Building An 8-Figure Business In 9 Years With Matthew Bertulli

The Fail On Podcast with Rob Nunnery - Fail Your Way To An Inspired Life

Matthew Bertulli is the Co-Founder and CEO of Demac Media.

Demac Media is a digital commerce agency that Matthew has built in the last nine years, and today, is now an eight-figure business with nearly 100 employees.

Matthew is also the Co-Founder of Pela Case, a six figure – soon to be seven figure – E-commerce brand. He’s also an angel investor in many industries including E-commerce, a tequila brand and even a nightclub.

To top it off, Matthew has also just released his first book called Anything, Anywhere.

In this episode we discuss his nine year journey building Demac to a hundred employees and eight figures. He reveals what the early days were like and what led him to drop out of college. He talks about the moment that he decided to quit his job and actually start the business in the first place.

If you’re looking for some candid advice, take a listen.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Find out how Matthew started a business with just two employees.
• Redefining what success and failure is to you.
• Why losing everything is highly improbable.
• Viva the side hustle!
• Leading 100 employees: Matthews work philosophy.
• E-commerce trends: Doing things at the right time.
• Why it is up to you to discover the type of entrepreneurship you wan to pursue.
• Entrepreneurship in today’s culture of instant gratification.
• Asking for help, networking and realizing that you don’t know it all.
• And much more!

Tweetables

“If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough.” — @mbertulli

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“I think the idea that failure is a good thing is a little backwards.” — @mbertulli

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“Wherever you do your best work, we encourage that.” — @mbertulli

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“If you build a great business, there will always be an exit.” — @mbertulli

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“I think it is up to the person to seek out the kind of entrepreneur that you want to be.” — @mbertulli

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Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Matthew Bertulli on Twitter — https://twitter.com/mbertulli

Matthew on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbertulli/

Pela Case — https://pelacase.com/

Demac Media — https://www.demacmedia.com/

Net Suite — http://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml

Anything Anywhere on Amazon — https://www.amazon.ca/Anything-Anywhere-Future-Digital-First-Roadmap/dp/1619616211

Transcript Below

Read Full Transcript

EPISODE 022

“MB: Then we found as we got bigger, so crossing 30, 40, 50 employees, you start to cross these boundaries too. Like it goes form like less family, more village-y type thing that we started to allow, encourage and introduce the idea of wherever you do your best work, we encourage that. If that means that you should he taking a day or two off a week and going away from home or from wherever else because you want to switch up. That’s cool, that was just born out of my own – I work that way.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:30.3] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders faced on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:56.7] RN: Hey there and welcome to the show that believes embracing failure and sharing your honest struggle is the only way to achieve your . In a world that only shares successes, we share the struggle by talking to honest and vulnerable entrepreneurs.

This is a platform for their stories and today’s story is of Matthew Bertulli. Matthew is the Founder of Demac media, a company he’s built the last nine years, which is now an eight figure business with close to a hundred employees.

Matthew’s also the cofounder of Palo Case, a six figure soon to be seven figure E-commerce brand, he’s also an angel investor in many industries including E-commerce brands, a tequila brand and even a nightclub.

He’s also just released his first book called Anything Anywhere. We’ll be discussing his nine year journey building Demac to a hundred employees and eight figures, what the early days were like and what led him to actually starting the business in the first place. And the latest company he cofounded Pela Case and what he aspires that business to be.

But first, if you’d like to stay up to date on all fail on podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:03.7] RN: So your company’s a leading authority in digital commerce. Just for a little context, how’d you get into E-com and when was this?

[0:02:13.4] MB: Demac started eight years ago. I grew up retail though. For me to get into E-com was like breathing.

[0:02:20.3] RN: Natural progression.

[0:02:21.2] MB: Yeah, my family owned retail stores and furniture home décor, baby. I’m third generation so like 55 years up in northern Ontario, those stores closed in the early 2000’s. I went to school and dropped out for computer science. I’m a software engineer by trade and then I was working for a company called Net Suite in 2007, 2008.

[0:02:41.4] RN: Yeah, I know Net Suite.

