Interview with Matteo Morelli, founder of Mind Titans - Online business and freedom lifestyle

Matteo Morelli is an online entrepreneur and the founder of Mind Titans. He creates online courses around personal development, NLP and hypnotherapy. Through his courses he helps his customers change, break their psychological barriers and improve their lives, improve other people's lives, become better communicators, become more productive, earn more money, ....

In this interview, we chat with Matteo on how he started creating online courses, trying a lot of different strategies, creating his Youtube channel, believing in his business while results were slow to come, finding his niche and his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.

What's special about Mind Titans?

First of all, I structure my training courses so that they help break the psychological barriers and limiting beliefs of my customers. And then, I'm focused on developing the best quality of training programs and use a pedagogy that is simple and practical. And that's what I think is different from others and it's the feedback I usually get from my customers.

Why did you start Mind Titans?

My main motivation to create my online business was to have freedom and be able to travel while sharing my expertise. I've had previous experiences in hypnosis coaching, in Sales and some other stuff but I saw that none of these jobs would give me the kind of freedom I wanted. So, creating online courses was the path that made most sense to me based on the expertise I had acquired at this point.

How did you start it? Did you have any previous experience as an entrepreneur?

After my university studies, I had some different work experiences that were not fulfilling and left me quite depressed. I was 24 at the time.

So, I decided to make a trip to the USA to visit a friend, who was also in the personal development space. The simple fact of being in a new environment and exchanging with my friend made me realize I had some false and limiting beliefs about money. I thought back then that it was hard to make money, making too much money was bad, or you had to do some bad things to make money online, etc. So my friend helped me change my beliefs around money and then I got more interested in online businesses.

But, what really motivated me was meeting a very successful online marketer, Theophile Eliet, who I was following and liked his style. By some incredible luck I had the chance of meeting him and his friends at a bar in Bangkok while I was traveling in Thailand. Seeing what he already had achieved (he had already done more than $2 million sales) and him being born the same year as me got me inspired.

At that time, I had already started a website offering coaching and a product on hypnosis. I got a couple coaching clients but the hypnosis product did not sell - That's what happens when you build something that no one asks for - Then I engaged in some facebook groups about coaching, started blogging, got a few more clients but quickly realized that was not going to produce fast results or be a long term strategy.

So I was looking at some better ways and got to know about Skillshare when I attended a Digital nomad conference in 2019 in Chiangmai. An entrepreneur was speaking about his successful experience on this platform creating a photo course for Instagram and I thought I'd give it a try.

So I created a video course on productivity which I thought was a topic that would be relevant on that platform. I had never done a video course before but I already had experience in public speaking. Nonetheless, it took some time to learn how to be comfortable in front of the camera.

I was very happy creating the course. It got some traction on Skillshare but that was not enough to generate significant revenue. However, I learnt from that experience that I really liked to make videos and the process of editing it.

So I wanted to create more videos and in July 2019 decided to start a Youtube channel. My channel has progressed relatively fast since then but I had to experiment a few different things before finding my niche.

At first I was making general videos about personal development, dating advice, NLP. But I noticed there was one video that got more views than all the rest and it was a video about Richard Bandler on covert hypnosis. I did some more videos about Richard Bandler and decided to very quickly create a course "Hypnotize like Bandler".

Less than 2 weeks after, I got 3 sales in one go. I understood at this moment that there was a market need on this topic. I then rebranded my channel around conversational hypnosis and focused on it. That's when I started to get traction. But in the beginning I had no idea that was what I was going to be focusing on.

How did you validate your idea?

Actually I did not validate my idea. I took the approach of going for it, deciding that it was going to work and doing everything that needed to be done to make it happen.

I had seen an online entrepreneur specialized in dropshipping create an online course (to teach others how to do it) from scratch and generating about $80-100k sales in about 8 months. Seeing the process from A to Z and his results gave me confidence that I could also succeed.

But I must admit that it was hard, a lot mentally also, because it took a while to get significant results.

How did you finance your project?

From my personal savings. And I did a few jobs here and there. I got a few sales from my online courses and coaching along the way but they were not significant enough. So I had to keep pushing through for more than one year until I was able to generate sufficient revenue.

How did you market and promote your business when you were launching? What was the most effective strategy?

Like I said earlier, I tried quite a few things like blogging, posting in forums, Facebook groups, creating a course on Skillshare, ... but creating videos on Youtube has been the most effective strategy for me. Since I've started my Youtube channel I have been posting every week.

