IAM2360 – Entrepreneur and Brand Architect Build Powerful Brands and Partners With Others To Do The Same

Matt Gottesman is an international business strategist, brand architect, and purpose-driven entrepreneur.

He shares how his experiences with tech, branding, and consulting helped him transition into working with high-end brands like Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy, and Cadillac.

Matt emphasizes the importance of energy and authenticity in brand building, explaining that he connects with people and businesses on a deep, energetic level to understand their core motivations.

Matt mentions the importance of effectively organizing his time and schedule, using tools like a calendar and a large whiteboard to track goals and tasks.

Matt advises young entrepreneurs to focus on the process, particularly the details, and to learn from successful mentors.

He highlights the importance of setting a good example and making decisions with intuition rather than emotion.

Website: Matt Gottesman

LinkedIn: Matt Gottesman LLC

Facebook: Matt Gottesman

Instagram: hdfmagazine

Previous Episode: iam218-entrepreneur-and-brand-architect-build-powerful-brands-and-partners-with-others-to-do-the-same

Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE. 

I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!

Transcription:

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today!

Matt Gottesman Teaser 00:00

When you have the audience's attention and you treat them really, really well, then you can really grow companies and brands and impact and you can learn from them.

What they're needing, right? And so for me, the next level of like how I would conduct myself as a CEO is how am I connected to the audience and understanding what they need and learning from them?

Intro 00:23

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:48

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Matt Gottesman. MattGottesman.com. Matt, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Matt Gottesman 00:56

Thanks for having me man. I appreciate it. I appreciate your time too.

Gresham Harkless 00:59

Yeah, I appreciate your time and I appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing and what I wanted little bit more about Matt so you can hear about all those awesome things I was talking about.

And Matt builds powerful, impactful brands and partners with others to do the same. He's a purpose-driven entrepreneur, a leading international business strategist and brand architect focusing on luxury lifestyle, health and wellness, cannabis, tech, fashion, arts and entertainment.

He's worked in partnered with some of the world's most prestigious brands under the Louis Vuitton, Moët Hennessy conglomerate such as Krug Champagne and Run Art Champagne, as well as others to the likes of Cadillac and the World Trade Center.

With two international business degrees including MBA from Thunderbird, the number one school for international business, 20 plus years experience in Internet technology, 10 plus years in branding.

He's built a reputation for positioning brands for high visibility and scale as well as maximum efficiency.

He's also the owner of an online media company that houses a digital publication, Hustle and Deal Flow, a Forbes-featured podcast.

The hustle sold separately and his social media reaches millions starting with his insanely engaging Instagram account at HDFMagazine.

He's currently also the co-founder of Cannabis Magazine, the number one online destination for industry news and the newly launched Cannabis Magazine podcast.

When Matt isn't building brands or partnering with others, he mentors creative entrepreneurs all over the world via the web and has also created several online programs that help you scale your company's overall growth internationally and systematically.

Matt, it's awesome to have me on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Matt Gottesman 02:34

It's always crazy when somebody else reads some, like, all the different things going on in your world, you don't even like sometimes how much is actually going on until somebody says so.

[restrict paid=”true”]

Gresham Harkless 02:43

Yeah, absolutely. I can't imagine that you sleep much, but I appreciate you taking some time out to have a conversation.

I wanted to drill a little bit deeper. I know it's actually on a little bit, but I want to hear about what I call your CEO story. We'll let you start your business.

Matt Gottesman 02:54

So I ironically never really worked for anybody. And that started, like, at 2021. Now. I had, like, a lot of jobs up until then, like, I started very early, like learning work, when my pops was all like, hey, you need to learn to work.

So at a very, very young age, I definitely had jobs, like always, right. But I realized real quickly on that I didn't have like a corporate mentality.

I love playing with others and I love creating and collaborating. But, I'm at an age, I'm in my late 30s, where that time-frame, like that shift, that millennial shift was just starting to happen more, like the LinkedIn didn't exist, right?

Facebook didn't exist. All these companies didn't exist. It was like that idea of corporate culture was still very, very linear.

And I tried to be able to kind of mesh in there, and I just, I didn't. I had my first startup in my early 20s.

It was a digital music startup, epic failure. And it was amazing because it taught me everything I needed to know about, like, tech and digital and engineering and design and copywriting and digital marketing, all that stuff.

That kind of became the start of me first running my own company from, like a consultancy side. And I just, I started working with all kinds of brands and then I went back to school.

And then I got referred to Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy, and really, it was just kind of always put into these positions where they're like, hey, we don't understand this stuff. Explain it.

So, it was cool to be like my own kind of have my own consultancy. But even then, you learn a lot about what happens when you work with brands and that relationship, right?

Because real quickly, other companies want to absorb you like an employee, not recognizing that you're a third party person there to help unbiased, get them out of their own way.

So to shorten that, about five years ago, besides being a consultant, I knew I wanted to build something on my own that, again, I recognized where content marketing and influencer marketing, before they were calling it influencer, was going.

