Cause I think that's where most things die. I can't tell you how many times in entrepreneurship I've met someone really fantastic. There's kind of like that initial spark and I'm like, wow, you're cool. You're interesting. You have something, but then you just kind of have it die somewhere along the way you lose touch. You don't actually do anything on it. 

‍

And I think a big thing that you do and you tell me if this is fair or not. I think very quickly you establish trust and you establish that trust by doing something that most people aren't comfortable doing. You actually fly to them and truly get to know them in person, which I hate to say, it is old school now, but you're really getting the full glimpse. And then from there, I think you also do something really cool, which you've mentioned, this is going back to the Avengers. It seems like you are locked in, lasered in terms of figuring out what their superpower is. And then there's the after that, which is like, how do I then take that and put them in an environment in a situation on a team where they can just use and fully maximize that super. Do you feel like that's kind of fair in terms of like the overall steps?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, totally nailed it. I love this quote. I don't even remember the quote. Let me give you the gist of the quote, without trust, the easiest, simplest things are impossible. With trust, the impossible is possible. So trust is everything guys. I even have a formula, this is like super nerdy, I have a formula for trust that I teach to our team about how do you build trust? These are the ingredients for trust. You have to be reliable, credible, intimate, and not self oriented. These are the things, I won't go into it. But we're in a business where trust is very important, because we work with our clients, and we need to make sure that they understand that we're trying our very best. And when things get hard, it's not because we're like messing things up, it's because there's things that are unforeseeable, and you have to trust us through the bumpy times.

‍

Everything is so much easier with trust. When I find these people, you got to establish trust like you said Tyler and the other thing is you got to give. A good way to show trust is just to give, be as helpful as possible, let them tiptoe into the relationship. A lot of people want to make everything super formal right off the bat. Who knows this is gonna work? I don't know, honestly the chances of it working out are not very high.

‍

Mike Wu

Mm-hmm.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Totally.

‍

Matt Graham

So look you seem like a great guy, Tyler. Let's do some business together. Probably 10 % chance it’s going to work out. No hard feelings. Okay, we might have disagreements, we may argue, it probably won't work. But let's just try. Okay. Let's not bicker over every little thing right now. Let's go hard for a few months and then we'll circle back and see what happened. And that's what I did with that partner I mentioned about in that doubled our revenue. We just tiptoed into it and we just clicked like magic.

‍

Tyler Rachal

And that resonates a ton. You're making me think back to before Mike and I started Hireframe, we started a brokerage service where we would work with companies that needed to work with outsourcing partners to outsource some function of their business. And we had basically onboarded 80 to like a hundred outsourcing, BPO partners, that we had done our best to try to profile them, understand what are they good at? What are they not good at? You know, what are some of their flagship customers, etc, etc. And what I will tell you is, in the history of that business, which was short, but we did a couple of really great deals. All the companies, all the partners where it worked out, were the ones that just said, I like you, let's start to work on something right now. And we didn't waste a bunch of time arguing about these little points. 

‍

For every partner that it didn't work out with, I can just tell you, they redlined the hell out of our partnership agreements. They argue with us on these certain points, percentage points, whatever it was. And it's like, no wonder it didn't work out because why are we talking about this? We haven't even done a single deal together and we're just wasting all this time. So that really resonates. And that's why I was saying, I think you glossed over that. It's something that I see a lot in entrepreneurship. Many, many, many entrepreneurs cannot do what you do. cannot meet somebody and start to work with them. There's just too much of a lack of trust, truly. And it can be, I think, debilitating. So it really is one of your superpowers.

‍

Matt Graham

Thanks, guys. Yeah, I mean, it's not all rainbows and unicorns. I fuck it up a lot. I take the wrong bet. It's like same with recruiting, right? You want to find people that can get it right nine times out of 10. But there is still the occasional time where it doesn't work. And you got to be graceful. There's no hard feelings. This is how business is, there's a certain level of professionalism and maturity. And guess what? That doesn't mean it can't work in the future. There could be very well something that could work. 

‍

There's a guy that we brought onto the sales team. I think he's a very talented sales guy, but he just got done. He's burned out from a startup and he's not going to kind of continue with us right now. Guess what? No hard feelings, man. We tried. You need to go take a break. Go fucking to Costa Rica. Take six months. Come back. We can try again. So just being open-minded like that, knowing that there's so many thin gs that can make it work or not work and maybe some of it's just timing or environment. I meet a lot of talented people and I'm like, we're not ready for you right now, but I hope in two years we're going to be ready for you.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Yeah. So I was going to say Matt rapid fire. You're a man of what I would call super interesting takes on certain things in business. So I'm going to ask you about some ones that we've talked about, that I find very interesting. Let's first talk about your take on doing company retreats, off sites, whatever it is. I think you have a unique and incredible approach to doing me. So what are Matt's rules for doing a company offsite?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah. So we started this very early on in the company. We were a company. We had like seven people and we did our first retreat and we just kept doing them twice a year, two times a year, every six months. And we tried different iterations. The first couple, we tried to have some work. We made it a week and we tried to do work during the day and have fun at night. Not a good idea. People are tired from jet lag. It's hard for them to focus. It's not their environment. They don't have their whole setup. There's no outlets. The computers are dying all this stuff. Just have fun, right? Do some company team building stuff. Have something active, play sports together, go whitewater rafting, zip lining, four wheeling. These things build bonds. You don't need to be sitting in front of a presentation and brainstorming what problems we have to solve together. That stuff will come. Just use this time to get to know each other. Remember, you know a little tiny piece about everybody. Be curious, sit with them on the bus for 30 minutes, get to know their story, talk to each other, have fun, have drinks, laugh, dance, and just enjoy it. That's number one. 

