Matt Warren

Author: Matt

  • Merchant Cash Advance to Annual Interest Calculator

    Merchant Cash Advance to Annual Interest Calculator

    in eCommerce, Merchant Cash Advances are common financial offereings. Both Shopify and Amazon have integrated financial offerings based on your sales data. These offers are often quite appealing: borrow $10,000 and payback $11,000 in 6 months.

    At face value these offers seem like a fair market rate like 10% in that case. However, it’s a bit deceiving.

    If you had instead borrowed with a term loan, then as you pay down the principal of the debt the interest payments come down as well.

    So, borrowing $10,000 at 10% APY, with monthly payments you’d pay back about $10,530. Not $11,000. That’s a big difference!

    Here’s the calculator to find the equivalent APY rate for a merchant cash advance. Use this to more fairly compare the cost of credit and wether or not you’d be better off with credit cards

    MCA to Annual Interest Calculator (Monthly Payments)

    Enter your merchant cash advance details below:







  • Goals and Goal Setting

    Goals and Goal Setting

    I’m one of those people who have stubbornly made new years resolutions for many years. Sometimes they stick and sometimes they don’t.

    What I’ve learned about what works and what doesn’t comes down to these core lessons:

    1. focus on action rather than results
    2. Write it somewhere you will look at regularly – and rewrite the goals often as you break them into monthly, weekly and daily actions
    3. measurable is best

    Lets dig in.

    Action over Results

    I might have in my mind that I want to lose 10lbs this year, but the effective resolution that will help me get there has been to record my weight every day. When recording my weight it keeps things in mind often enough that progress happens by default – because I can take action everytime that my weight unexpectedly goes up.

    Here’s a couple more examples:

    Instead of 500 Youtube followers – goal is to publish at least 1 video a week

    Instead of the goal to build some AI software – it’s to commit code to git everyday.

    The lower the level of action that can be measured the more likely it has been for me to make progress on it.

    Write it Somewhere Obvious

    Goals that disappear behind and app, on a sticky note burried in a pile of paper, or in the middle of a journal will tend to be forgotten within days. You cannot hit a goal that you’ve forgotten about.

    Sometimes even if it’s just on a big billboard right in front of your face all day you can still be blinded by it.

    That’s why I like to re-write the goals often, revisit your goal list at the beginning of every month. Pick the goals that can be broken down into something that can be accomplished for the month and rewrite into a monthly goal, then every day of the month rewrite the goal into the day’s action to take.

    Write it by hand – makes it more real and the tediousness of re-writing adds motivation to get it done.

    Measurable Output

    Something like the goal of 500 YouTube subs isn’t entirely in your control. There’s algorithms, and luck involved in catching the right moment in time with the right video.

    Publishing a weekly video is in your control, it’s a cadence that you set, and hopfully can meet. The quality of that video can be as good as you can make in the time allocated to it, and hopefully with repetition, the quality improves.

    I prefer to have measurable items that are dependant on me and remove uncertainty about the finished result. Writing code vs features delivered, videos published vs subscribers gained, emails sent vs converted sales.

  • Programmatic SEO

    Programmatic SEO

    A couple weeks ago I was inspired to revisit an idea I had launched a business into a decade ago, but failed and shut down. 10 years ago, I built a service called AutomaticBlogMachine, it would deploy wordpress to a new server, set up the theme, install some plugins, and publish content.

    However, 2 major things caused it to fail.

    1. Shortly after launch, Google rolled out a series of updates – Penguin, Panda etc that was able to identify the content as machine generated and ignore these website from any SEO impact with ease.
    2. The natual language approaches available at the time were crud and resulted in low value spam. Basic word swapping, translations and gramatical rewording of existing content. Visitors didn’t like it.

    Today with LLMs it’s possible to create genuinely value-add content automatically that answers people’s questions, links to the appropriate resources and has unique imagery to accompany it. It can be engaging content.