[0:02:43.4] MB: We IPO’d and I left to start this but I’ve been in some form of E-com since the late 90’s. This was just my own thing.

[0:02:43.4] RN: What exactly do you guys do here? How do you make money?

[0:02:56.6] MB: Yeah, I mean, the five word intro thing is we help you – play your intro. We help merchants build and grow E-commerce businesses so we are – the expanded version of that is, I work with a lot of manufacturers, a lot of brick and mortar retailers to either go online or build a bigger com of business.

A lot of the times it’s just somebody coming to us and saying “Hey, I want to do X million dollars now, I want to re-platform, I want new design, we need a whole bunch of shit.” Version optimization.

[0:03:25.9] RN: Traditional offline businesses though for the most part?

[0:03:27.8] MB: We get a good chunk of them that are offline, not a lot anymore that are like – that have no.

[0:03:33.0] RN: Presence at all.

[0:03:34.3] MB: Yeah. It used to be though. Like eight years ago, especially in Canada. When I started here, the idea of starting, like being in E-com, there was no E-com, it was a joke.

[0:03:45.0] RN: Now you have Shot the Fire.

[0:03:46.0] MB: I know, it’s like one of the largest E-com platforms ever and it’s like two kilometers down the road. Yeah, eight years ago, I remember eight years ago, actually talking to Harley and Toby and those guys too but they were getting going as well.

It was a little stupid. We were way early too, probably the first three years of this business, way too early.

[0:04:04.0] RN: In what sense?

[0:04:05.5] MB: Market wasn’t mature enough, you know, retailers here had no idea what this really was, they were unsure. All they’d heard about from the States was everybody was losing money.

Nobody’s actually turning a profit online, it’s still a problem, a lot of news about a lot of retailers failing or even E-com only brands that are going under, like Nasty Gal. It does not help us out that much when these businesses fail.

[0:04:27.5] RN: When you say you’re early like that, the market wasn’t mature enough, how are you acquiring clients that early on?

[0:04:33.1] MB: Really early on, a lot of word of mouth. Because I came from the retail world, I spoke the language really well so I got a handful of intros out of the gate. So when I left Net Suite, I already had a bunch of companies that I was working with at Net Suite that I had been connected to. They made some intros, I went out and it was like a one man show.

[0:04:50.9] RN: Sure.

[0:04:52.3] MB: No business plan, no nothing. I’m going to go do something in this space. I’m just going to go talk to a bunch of merchants. About a year and a bit in, I connected with a company called Magento at the time, they were just getting going as well, The Valet. Turned out they were a rocket ship. We did a ton of business with them and I was the only guy in Canada that could do it, so that helped.

Built a couple of big partnerships really early on about three or four years ago, with Shopify. I’m a big fan of channel partners and I got that from Net Suite because that’s how Net Suite built itself – half of its business came from partners.

That was it, there was not a lot of sophistication in the first three, four years, a lot of it was word of mouth, not at all repeatable, not at all scalable. Scary as hell and not know we’re like you’re next, yeah, your next customer’s coming from.

[0:05:41.1] RN: On that note, when you started Demac, was it just you? Did you bring on employees right out of the gate? Did you have capital?

[0:05:49.4] MB: No, just me, my own capital.

[0:05:53.1] RN: How much did you have to put in before you saw a dollar back?
[0:05:55.4] MB: I was paid from like – we were cashflow positive from day one.

[0:05:56.6] RN: Got it.

[0:05:57.8] MB: Mainly because I can code.

[0:06:00.4] RN: You had no overhead from day one.

[0:06:00.9] MB: No, I’m the only overhead. Like can I pay mortgage? Yeah, when we IPO’d Net Suite, I’d left, got a couple of customers to pay the bills right out of the gate and then my wife joined to designer about six, seven months in. And then my co-founder, our CTO, he joined about a year and a half and that was like the first three people.

[0:06:24.5] RN: What were you doing in revenue roughly at this point?

[0:06:27.7] MB: I think, so year one, which was just my wife and I think it was $80,000.

[0:06:34.1] RN: Was she getting paid either?

