Whilst I was at Yanik Silvers Underground Online Seminar, I managed to get an exclusive interview with the great Matt Mickiewicz. He was one of the speakers at Yanik’s event and is a true definition of an entrepreneur having got started in business at age 14!

I love doing these video interviews. This one has been a long time coming, I know you will enjoy it. Its for everyone – the value Matt shares targets everybody so listen up!

I have the video, audio and transcript so you can take your pick.

Leave me a comment and tell me what you learnt from it and how its helped you.

Your Friend

Aaron

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Right Click To Download The Mp3 Here

Matt Mickiewicz Interview Transcript….

Aaron: Hi guys, Aaron Darko here from MillionaireAt24.com, and today I’m with Matt Mickiewicz. He’s the owner of SitePoint, Flippa, and 99designs. Now Matt, can you tell us a bit about yourself, and how you managed to start so many businesses?

Matt: I’m 26 years old now, I actually got my starting business at age 14, so I was very, very young. I created a website called Webmaster-Resources.com, and the idea behind that site was basically I was going to build websites as a hobby, I was finding I had to do a great deal of research and a great deal of legwork to find all the tools and information and resources I needed. So I thought to myself, if I’m having all these problems learning everything I need, surely there’s thousands of people like me.

So I basically created this website to compile all the information that I was learning and to share it with the rest of the world. Now, I was very fortunate that, 17 days after I launched my website, I got picked up by the LA Times, who heard about me, and then USA Today, Washington Times, Windows Magazine, all these other big media outlets started jumping on board and promoting me. A lot of good SEO traffic, good word of mouth, and business just really grew from there. Today we’ve renamed it and it’s called SitePoint.com. It’s one of the top 1000 websites on the internet, and it’s basically a giant online reserve site for people in the web design industry – we have email newsletters, and blogs, and forums, and we also do a lot of book publishing, so if you’re at a local Borders or Barnes and Nobles store you’ll probably see our orange and blue books about PHP, CSS, and stuff like that.

Aaron: Okay. So, if someone wants to get a design done, they go to 99designs. What else could they find there? Like how can that help them?

Matt: So 99Designs is the largest crowd-sourcing marketplace for graphic design. Before us, if you needed graphic design done, you either went on Elance and requested bids, you hired a friend or family member, or you just tried to do it yourself. With 99designs we basically turned them all upside down on its head.

So, what happens is, say you need a logo. You come to 99designs, describe your needs (for example, ‘I want a yellow and blue logo that’s very Web 2.0’), you set a budget, for example $300, then a timeline, which is usually a week. Then designers from all over the world see your project, see your description, and they compete for your $300 by uploading fully complete concept designs – so you’re not getting bids back, you’re getting back actual work. After a week’s time, you’ll on average get 100 different designs to choose from. You pick one, and that designer gets paid out from the budget through us.

Aaron: I see. So entrepreneurs out there who are trying to solve problems but they don’t know how to do it – what advice would you give them? Because your site obviously solves a big problem in the marketplace.

Matt:

“Look at areas that people are struggling with“

In our case, we found a lot of small business owners didn’t have a professional grinding identity. They either did it themselves, through an online tool like LogoMaker, used Microsoft ClipArt, had their cousin do it, whatever—they didn’t have access to a professional designer because they didn’t feel comfortable enough hiring a professional designer. They were intimidated by the process, they thought they would get ripped off, and they thought it would cost them an arm and a leg. So we basically eliminate all those risks for them. You see 100+ options, so you know you’ll see something you like; we have a 100% money back guarantee, which no freelance designer offers; and it’s really, really cost effective, just a couple hundred bucks.

So have a look at what people are struggling with, what’s high risk, what are people avoiding doing—and if you can create a way to ease that pain, you can be very successful.

