Who is
Matthew
Pollard?

Matthew Pollard is an internationally-recognized consultant, speaker, blogger, author, mentor, coach, and serial entrepreneur with five multi-million dollar business success stories under his belt, all before the age of 30. He is the founder and CEO of Rapid Growth, LLC, dedicated to achieving maximum ROI for businesses of all sizes. Though his client list includes multiple Fortune 500 companies, his real passion is helping small business owners end the overwhelm, eliminate the stress and guesswork, and get on a clear path to Rapid Growth. Called “the real deal” by Forbes, his methods have transformed over 3500 businesses to date.

Matthew holds a CSP, the highest level of certification awarded by the National Speakers Association (NSA). He has spoken to rave reviews around the world, from multi-national corporations to small business associations, on the topics of accelerated business growth, sales systemization, networking strategies, the true power of introverts, and more. Legendary speaker and former NSA president Jim Cathcart calls Matthew’s delivery “powerful,” and recommends “you get into his audience as soon as you can.” 

Matthew was born in a small blue-collar town in Australia called Craigieburn, to a family of miners, sheep shearers, factory workers, seamstresses, and secretaries. Honest and capable trade work ran deep through the generations, instilling in Matthew a strong work ethic and a respect for the hard yards.

This commitment to a job well done, combined with his father’s favorite saying, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” set the stage for Matthew’s entire life. Things did not come easily for him, but he made his success possible by charging on, creating inventive solutions to problems, and never giving up.

A lifelong visual processing disorder, misdiagnosed until his teenage years, left him with the reading speed of a sixth grader; school was a nonstop struggle requiring hours of daily work just to remain on equal footing with the peers who seemed to sail by. But like all challenges we overcome, there are benefits on the other side. He taught himself shortcuts to get through school, with the ultimate result being an overall ability to think beyond the established, standard ways of doing things.

This resourceful thinking would come in handy just a few short months after graduating high school. Uncertain what he wanted to do with his life, and exhausted from the effort of finishing school, Matthew decided to postpone university, and instead ended up at the only job he could find: commission-only door to door sales. Not only did Matthew struggle to read the product and training material, but a case of chronic acne and crippling introversion left him feeling uncomfortable with his people skills. While this job was the stuff of nightmares, there was literally no other choice.

So how did he end up going from 92 rejections on day one to being the #1 salesperson at the company (the largest sales firm in the Southern hemisphere) within just six weeks?

Just as he had through school, he created systems that worked. He watched hours of YouTube videos every day, learned the elements of a successful sale, refined the techniques, created a few of his own, put them in a step-by-step order, and practiced, practiced, practiced. Within five months, he was the company’s youngest-ever State Manager, overseeing 15 salespeople and training them all on his system. Just four months later, he had that small state of South Australia out-performing the largest markets in the country. He was soon promoted to State Manager of the Melbourne head office, where he introduced his training to all offices across the country.

In 2014, Matthew moved to Austin, Texas, to start his new coaching and consulting business. Why Austin? Well, luck had a lot to do with it. His first visit happened to coincide with SXSW, and he instantly fell in love. The live music, the energy, the creativity in the air—it was intoxicating. But what really captured his heart was the small business community. Unlike anything he’d seen before, Austin’s business owners didn’t compete—they lifted each other up, shared resources, and genuinely celebrated one another’s wins. Perhaps this spirit was born from the city’s collaborative music scene; whatever the reason, Matthew immediately recognized its magic. He later wrote about it in Fortune Magazine, in an article titled “Why Austin Is the Rockstar of Small-Business Cities.”

It wasn’t long before Matthew had his first series of clients. And after seeing the rapid growth results he was helping them achieve, he knew he had a formula that made a real and lasting difference. That’s when he made the decision: If he wanted to have a greater impact, he’d need to take his coaching online.

The only problem? He didn’t know a thing about websites. In his previous businesses, he’d call the developer if he needed to change a single word in the website copy. Now he was attempting to build an entire site, market it, and turn it into a scalable business. He didn’t want to rely on the expertise of others for all these elements; he wanted to understand it for himself and stay in the driver’s seat the whole way.

Just as he’d taught himself how to differentiate, find a niche market, and create an effective sales system, Matthew learned how to build a simple website. He wrote a few blog posts, launched a podcast, created email campaigns, and developed a social media strategy. Within six months, he’d built a six-figure consulting business, was listed in the Evan Carmichael report as one of the most-retweeted business coaches on Twitter, and had become an award-winning sales blogger.

More importantly, he was making a difference in the lives of the people he loved to help most of all: small business owners. He’d discovered that his unique processes, which he now calls his Rapid Growth System, not only worked to catapult his own businesses into Rapid Growth, but also worked for service provider businesses of every kind – commercial real-estate brokers, coaches, lawyers, writers, cloud consulting, videographers, professional speakers, florists, you name it. And the online systems he’d created for marketing and social media were working for them too.

Matthew had found his true purpose. For the first time, he didn’t get bored in his work. He didn’t look around for the next exciting thing. This was it: helping others achieve Rapid Growth.