    Researching, generating and publishing content automatically using these new approaches is now possible, and so I’m starting an experiement to see how it works.

    I’d like to see what happens with a website that has 10,000+pages. How fast should this site grow content? and if there is a growth in traffic, can it be sustainable and monetized?

    The bigger idea is to build a system (again) that can be used as a domain parking service. It grows the domain rank over time passively, and ideally generates revenue along the way.

    Register your interest with the form: https://forms.gle/QsgyGMbHDJ87Zmv39

    Join Interest Group
  • Founder Fuel: How do you Manage your Business Finances and Cash Flow?

    Founder Fuel: How do you Manage your Business Finances and Cash Flow?

    Sometimes a business is in growth mode and it makes sense to spend money to buy revenue, other times cashflow is king and the focus is on accounts receivable and payable. This stuff is hard and involves a bunch of things I rarely hear people talk about.

    If you have your fingers into the accounting system like I do there are some tools to help make the bookkeeping just a little less tedious and give you visibility on where the money is coming and going.

    Here’s the current software in my finance stack:

    1. Dext – for automatically parsing invoices and receipts, it categorizes and sends into Quickbooks
    2. Quickbooks Online – love it or hate it, it’s a defacto standard that’s hard to avoid for profit and loss, and balance sheets. and is the double entry accounting final resting place for all numbers.
    3. A2X – tears open the payouts sent from Amazon and Shopify into the more granular transactions that make it up. These import into QBO where it’s then possible to see revenue and payment processing fees, returns and other transactions split out.
    4. custom software – theres a few things that A2X can’t handle and for that we have some custom tools (nice to have a software dev in-house). It can help get COGS numbers across all sales channels, and display nicer reports.
    5. Google Sheets – the most versatile tool for adhoc models, and tracking things. Flexibility and shareability is hard to beat.
    6. Notion – notion is the home of all documented SOPs. These how to guides are incredibly helpful for making sure that recurring tasks are understood and done consistently each time.
    7. Banks with virtual cards – virtual cards make it easier to give employees a card for paying expenses, and lower risk that if one card is compromised, a bunch of things will need to be updated. I’m using Relay in the US and Vault in Canada.

    Is there anything I wish could be done better? Yes. The custom software is kind of a pain, mostly because so many systems it interacts with don’t have APIs and have to use fragile ways to get data.

    And that’s it for this Daily Founder Fuel Journal entry.

  • Founder Fuel: How do you measure the success of your marketing efforts?

    Founder Fuel: How do you measure the success of your marketing efforts?

    At different times in a business success means different things. Sometimes it’s measured in Likes and views, other times in ROAS or ACOS, other times it’s in brand recall. But as with most things in business, if you don’t measure you aren’t in control of it. So KPIs for your marketing efforts is an important aspect of understanding if things are working as intended.

    I have been drawn to sales and direct marketing approaches in the past because the metrics are easy to collect. I think most small companies should start here. The direct testing enables quicker learning which can then form the backbone of a brand. Where as jumping straight into brand marketing usually requires a lot of assumptions.

    With one-on-one sales you get immediate and clear annecdotal feedback about what customers want. Then expand with direct marketing ads to scale those up to 10,000+ people to further refine the messaging and targeting, and test the market further. Finally layering in the branding in a way that applies everything you’ve learned so far.

    Easier said than done. People feel compelled to start with a logo.

    As you get more sophisticated, something I have not yet explored is Marketing Mix Modeling approaches to measure the effectiveness of marketing. With a complex set of marketing channels in which to budget marketing spend this is probably the best way to assess how it all is affecting sales.

    That’s how I think about measuring the success of marketing. This journaling prompt came from Daily Founder Fuel a very short daily newsletter that contains a journaling prompt for founders, entreprenurs and business owners.

  • Founder Fuel: How do you motivate and inspire your team?

    Founder Fuel: How do you motivate and inspire your team?