And ultimately, I just wanted my own distribution. No different than what you have with your podcasts and publications and whatnot.

When you have the audience's attention and you treat them really, really well, then you can really grow companies and brands and impact, and you can learn from them what they're needing.

And so for me, the next level of how I would conduct myself as a CEO is how am I connected to the audience and understanding what they need and learning from them and seeing what is in my lane that I can deliver to them. And so, yes, the podcast, the publications, everything just kind of kaboom.

Gresham Harkless 05:31

Nice, nice, nice. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what you feel kind of sting, which is you or yours. Organization kind of sets you apart and makes you different and unique.

Matt Gottesman 05:40

So. All right. There's actually a couple things that are very, very secret sauces. I like that, by the way, for me, with, like, especially when it comes to a brand, it's all energy. I am doing it all off of energy.

And I know that, like, typically people say, oh, okay, like, you know, let's just get to your brand mission.

Like, let's just get to your, let's just write a quick message and. But no, like, I say that, like, you got to go to the soul level of the person who's creating it.

And so when you do that, you have a whole other experience that happens. And so I definitely do everything at the energetic level.

I'll never force anything. It's all off of a feeling and a vibe, and that's not always easy to replicate.

So obviously. But that's why I've ended up working with so many really great individuals and brands and companies because they're like, how do you do it?

I'm like, it's an intuitive, energetic thing, like, and it's getting to the core of the person, right? So, like, I'll talk to the CEO.

And I'm like, why are you doing this, man? Like, oh, well, it's great for this product to do this. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Why are you doing this?

And it's interesting because if you go to that level, you actually start to get into their background and go all the way.

Sometimes back to their childhood, you start to realize they were almost grooming themselves, mentally, energetically, spiritually, whatever, for the position that they're in now, one way or another, whether they were doing it consciously or subconsciously.

So then you get to start to understand the story of their entire approach. And I was like, yeah, see, like, when you talk like that or when you message like that, boom.

Like, that's when you connect with the audience and they just skyrocket. So being present and really understanding people from an energetic level, I can actually help them with their brands go, like, way beyond what they'd even anticipated and actually make it easier.

But then, of course, it's coming out of their kind of comfort zone of, like, this can't be scripted. It's got to be authentic. So there's. I think there's definitely that.

And then I don't do any of this stuff scripted in general. So, like the podcast, I'm definitely prepared. I think you should know about your guests.

If I go into a business meeting or into any type of setting, it's respectful to know exactly who you are talking to and a bit of their background.

Gresham Harkless 07:53

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an Apple book or habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Matt Gottesman 08:01

Ooh, there's a few. There's a couple game changers. Number one, calendar. Every Sunday night, I actually look at the week ahead.

I block off what I'm going to be doing during those times, including, like, meditation, yoga, working out, hikes, whatever, breakfast, all that stuff.

I put that all in there. The following Sunday, I actually look and see how effective it really, that schedule was for me.

So instead of feeling overwhelmed all the time of, like, oh, I didn't stick to this, I didn't stick to this. I will actually go back and say, oh, okay, like, this seemed to work for me.

This didn't. The more you know what you're doing with your time, the more you start to respect it.

And the more you respect it, the more you can accomplish what you want to accomplish for you. Another really key thing is I've got one of these big, massive whiteboards on my wall. I got one of those, like, black glass quartet boards. I love it.

Gresham Harkless 08:51

Nice.

Matt Gottesman 08:51

Now I write all kinds of stuff down on the edges. I put, like, mission and goals and vision, things that are going to stay for a while in the middle.

It's all the stuff that is ongoing that I need to get done now. I don't have to look at it every day. That's not the purpose.

But I put it in a place in the house where vibrationally, it's always kind of in front of me. The interesting thing is I've had this now for about five months and I'm on my third board.

I had to raise stuff because it all got done. It was the weirdest thing to look up and be like, that actually got done. I mean, things that I was like, how the hell am I going to get all that done? Right?

And all of a sudden I'll look up, I'm like, oh, my go. Like, I got it all done. And then I would race and put more stuff. It's actually now becoming more exciting for me because there.

So there's not the pressure of, I gotta get this, I gotta get this, I gotta get this done. It's more exciting because I know that, oh, it's getting done.

So it's sort of like what I'm trying to remember the famous quote, but it was, it was like, write it down.

Not Alicia Keys, but it was like somebody of that magnitude and in that space that said, write it down.

Oh, Erykah Badu, write it down. There's something that happens when you actually write pen to paper or like, pen to board.

Something happens in manifesting it. It just does. So I say put it on a board in front of a place in the house where, like, energetically, it's always kind of top of mind, even if you're not looking at it.

Gresham Harkless 10:15

Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget, and you might have already touched on this, and this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Matt Gottesman 10:24

I haven't touched on that. There's a few things. I would get rid of the distractions as quickly as possible.

