Meet Matthew Boyer

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Boyer . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.

Hi Matthew , we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

Self-confidence was not something that came naturally to me during my youth. Even though I was involved in martial arts, competed in tournaments, and accomplished several different achievements, I still never had what you would call strong self-confidence and definitely not what one would have considered great self-esteem.

As I moved into my teen years, I was very shy, struggled with meeting new people, and spent a lot of time at home or at martial arts where I knew everyone and felt comfortable. I would not go to new restaurants or places where I didn’t know someone without lots of anxiety, or I would just skip it altogether.

As life moved forward, after high school, I decided I needed to break the cycle. I went out and found a job where I knew I would be uncomfortable. It forced me to deal with people and come out of my shell. I basically made the decision to fix my lack of self-confidence and low self-esteem by getting that job and forcing myself into an uncomfortable place to grow.

I also learned the value of putting in the repetitions to get better at things. On my first day at the new job, I had to stand at the front door, greet people as they came in, and offer to sell them our new fragrance. This was extremely awkward and uncomfortable for me, but after maybe even 20 times, I realized that I could easily do it. If I wanted to get better at things, I just had to do them more until I got better at it.

As life moved on, I just got the reps in. It went like this: start a new job, get a promotion, learn a new form in martial arts, go to a tournament, compete, and win. As I grew into my adult years and progressed from my 20s into my 30s, I always celebrated my wins. Through winning over and over, doing good things, and being successful, my inner voice learned that I win, and that’s what I do. It gave me bulletproof self-confidence and super high self-esteem.

This is something I feel a lot of people struggle with because, in today’s society, we focus on all the negatives all the time. So many people forget to celebrate wins, whether they’re big or small. For me, if I get up early, head out the door feeling good, that’s a win. If I like the way my clothes fit that day or have a good workout at the gym, that’s a win. If I have time to make my breakfast and can relax a little bit, that’s a win. Forcing myself to get in my ice bath in the morning is also a win.

So, most days, I’ve achieved 5 or 10 small wins before 9:00 a.m. No matter how bad the rest of my day goes, I already had a great morning. The rest of the day will be fine because I don’t dwell on the negativity or setbacks; I focus on my wins. This is something that I think many of us could do better at.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

It all started for me when I joined martial arts at the age of 10. I fell in love with every aspect of it, most importantly teaching, and I decided at that point that I wanted to grow up to own and run a martial arts school and train in martial arts for the rest of my life. I had no clue that this would take me on a lifelong journey of entrepreneurship.

As early as 13 years old, I always had some type of small business, whether it was restoring bicycles to sell to my friends, fixing lawn mowers, or selling gum to kids at school for extra money. By no means was I poor; I just loved the hustle. As I got into my later teen years and started my first job, my managers always insisted on putting me in customer-facing roles. I wouldn’t say I ever had a strict sales job because I never worked for a sales commission, but I always had a job that was customer service-based and responsible for making certain amounts of sales. No matter how much I tried to talk my bosses out of it over the years and asked them to put me in the back or doing other things, I always seemed to be up in front of the customers. It seemed that everyone around me saw the potential for that, except me.

As I got into my mid-twenties and closer to starting my first business, which would be my martial arts school, Boyer Academy, it became obvious to me that I was going to love being an entrepreneur. Upon starting Boyer Academy in the first quarter of 2009 during a terrible recession, I was forced to be resourceful. I was forced to be creative with how I marketed, grew, and branded my business, often with zero money because I was a brand new business owner in a terrible economy and did not have the extra money to invest in coaching or high-paid online marketing gimmicks. I had to get creative.

As the years progressed, my martial arts school did very well, and I learned that I was always supposed to be an entrepreneur. Upon starting Boyer Painting seven years after starting Boyer Academy, I realized I had to level up in the entrepreneurship world. With Boyer Academy, it had always been the Matt Boyer show. It was me, maybe a black belt helping with class, but I never ventured into the realm of payroll and managing multiple crews and employees.

The martial arts school was open for a couple of hours at night. We did some demonstrations, went to some tournaments, but as far as complexity went, it was very simple. Upon opening the doors at Boyer Painting, I was in for a whole new world because this business I wanted to scale. I had opened it with the plans of building it completely differently than I had Boyer Academy but with one similarity: customer service was going to be first. I wanted to project a professional and customer service-based contractor business. I wanted to make sure that we were prompt and on time, that I had crews able to talk and work with the customers without me having to hover over every job site. I wanted to build a large reputation and job base so that my crews would work all winter, and I could hire only the best because they would be paid the best. I wanted to provide work uniforms and go above and beyond with the procedures and how we walked the customers through their jobs. I wanted to move quickly through each job, leaving customers happy and able to put their houses back together. All in all, I wanted it to be different.

