Apr 1, 2021
As entrepreneurs and business owners, pivoting and adapting is in our DNA. But that doesn’t mean it’s always a breeze. Determination, hard work, and grit can help us navigate and overcome even the most difficult pivots in our careers—and lives.
Welcome to Building While Flying!
This weekly podcast is brought to you by the Sasha Group. We’re the small-to-medium-sized business arm of the VaynerX family of companies. We help ambitious companies build strong brands that flex with the times through strategy, branding media and marketing.
In ever-changing times, businesses and brands have to shift and adapt. And across all sectors, there is an air of experimentation. Business owners are trying new things out in the wild; building the plane while flying.
Our pilots, Katie Hankinson and Mickey Cloud, will be talking to a diverse range of business leaders and founders. They’ll explore how these guests tackle various challenges while staying resilient and committed to growth. Through these real-life examples of strategies put into practice, we hope to inspire you to experiment and develop your own strategies as we all navigate these uncertain times together.
Matt Brown is an expert in pivots.
His career has been full of them—from leaving college to work as a technical recruiter, to keeping up with the platforms that literally drive his business, to adapting to the remote working environment, and much more. After realizing the disconnect between manufacturers and the retailers that sell their products, Matt launched ThumbStopper, a SaaS social media marketing company, to help bridge the gap between online and IRL inventory and retailers’ and brands’ social media presences.
In this episode of Building While Flying, Mickey and Matt unpack the macro and micro pivots at each step of his career. Matt explains how ThumbStopper came to be, and talks about how adapting to new data and updates constantly changes the dynamics of conversations he has with his clients and partners. He revisits a career nightmare involving a Craigslist terms and conditions update that made nearly half of his revenue disappear overnight, and how his team persevered to quickly build a solution. Lastly, Matt and Mickey discuss the importance of company culture and team building, and how those impact talent retention over time.
What's a moment in your business where you've been too reliant on a platform and something shifted, and how did you navigate that?
Other in-flight topics:
- Matt’s career path
- Adapting your business based on new data, statistics, and platform updates
- Grit and determination during challenging times
- Impacts of remote work
- Importance of culture and team-building
- Advice for entrepreneurs
Links:
@thumbst0pper - https://www.instagram.com/thumbst0pper/
Youtube.com/c/Thumbstopper