    Leaders can lead in different ways, but some of the best leaders have been truly inspirational. They may inspire people to invent new things, or produce better work, or just provide enough motivation to put in 5 extra minutes. The Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) can work, but can also backfire if people don’t believe they’re possible.

    It’s been really enlightening to see that clear vision and inspiration can break through walls, but that once those walls are broken others quickly follow behind. This happens in sport – the 4 minute mile – once broken more and more people started to do what was previously thought impossible. It also happens all the time in technology – Landing rockets, now that SpaceX has done it, the Chinese are copying it.

    Inspiration is required to get the first people to unlock these barriers.

    How do I inspire? I hope to inspire by setting a good example. By working hard. By being informed enough to provide good reasons for decisions. But it is hard. Inspiring is not a skill learned in high school, though perhaps inspirational writing should be taught right after persuasive writing.

    I believe that more times than not inspiration comes from good story telling. The story you tell yourself or that you tell others.

    It’s not something that I feel confident I have excelled at in practice. But through writing down these thoughts I have a little bit more clarity on how I might learn and improve.

    For more inspirational journal prompts subscribe to Daily Founder Fuel

  • Founder Fuel: What new markets or customer segments could you explore?

    Founder Fuel: What new markets or customer segments could you explore?

    The best markets and segments to explore are the ones that are adjacent with what you already have. The further you go the more you have to start from the beginning to find the audience and the less overlap you have with your existing marketing assets.

    Much more preferable to push into new markets by expanding at the borders.

    This land and expand type of strategy could be geographic, it could be demographic or it could be interest based.

    Now, the thought of how to be deliberate about this comes to mind. How do you align people and keep the focus on markets and customer segments that can be efficiently won? Tie bonuses to winning certain types of customers over others? Create visualizations of the data?

  • Founder Fuel: What inspired you to start your business?

    Founder Fuel: What inspired you to start your business?

    Inspiration comes from many places. The original inspiration for Psychedelic Water came from a desire to go after what a trend towards the opening up of psychedelics – how can we catch the wave with something in the comercial space. Delving deeper into the research revealed more reasons why there was a need for this product to be on the market.

    Other ideas come from trying to solve problems. How can I solve for cheaper housing? How can I design a more interesting e-bike? How do I apply AI to improve productivity?

    My current insipiration has gotten me to think about a blend of a holding company concept as a way to test out all the backlog of ideas I have. There’s so many things I want to be able to accomplish but not enough time or capital to. So I’m attempting to test the ideas out cheaply and quickly with a build in public approach and should anything prove useful, it can develop further under the umbrella of my company.

    I think at a more fundamental level, I like to start businesses because I’m attracted to uncertainty. Life is more interesting when you are dealing with a level of not knowing everything. There’s always more to learn, always new situations and people to interact with. Ideas are everywhere and it’s just too compelling to not explore them.

  • Starting Daily Founder Fuel

    Starting Daily Founder Fuel

    This past week, I had an idea for an app. This idea came from an impulse to jot down some thoughts about my business challenges and how they needed to be written out, journaled, thought through, and developed further. I wanted to incorporate this into a daily practice, recognizing the value of writing. Everyone knows that through writing, ideas become more concrete, real, and memorable, as well as easier to share. So, writing was on my mind as I considered how to approach this.

    I also wanted to maintain a balanced approach to my thought process. Some days are for strategic thinking, others for sales processes, numbers, finance, long-term growth, or professional development. As a founder or entrepreneur, it’s crucial not to fall into old patterns of focusing only on preferred areas but to address all necessary aspects that might otherwise be neglected. Having a structured approach ensures a balanced distribution of thoughts and developing ideas, preventing a single-minded focus and fostering a holistic view of the business.