What I didn’t know was how receptive the community around me would be to this. Within 18 months of opening the doors, we were doing seven figures a year and in a position to give back to our community. With Boyer Academy, I had always done free lessons, free demos, small things like hosting an event at the school and donating a couple of hundred dollars to a local charity. But with Boyer Painting, I was able to take that to the next level. I have been able to paint several local community projects, whether it’s a church or a shelter for children, for free and save these businesses tens of thousands of dollars, allowing them to put that money elsewhere and offer more to our community. We’ve become a household name in and around our local community and are known for how much we give back and how much we take care of those around us.

At first, I thought this was where I was going in life: have a large painting company that generates over a million dollars a year so that I’m able to give back as much as I want. Well, that’s not exactly how it unfolded because I realized that I had abilities that would allow me to do a lot more than just paint a couple of buildings and donate a few martial arts classes to help local groups. Now, don’t get me wrong, doing that stuff is great, but I realized that I was called to do more than just that. It took me a while to figure it out.

Last year, in an effort to promote both of my businesses locally in my community, I partnered with Get Attention STL and we started a podcast. Extremely high quality, with great content, it features local business owners and gives them a platform for people to learn about their business. From the very first episode, I realized that talking to people and having these conversations was a huge passion of mine. I fell in love with the process: meeting all these new business owners, sitting down and having amazing conversations with them, and watching our podcast bring them more business. One person in particular reached out after being on the podcast, had seven new clients sign up with them, and tons of people reached out who never knew what she did. But after being able to hear her in long form and see how smart she was, they immediately wanted to sign up.

This triggered the thought in my head that I needed to learn how to speak on stages. If I hired a professional speaking coach, I could share even more and have more of these great conversations, along with being paid to speak to other business owners or entrepreneurs. After hiring professional speaking coach Jesse Cruz, I competed in a competition in Tampa Bay, Florida, where I took first place. But the real win that day was hearing everybody’s stories and seeing how no matter what your story was, it could affect and help others. See, I thought walking into that room I was going to be competing against other entrepreneurs like myself who were pitching a coaching program or wanting to help people with personal development. I did not realize that I would be sharing the stage with people who had gone through traumatic experiences such as domestic violence or suicide. I walked away from that event changed, realizing that everybody has a story and that we should use our words to help others.

After arriving home from that event, I was approached by Perfect Publishing to write a book about my strategy I spoke about on stage. I thought to myself, here we go, this is it. I’m going to write a book, I’m going to speak on stages, that’s how I’m going to share my story. But during the midst of all this, I found my way back into church. I was listening to the teachings in church, having multiple conversations with strong men in my community, and discussing Jesus and their lives and goals. Through these discussions, I saw where they had been taken down that journey by putting their faith in a higher power. I realized that I was being taken down this road to learn to speak, write the book, and meet these people to have them on my podcast because I could use the lessons I’ve learned over the years in business and martial arts to help many others—so many more than I could help by just having them come to Boyer Academy and learn martial arts.

I shared all of that with you so I could share this with you. You’ve seen where my journey has taken me; now you can see where my journey is going. I am currently developing a program to speak in schools all over the United States to combat the mental wellness problem that we are having in this country with children. Using the lessons that I’ve learned by training thousands of students in my martial arts school, I aim to help hundreds of thousands of children across the United States. My business strategy book, “Tell Show Do,” will release this month. Then we start production on a 10-book series for children based on teaching them self-confidence, courage, the power of their own thoughts, and winning through books like “Confidence with Kendall.” It will follow her journey through school and conquering her fears of speaking in front of her class.

Using these stories and other examples that have been part of my life over the last 15 years of martial arts training and developing the youth into champions, I feel that I can help so many more. I truly believe this is going to be the biggest thing I’ve ever done, and I’m very excited to launch it and see where it takes us through the year 2025. Our plan is to roll this out, for me to speak in as many schools as possible, distribute as many sets of these books to as many children as we can get them to, so that we can turn around the crisis that is affecting our children in the United States. This has become a huge problem that I see time and time again when children come into my martial arts school and the parents fill out a questionnaire before class, listing all the problems these poor kids are having. I’ve been frustrated with it for years. I’ve seen it for years. I’ve seen parents making mistakes, fathers leaving their children, and mothers forced to raise them on their own. I feel that I’ve been pointed in this direction because I do have a gift and I can help. These talks, this training, this book series are going to be huge and make an impact on so many lives that I know in my wildest dreams I cannot fathom what it will reach.