‍

Number two, try to do it when your team's not gonna be stressed out. So we always do our events during major US holidays because that's when clients are not sending emails and very demanding. Because they're all kind of taking a break. So it kind of sucks for me, I missed a holiday, but what are you gonna do? And the team can truly relax. They can fly, they can recover from their jet lag, and actually have some good time and not have to spend the whole trip on email.

‍

As the team has gotten bigger, we've had to figure out different locations. You got to find a  suitable venue where people don't become cliquey or small groups and then you just end up having a bunch of small groups all over during the trip. You want to really find a place where people can congregate and actually mingle and have truly like no that's that team, this is that team. And they stick together and don't talk to us. You have to have that intermingling. Otherwise people don't meet each other and they don't really get to see the rest of the company. 

‍

So we found resorts are great because resorts have lots of space. You can have 20 people playing soccer. You can have 15 people playing volleyball. You can all go and swim at the pool or on the beach. You can have big dinners where everyone's able to sit at a giant table and see each other and switch spots. It's not like you're in the middle of a city where you go to the restaurant. They're like, no, we don't have room for 50 people. Like how about 10 of you stay here and 10 go to this other site where our sister restaurant is. So yeah, that's the other thing is making sure you have the right kind of physical space to bring people together.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Second and last, that's an awesome one. So, any founder that's out there listening, Matt shared this with us and Mike and I immediately started looking at random locations in Southeast Asia. So love that one. The second and last rapid fire. You said something to me that really stuck with me as a fellow agency owner. And you talked about basically, I want you to give it the right verbiage here, but it was essentially like go where there are companies that have raised lots of money and are spending lots of money to acquire tons of traffic. Essentially go to the big oceans that are being created by other companies. And that's where you're going to really get your customer acquisition versus most agency owners, you are always thinking about how can I get someone to come to my dinky little website and please just submit a form. So how do you think about customer acquisition as an agency and where to go?

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, I have tons of thoughts on this. This is what I spent all day thinking about. You can literally call me 24 7. I'm always pumped to talk acquisition and growth hacks and just growth in general. But there's always your content engine. So you got to grow, it's just part of the game. Some of this level of thinking is there is no silver bullet, you got to do a little bit of everything. So one of those things is content, you got to be everywhere all the time with good content. So that's you know, we're all here today trying to make content. You gotta be on all the platforms. You gotta be getting valuable information out there. People just need to know who you are and what you do and stay top of mind. Attention is the new currency. 

‍

The other thing is like, for what you were referring to Tyler, is there are companies that have free money and they spend all that free money getting lots and lots of leads. What do they do with those leads? I bet they can help give them to you. Especially in my space where it's development, we're working with platforms. The platforms, they want their users to use the platform. Often those users need implementation partners. So Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft, all technology plays, all these huge platforms that have tons of money. You can attach yourself to them and add value to the platform. And in return, the platform will gladly make you a partner of theirs. And you add a lot of value to their entire ecosystem. So just by being a good partner for these platforms can drive a lot of your business and your acquisition. Another thing for acquisition that I'm very hot on right now is M & A. You can buy acquisition, not by giving it to Google and Facebook via ads, but you can actually do channel partnerships, which I think are very difficult. Or you could buy businesses that have complimentary services and similar customer segment as you. And I think that's like a really interesting thing I'm working on right now. I have seen people do it at a small scale with newsletters, small little acquisitions like that, but I'm thinking like bigger acquisitions, companies that have 400 SMBs as their clients. Guess what? We're in a new age where these SMBs can access our services in a way that they never ever could before. And they all need to go through a digital transformation. And so buy a company that has 400 SMBs as their clients and sell technology in through that channel.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Last one, sorry. Bonus one. You mentioned you're very active on LinkedIn. And I would just say that in general, you've referenced this several times. You've talked about staying in touch, right? I hate to be lame and kind of like how every entrepreneur is like, what is your system? But  that's the question, do you actually deliberately say I'm going to touch base with Tyler  in a couple of months or, or this is just natural to you.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, shit, I gotta get better at this.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Do you, I don't know. You're pretty good. I think if it ain't broke.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, it's a great question. I don't know. I really probably should come up with a more systematic way of doing it. My main thing is I just remember what you're interested in. And whenever I find something that's interesting to me and I know it's interesting to you, I just pass it on to you. 

‍

Tyler Rachal

That's good though. That's amazing.

‍

Matt Graham

It's just, I don't know, something in my brain that can make the connection and just send you something that could be valuable. So it's always like a giving mindset. Again, who do know? What do they need? What are they good at? Keep that in mind and just connect people together. Don't do it so it's annoying, try to really spot true value. And I think most entrepreneurs have a good nose and sense for when value can be created, you know?

‍

Tyler Rachal

Without a doubt, you do it naturally. And that one resonates a ton with me because I try to do it as well. It’s just when you meet good people, you think of them. And if you truly do learn what their interests are, you don't, you don't need a CRM to do that. You can just be like, yeah, Matt loves to talk about SEO hacks. And I saw this thing. I wonder if Matt checked out that podcast too.

‍

Mike Wu

I think that's probably a good place to wrap things up. If anyone's listening to this and you are a rock star A player, Matt is your guy. He wants to work with you at your own risk. He might find a way to sleep on your couch too. 

‍

Tyler Rachal

Yes, anyone with a spare couch.

‍

Mike Wu

Matt, to wrap things up here, we always ask our kind guests to offer a way for people to connect with them if that's something you like. Where can people find you? Where can they learn more about Rapid Dev? Let us know.

‍

Matt Graham

Yeah, absolutely. Find me on LinkedIn, Matt Graham, No Code Guy. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Send me a DM. I'll definitely get back to you.

‍

Mike Wu

Thank you so much, Matt.

‍

Tyler Rachal

Thank you, Matt.

‍

‍