    I began searching for journaling apps tailored to entrepreneurs, addressing their specific concerns and questions to improve their business and life. Most journals available are generic, catering to a wide audience with personal goals and life thoughts. I wanted something more specific to business ideas. While I enjoy writing on paper, a physical book can be easily forgotten. To counter this, I decided to create an email newsletter that would appear daily, ensuring it remains visible and part of my routine. This way, it consistently prompts daily reflection without being easily hidden or forgotten.

    After collecting journaling prompt ideas and quotes, I realized many turned into homework-like tasks, which, while interesting and fun, also served as valuable exercises. Questions about handling team conflicts, delegation, sales tactics, personal skill development, team motivation, and defining unique sales propositions kept me engaged. These prompts helped test my clarity of thought and understanding of various business aspects, ensuring I stayed sharp and well-rounded in my approach.

    Seeing a need for such a resource, I launched a website, dailyfounderfuel.com, and created a newsletter signup so everyone could try it. I populated it with prompts scheduled out for the next several months. This experiment required minimal effort and low cost—around $40 initially and $10 monthly for email service, domain, and hosting. This small investment sets up an ongoing experiment to see if there’s interest in such a resource. If successful, I’ll have a valuable list of entrepreneurs and founders. If not, it’s a learning exercise. Either way, it’s a worthwhile endeavor. If this sounds interesting, check out dailyfounderfuel.com and sign up.

  • Copy My AI Assisted Content Strategy

    Copy My AI Assisted Content Strategy

    Getting and growing attention is the core of any marketing strategy. But standing out is harder than ever when everyone is equipped with high quality cameras, microphones and great software.

    Today I’m going to tell you about how I’m leveraging AI to accelerate the production of short form video content that I’m cross posting to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

    When thinking about producing short-form video here’s what I consider important:

    Develop a format and style that can repeat. This reduces the amount of decisions that need to be made and streamlines the production. It also makes the videos more binge-worthy, since people who like one will be highly likely to enjoy the other videos.

    The structure should have a strong hook – most videos on these platforms have 1 second to grab your attention. If you manage to keep 50% of people past the 3rd second you’re doing well.

    Make the content valuable – entertainment value or educational value. High value content is more likely to get shared

    Don’t spend too much time/money on producing a short video. These things have a short life-span. Going super viral is a lot of luck so embrace “internet ugly”.

    Always be testing – use the short lifespan to your advantage – re-edit and re-post often. Remember, 90% of people who saw the video, didn’t watch the whole thing, the remaining 10% will have forgotten about it by next week.

    So, here’s a strategy I’ve started to use to develop a personal brand presence. I developed a structure for the videos that include (in my case) 5 stages:

    Opening/hook

    Conflict

    Escalation

    Resolution or cliffhanger

    Closing

    Then I add some additional constraints:

    Must be easily recorded with just myself and a phone camera

    very few if any props or setting changes

    no special effects required

    With the help of ChatGPT, I asked for help developing the first 10 video ideas that can fit this criteria and BOOM! There’s a list of concepts.

    Just a little bit of workshopping these ideas to turn them into short 8-10 line scripts.

    In my case I decided to have an AI character in my scripts. This adds to the complexity of editing. But it’s kind of fun, so here’s what I did for that:

    Use the voices from elevenlabs.io to generate the audio files. Interesting note here – The speech-to-speech AI option can match the tone and cadence but with another character’s voice – which helps with telling jokes.

    Used CapCut video editor – this is significantly easier to use than Adobe’s professional tools. It layers in the video with the extra audio track. A short video can be edited in less than 10 minutes.

    Take advantage of automated AI caption generation – they’re usually 95% correct and the timing is aligned for you. People often watch with the sound off – so captions are important.

    SEO is a part of the process with publishing videos. I use ChatGPT to help write a video title and description that matches the video and provides enough textual content for indexing the video.

    Putting this together and a bit of practice it’s possible to script, record, edit and publish a decent short video in as little as 15 minutes.

    If you want to see some of the results – subscribe to my YouTube channel

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