[0:06:37.8] MB: No. That was like, pay our bills, pay the mortgage. I think year two, we jumped to three or 400 and then –

[0:06:45.2] RN: That’s what largely bring on.

[0:06:46.7] MB: Yeah, then we started hiring. By the end of year two, I think we were five or six people and it’s sort of like – if you look back over the last eight years, we’ve gone pretty consistently. Somewhere between 30 to 35% up to about 55% year over year growth, we kind of try and keep it in that band.

[0:07:09.4] RN: Not grow too fast.

[0:07:10.3] MB: Yeah, we have no outside investors, everything’s been bootstrapped, this is all our own cash.

[0:07:14.9] RN: Was this the first business you started?

[0:07:16.6] MB: It was the first real one.

[0:07:17.7] RN: Yeah. What was the biggest – I mean, did you have – after leaving Net Suite, did you have any kind of sense of fear starting it that would –

[0:07:25.4] MB: Dude, yeah. Especially coming like a family of entrepreneurs, we were in retail a long time.

[0:07:32.5] RN: Retail’s a tough racket.

[0:07:33.4] MB: Shit yeah, it’s not good. Now, you have to really know what you’re doing, especially if you’re just bricks. That sucks. Today it sucks.

[0:07:41.2] RN: Yeah. Is that impossible today?

[0:07:43.4] MB: Totally. I know a few.

[0:07:46.2] RN: Yeah, it’s crazy.

[0:07:47.5] MB: They’re just very good at uprooting stores. In Canada stores still work quite well. Guys like Amazon, they don’t have the penetration that they do in the States.

[0:07:56.0] RN: Yeah.

[0:07:56.5] MB: They’re getting there but we’re behind.

[0:07:59.2] RN: Got it.

[0:08:00.0] MB: Yeah, I think the idea of like fear and uncertainty, I don’t think it goes away either, I don’t – I think there’s this –

[0:08:07.0] RN: You still feel it?

[0:08:07.9] MB: Shit yeah. Anybody saying I was like totally lying, you’re full of shit man. I see sort of success and failure as this giant spectrum and it’s highly personal. You land somewhere on it and you’re constantly refining what your definition of both is right?

A failure to me today would have been like almost catastrophic in the early days. I may feel a hell of a lot more now than I did early on but I’m also probably taking more swings. I think that you know, looking back, we definitely had a whole bunch of small ones because we were only ever taking small risks.

[0:08:43.0] RN: They don’t want to bet the house right?

[0:08:45.0] MB: Yeah, literally. When you’re starting, literally about that.

[0:08:48.5] RN: House on the line.

[0:08:50.0] MB: I think now, yeah, it’s strange. It never goes away, if you’re not – I’m an avid mountain biker. The joke in mountain biking is if you’re not falling, you’re not trying hard enough right? You’re going to leave the bush with some kind of scratch or dent on you. I look at it no differently, I think that – if we’re not failing, we’re not trying hard enough to evolve. Then, failure is super subjective. It’s almost like –

Failure and success, those two terms are – I hate it when someone’s like, well this guy’s really successful, I’m like there’s not a definition to that. Exactly.

[0:09:29.8] RN: By his? Hers? Same with failure. I was talking to Dev downstairs. You know, before I even had him on the show, he was like dude, I’ve got like a really contrarian view on failure because he doesn’t think failure is a prerequisite for success.

[0:09:42.1] MB: No it’s not. Exactly. This is my first real company by most measures. It is successful, we’re still here eight years later.

[0:09:50.3] RN: Exactly. And like we just talked about, it’s the definition right? What’s failure? Does it have to be a catastrophe? Where you don’t have this business, you lose this business? No.

[0:10:02.1] MB: If something doesn’t work to the expectation that you had.

[0:10:04.5] RN: Exactly.

[0:10:05.3] MB: Whether your expectation was wrong or not is the right thing.

[0:10:07.6] RN: And whether you learn from that right?

[0:10:08.8] MB: Yeah. I’m with Dev. I think he and I have talked about this a few times. I don’t go into anything trying to fail. I think the idea that failure is a good thing is a little backwards. It’s like no, it happens.

But...