Talking to my friend and fellow entrepreneur Jon Matzner is always a little bit dangerous — I always walk away with about five new business ideas to try that I’d never thought about before.
Jon is a master business idea tester. He started his career in the Foreign Service and when he figured out he didn’t want to do that long term, he came back to the US and started buying small, difficult, operationally-intensive businesses.
That experience, in addition to his background in working internationally, meant that he got really good at finding, hiring, and employing folks from around the world in really meaningful ways.
So when he put all the pieces together of what he learned about global talent, he decided to launch his company Sagan Passport, which he describes as “the Costco for global talent.” In other words, it’s a membership community for founders, executives, and CEOs to hire international talent to help grow their businesses.
I love the concept, and I love Jon, so I had to get him on the Freedom Formula pod. He had plenty to share about his journey, how he determines whether a business model will work or not, and the easiest way to come up with ideas.
Try, Test, Adjust
I love how Jon iterates — he moves fast, finding ten things to try by the time I do one or two. He tries things out, tests to see what hits, and determines what he actually likes doing. A lot of people have a massive fear of launching (myself included) because they want everything to be perfect. I really admire Jon’s ability to look past that and just test.
Jon says that while it looks like he’s constantly doing a lot, what he’s really doing is simply seeing what the market will pay for, where the perceived value is, and where the operational execution model that he’s really excited about is. He insists that he doesn’t just randomly go after new ventures — if you look at everything he’s done over the past few years it’s been all about automation, AI, and global talent. Yes, its application to multiple businesses is different, but he’s not reinventing the wheel every time.
That’s how one of his most successful ventures, TeamWiki, came to fruition. When working with global talent, one of the things he observed was that most companies are bad at writing down SOPs and building out their internal Notion. So, he came up with a way to do that — combining his interest in automation, AI, and global talent.
I had to ask: what’s his strategy for testing and experimenting?
Jon says it’s simple. He goes online, posts, hangs out in the comment section, and sees if there’s any interest. He did just that with TeamWiki and landed a major contract with a multimillion-dollar import-export company. He calls it “old Seth Godin” — ideas that spread, win — and tries to touch the market as quickly as possible to see if people are excited.
His advice? Test as quickly as possible, and let people vote with their dollars. You’ll be able to quickly determine if your idea is worth pursuing…or not.
The Easiest Way to Come up with Ideas
I’m often contacted by folks who want to escape the 9 to 5 but aren’t sure how to do it. They want to be an entrepreneur, but they haven’t had their big idea yet. I had to ask Jon what he would say to them.
Jon told me that he thinks people need to embrace old-school networking — go to interesting places, meet interesting people, and stay in touch. Make a habit of getting exposure to ideas, business models, and concepts, and then just see where your energy pulls you.
In his own life, he never set out and thought, “This is the direction I’m going.” He simply followed his interest and curiosity and was able to accumulate skills that pushed him down the road. He also asked himself the all-important question: what would I do even if I didn’t make any money from it? He urges budding entrepreneurs to ask themselves this instead of doing what some random guy on a Twitter thread told him to do because it looks easy. It’s never easy.
Your passion may not always be something obvious you can make money from, but he does think that following your passion as it relates to things that can also be useful for other people is the move.
One way to do this is to look at what you personally already spend money on — it’s probably something other people would spend money on too. A home cleaning service is an example. When I launched MaidThis I knew people were going to spend money on it.
Was I passionate about cleaning? Not particularly. But I saw the future the idea held: I could turn it into a franchise that would empower other people to become business owners, which is something that I am passionate about.
Both Jon and I agreed that this is by far the easiest way to come up with business ideas that are scalable and sustainable.
Jon also notes that he’s actually a sales guy at heart, but he taught himself systems and AI because he wanted to build leverage. He has the mindset of, “Let’s go, and then we’ll figure it out.” He launches fast and hard, and you’ve got to admire him for it.
Based on the success of TeamWiki and Sagan Passport, I’d say he’s figured it out.
Put yourself out there, test, adjust, and test again — do the same and you’ll be well on your way to figuring it out too.
Photo by Djim Loic on Unsplash
This article was written by Neel from MaidThis Franchise, a remote-local franchise opportunity for people looking to escape the rat race and reach financial freedom. Learn more here.