Being able to take the lessons, trials, and tribulations that I’ve been through in my life, businesses, and martial arts, honor my instructors by using them as inspirations for

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

In the beginning, the biggest quality that kept me going was the fear of failure. I never wanted to fail; I did not want to close my school. This had been a dream I had for years, so I did whatever it took. Even though I was broke, I offered martial arts classes at local preschools for free just to get my name out and hand out flyers. I would offer to do demos at events that had nothing to do with martial arts if they would allow us to be on their flyer, include us in their promotional information, and let me pass out coupons at the event for the school.

With this fear, I was already broke. I had moved back home to my father’s house to save money while I got the business off the ground, so I really had nowhere to go but up. Although it would have been nice to do it differently, I feel that the fear of failing, being broke, and having no choice but to move forward taught me to fight my way up and through hard situations. When I would tell friends about the challenges I faced with the business, they would say, “Well Matt, maybe it’s time to close.” But that was never an option for me. It was never “I’m going to close”; it was always “I’m going to do this” or “I’m going to do that” to get ahead.

As I developed in my entrepreneurship journey, I maintained that outlook. When things got tough, I didn’t think about quitting. I didn’t shut down and hide. I looked at every angle and came up with ways out of those rock-and-a-hard-place type spots. Having nothing to fall back on, other than going back to work for someone else—which I did not want to do—forced me to push myself at times when most people would have given up.

I know other great entrepreneurs have said it, but the power of being broke and having nowhere to go but up is a huge advantage for anyone in that space. People tell me all the time that they’re too broke or they can’t be an entrepreneur because of this or that. But if you’re broke with nowhere to go but up, you have no choice but to win. It’s a huge advantage for anybody wanting to be an entrepreneur to be in that situation. If you’re already successful, have a house, a family, and all these things going on, you have a lot more to risk than I did at the time. I was sleeping on a mattress in my dad’s basement with no money, no wife, and no kids. All I had to do was hustle. I wanted to grow my business and continue to learn, and I had to do it the hard way.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Over the years of being an entrepreneur, I’ve become what some call a personal development junkie. I’ve read hundreds of personal development books and buy them all the time. My Amazon driver almost knows me by first name because of all the books delivered to my house weekly. Whether I have time to read them now or later, I purchase them when I find one interesting, putting it on the shelf for when I finish my current book.

A big game changer for me came several years into my entrepreneurial journey when a friend shared the book *Be Obsessed or Be Average* by Grant Cardone. I had never listened to a personal development book before, but the cover of the book—him riding on an airplane with the title *Be Obsessed or Be Average*—caught my attention. My friend Josh, a successful entrepreneur, recommended it, so I decided to check it out.

In the first part of the book, Grant describes how all his life, people had told him that he worked too much. He needed to rest more, go on more vacations, and chill out. They told him he had ADHD and depression. This resonated with me because my whole life, people had always said, “Why do you work so hard? Why do you go from school all day in high school to martial arts all night long, working on somebody’s car after you get out of there, and maybe going to help someone paint a house on the weekends? You just work too much; you need to relax.” I had let that message creep in.

Grant goes on to say that he realized he likes to work. He wants to work every day. Matter of fact, he wants an extra day of the week and extra hours in each day because working makes him happy. I’ll be honest, I almost wrecked my truck because I was yelling at the radio, “Yes, Uncle G, yes, me too!” I realized that there were other people like me out there—that I wasn’t weird. It was just that the majority of people I surrounded myself with did not have the same entrepreneurial mindset that I did. I want to do great things. I want to work all the time. I enjoy it. Hearing someone very successful say that sparked a fire in me.

At the time, I was struggling with depression. I had been trying to force myself to have just one job—running my martial arts school—but no matter how successful the school was, I was still not satisfied. I was still depressed. I was bored during the day if I didn’t have work to do. By hearing those words from Grant in *Be Obsessed or Be Average*, I realized there was a whole world out there of people like me who like to work, who like to hustle, who don’t want to sit around on a Friday night watching a movie or going to a baseball game. They want to be studying personal development content, working out, growing their business, and talking to customers.

This is a big book that I recommend to a lot of people as their first book because I took so many great nuggets from it. If you want to be above average, you’re not going to achieve that with an average workload or an average mindset. You have to be obsessed with winning, greatness, or whatever you’re shooting for. If you’re obsessed with making a difference, you’re not going to let anything get in your way. But if you have an average mindset, you’re going to let the world shut you down, and you’re going to stop at the first little inconvenience. Those of us who are obsessed are going to move mountains to achieve our goals. Yes, some people will call us crazy, but years later, those people will call us for advice and ask us for autographs.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @matthew_Boyer_offical
• Facebook: Matthew Boyer

Image Credits

Manda Rae photography