 

Me and Matt Mickiewicz at Yaniks Underground Online Seminar - Matt is the owner of Sitepoint.com , Flippa.com and 99designs.com

Aaron: Absolutely. So what’s the last tip you’ll leave your young entrepreneurs with? They want to get online, they want to get into this business world, what advice would you give them?

Matt:

First of all, anything that you do will take 2, 3, or 4 times as long as you think it should, so be very, very patient and persevere.

“Also, don’t copycat others—be original, do your own thing, create new concepts, and do something that you’re passionate about and you think will help people. Don’t just do something for the money. I started Webmaster-Resources because I wanted to help other people build their own websites. I did not start it because I wanted to make money.”

Aaron: Absolutely. So what’s your last tip that you want to leave people who are struggling with their schoolwork and trying to build their business at the same time?

Matt:

“Watch less TV”

I think a lot of people say they don’t have the time but they spend 3 hours a day watching Lost and reality shows and whatnot. When I was 14, 15, 16, 17, I was going through high school while running this website, I was making more money than both my parents combined. I was basically answering emails in the morning, at lunch hour I was at Starbucks doing biz dev deals and doing ad sales, then I was working evenings, weekends, holidays…I never took a vacation. My friends went to the beach, I was working on my laptop. It’s hard, absolutely it’s hard. You have to be also very adaptable so, to give you another example:

I started Webmaster-Resources and the initial business model was advertising sales. 2001 came along, Dotcom crash, all our advertisers went bankrupt, and we got into book publishing. If 3 years earlier you’d told me that we’d be into book publishing, I would have said ‘you’re insane’, but we kept an open mind. We looked at what people were doing on our website, what they wanted; we tested ideas really, really cheaply, so that if we were wrong we could fail really cheaply. Just stay flexible and adaptable.

Aaron: Absolutely. I mean it’s all about sacrifice – entrepreneurs sacrifice the instant gratification for the long-term gratification. So you know you’ve got to do something today to enjoy tomorrow, whereas poor people say: “I want to do something now,” so they don’t think about the future.

Matt:

“The best time to start business is when you’re really young. You don’t have a lot of stuff, you’re not married, you don’t have kids, so you can live cheaply for a couple years and do what it takes.”

Once you get established…if you get a job that’s making you 80-100K a year and you decide to do your own business, your income might be cut in half for the first three or four years. That’s a huge sacrifice! You have a mortgage already based on your income, you have your payment on your car or whatever, and it’s really hard to make those cutbacks and sacrifices.

The best time to go and take a risk is when you’re really young and you’re not tied down to anything and you’re not used to a certain level of lifestyle.

Aaron: So what if someone’s in a job right now? You know, cause I get loads of agegroups watching my videos, they’re in a job right now, and they’ve heard that and they’re thinking ‘shit, how am I going to get out of my job?’ What would you say to that?

Matt:

Well start part-time. Start in the evenings and weekends, and once you have a couple of two- or three-thousand a month in income, then maybe it’s time to pull the trigger and go off on your own.

“I think necessity is the mother of all invention, so if you quit your day job, you’ll do whatever it takes to keep that income coming in, which will make you work that much harder, that much more passionate. But if you have that fallback, you’ll always be ‘so so’, you’ll never give 100 percent because you’ll always have that security in the background.”

Aaron: Thank you very much for sharing that with us, Matt. If you want to find out more about Matt, you can go to SitePoint, Flippa.com and 99designs.com. And what’s your personal email, if people really want to really get in touch with you and talk about designing their website?

Matt: Matt@SitePoint.com or you can follow me on twitter—my handle is sitepointmatt.

Aaron: Okay. Thank you very much Matt.

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And there you have it – another great interview with a lot of golden tips in there!

Leave me a comment below to tell me what you thought of it – would you like me to interview Matt again? Let me know below!

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Ciao!

P.S. Wanna start your own business? Check out Worlwide Brands, probably THE best place to source products at wholesale prices and sell them for profit on eBay and Amazon! Its easier than you think – go check it out!