I always had a strong work ethic, but I would have definitely dove deeper into the details of the process for one thing at a time and just focused on one thing at a time in the process.

I think you hear a lot of entrepreneurs say, like, oh, embrace the process. Love the process. Like, you hear all the same things, but nobody ever actually talks about what that really, really, really means.

I mean, like, and I always give that analogy of if you can go into a garage and instead of just asking for the keys to a Ferrari, ask them if you can help build the engine with them so you know how it works, right?

Like, really, really get to know how the engine is built by building it yourself, understanding all the intricate details.

So I would definitely, I'd be just a little bit more focused on the processes and also I would say even be even more mobile.

Go wherever you need to go to surround yourself with the right people. Very early on, I always had good people around me.

But for some of the things that I needed to accomplish and do, I needed probably maybe like another geographic location for me might have just been like a geographic location, right?

So go find wherever the people are that are closest to the things that you want to do and go do that.

I also, I probably wouldn't. I have no regrets. I would never go back and change anything. But being a CEO very early on, I think what I would have done differently is I would have gone to a very specific person that I admired in a very specific industry I wanted to be in.

I don't care if I worked for them for free or whatever. I would make it work and I'd be like, I want to learn everything that you have to offer and I'll do the work for you.

Whatever you tell me to do, I'll do it. And then that way, like, one day I can do the same. What you do.

I would, hands down, like any young, CEO, entrepreneur or anything, I would say, like, go do that right now, immediately.

Because it's priceless. Like, if you can get around that kind of person. And by the way, most successful people want to help people.

They actually want to help people. The issue is that not a lot of people want to do the work or they want to just kind of take.

They don't understand how the value exchange goes. You're going to a very high-profile person and asking them to teach you is fine, but be prepared to do the work.

Let whatever they ask with no ego. Like kind of a whole Mr. Miyagi Danielson, karate kid thing. Like, I think you take that approach, you're going to be golden, like easily.

You're going to shave off years, connections, networks, locations, getting in wherever you want to get in.

You're going to shave off like an entire lifetime by doing that, and probably within a few years. So I would recommend that.

Gresham Harkless 13:15

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And a lot of times that knowledge and that information, just like we were talking about energetically when you're around that person.

But you're also seeing exactly what they're doing, it starts to increase your likelihood of being successful, which is of course, what a lot of people are looking to do.

So I appreciate you for sharing that with Us. And now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question and it's the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Matt, I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO means to you?

Matt Gottesman 13:38

I think a CEO, actually I know a CEO means stepping into who you really are, into your truth. I think it means patience, humility, humbleness, leadership.

I think that we are all here to serve. When you act from a place of serve, serving your customers, serving your team, it has a trickle-down effect for success.

I believe that we have to embrace doing the work as an example so that other people will follow suit.

If I work hard and smart, then so too will my team or so too will the people I educate or teach. We have to set ourselves as an example.

So, because it's absorbable what we do, everything is absorbable. And everything that we do also attracts everybody that comes around us. So I think we have to be.

And so I think also I know a keen sense of self-awareness. You have to be so self-aware of how you can better yourself, how you can better position yourself, better educate yourself and just your overall approach to life.

Being a CEO is not an easy thing. It doesn't have to be a difficult thing, it's just not an easy thing. There's that famous quote that it doesn't get easier, you just get better.

It's true, because you start to learn how to move differently and how to make better decisions quickly and to detach yourself from an emotional decision and move more into just doing a right decision. Right.

An intuitive decision. So I know that that's, that's also really important as a CEO, the self-awareness. So you have to learn to drop the ego as well.

Gresham Harkless 15:16

Absolutely. And that all helps you to propel yourself towards that, to being extremely successful when you're able to drop that ego and you're able to humble yourself.

And sometimes have that confidence, but at the same time understand that you can still learn things and still be better.

So Matt, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do is pass you to mic just to see if there's anything know you can let our readers and our listeners know and then of course how they can find you. Subscribe to your podcast and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing.

Matt Gottesman 15:40

Yeah, no, thank you. Anybody that wants to reach out personally. MattGottesman.com M A T T G O T T E S M A N.com. I am very communicative on Instagram. So H as in Henry, D as in dog, F as in Frank HDFMagazine on Instagram.

You check out the blog hdfmagazine.com we have a podcast, obviously, called the Hustle, sold separately.

And we're on iTunes and Spotify and Google Play and iHeart and all of your major platforms. All platforms really love when people reach out through there.

And yeah, they can reach out to me on any of those platforms and I'm very engaging. Facebook, I'm there as well, too. Matt Gottesman official or just Matt Gottesman.

Gresham Harkless 16:20

No problem. No, I truly appreciate you. Not just for your time you had today, but everything awesome that you're doing. And again, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Matt Gottesman 16:27

Thank you, Gresham. I appreciate you too.

Outro 16:29

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast, powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue16Media.com. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

[/restrict]