How long did it take you to start getting the first results and see you could create a viable business?

I thought it would take 6 months but in the end it took about 1.5 years before I could generate significant recurring revenue.

What has been your business revenue progression?

The first significant step was when I started making 250 $ monthly revenue from my courses after about a year. Then after a few months it grew to around $1000 and now to around $3000 monthly revenue just through organic growth and while actually working less on my business.

What are the main ways in which you are able to monetize your business?

Through selling my online courses.

What are the most useful tools/platforms that you use for your business?

Kooneo is my go to platform for creating my courses. I think it's a great tool, I find it very easy to use, secure and has very affordable rates. Then, Youtube is of course my main platform for marketing my content and building my brand. And, I use Wordpress for my website and Get Response for my emailing campaigns.

What do you like most about being an entrepreneur?

Living the lifestyle I want through my business. Being able to share my expertise online, help people with my courses, have the freedom and ability to travel like a digital nomad.

What has been your biggest challenge/failure as an entrepreneur?

It was keeping the belief and keep producing content for more than one year while I had no results.

It was also getting over my false beliefs about money, fear of losing money... and I think that was more difficult than getting the skills about marketing, creating content.

What are your business goals for this coming year?

My next goal is to grow my business and hit the $10 K monthly profits in passive income. I'm going to keep producing video content and probably also do more blogging. I've done more than 130 videos by now and I want to explore some different ways of creating content.

But aside from the numbers right now, what I'm very proud about my business is the systems and methodology I've put in place and that allow me to be very productive by working only a minimal number of hours per week. I work on average 12 hours per week and I can now create a new high quality course in just 1.5 days.

How can an aspiring entrepreneur start building a business now? What would be a good business type to start as a beginner?

I would say think first and foremost of the kind of lifestyle you want and then look at what kind of business would help you do that. That makes more sense to me than starting a business just because it could be profitable. There's no point in creating a business or choosing a business model that does not make you happy. Your business will be your work and your work will influence your lifestyle. For example, if you like to travel a lot, don't start an onsite coaching business ... because you won't be able to travel much in this case.

And my other advice would be to start something in which you're already good at, have skills or have some natural abilities or some strong eagerness in. This will help you learn and get results faster.

Accept also to adapt, to change if you see what you had initially planned is not working. And keep learning and try to make progress. You will see that things that seem difficult in the beginning will become pretty simple when you've mastered certain skills or made some breakthroughs.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

I use Deep work. Deep work has been a game changer for me and it's principle is quite simple actually.

I work on short periods of time where I'm fully focused and at maximum creativity. I work on an intensive 90 mins block and then I take a 20-30 mins break. After that, I start another cycle of intense work and break. And I keep it to a maximum of 3 blocks per day.

When you are starting as an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to know if you're working enough or not enough since you don't have a boss. The Deepwork technique has allowed me to relieve the pressure or anxiety of asking myself if I was doing enough during the day. And moreover, at this level of focus you cannot do more than 3 cycles a day.

Coffee is also helpful but I don't abuse it.

And, I think it's also important to plan recovery periods like athletes, bodybuilders do. If you're working out hard but don't take time for recovery, that's not going to be very good in the long run.

I've organized myself to work on short but intense periods of time and I find that it has been working really well for me. I just wake up and do what needs to be done. Then after I've done my tasks for the day I can take time to do other activities and relax. And I can start the next day fresh and fully motivated. With this way of working, I can produce easily 3-5 contents per week just working 3-4 hours a day and sometimes only 1,5 hours a day.

What's your favourite business quote?

"You can be right or you can be rich." Accept that you don't know enough to become rich and learn what needs to be done. Creating value, doing sound financial investments, building a business are not things you usually learn at school. That helped me get over my false beliefs on money.

Another one is: "When times are really good it's going to crash at some point and when times are really bad it's going to get better again."

I learnt this concept from the Book Shut up and Listen by Tilman Fertitta. When you accept that, then you don't have fear because you know about the cycles.

Any good book(s) to recommend to an aspiring entrepreneur?

Expert Secrets by Russell Brunson for learning the marketing strategies

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. If you're not into creating big tech startups, then it might not interest you that much. But the principles are useful.

Deep Work by Cal Newman, for productivity

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To learn more about Matteo Morelli and Mind Titans :

www.mindtitans.com

YouTube Mind Titans

Interesting course on NLP Copywriting for entrepreneurs.

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