During the last week of October in 2013, I was lost at sea, floating off the coast of Los Angeles on a friend’s 46' Beneteau with my Young, Rich, and Homeless friends. You know the type. Our boat wasn’t broken, but my mind was…

A week earlier, we’d set sail out of San Francisco, sailed around the treacherous waters of Point Conception, and into Santa Barbara on the B.O.H.I.C.A. (which is an acronym for Bend Over Here It Comes Again). We ate uni and drank beers. We were all high on life.

A few days later, we arrived in Marina Del Ray, I checked my P.O Box in Venice, and “found” the infamous Banksy Letter (that I sent to myself as part of an social experiment I will expound upon in my forthcoming book War&Porn </end plug>). A lot of gullible people on the Internet thought it was real. It is safe to say that day I won the Internet. But, I was still feeling lost...

After too much sun on the open sea, 6 months living and breathing the Young, Rich, and Homeless lifestyle, and way too much time inside my own head, I decided I needed something to change.

I needed my own bed. I needed a routine. I needed a local coffee shop, a commute, an office, and some coworkers. I needed something to focus on. I needed simplicity. Traveling and writing a book became incredibly frustrating when I realized it was just my way of procrastinating. The idea of writing about my life experiences was cathartic at first. But I was going insane…

I guess this is a good time to tell the world that the company I started in 2011, AlphaBoost, ya, the one I was going to build, flip, and make millions from, ya, it sunk like a rock. It’s over. Dead in the water. Finito. #fail

The AlphaBoost failure story goes something like this: after that fuck-face Jesse Thomas showed the whole world what a douche he is and why no one should ever trust him, someone on my advisory board leaked an email to Sam Biddle at Gawker and Nitasha Tiku at BetaBeat. Sam and Nitasha then did their job of being scummy reporters so well that my team lost hope, acquirers and investors smelled the blood, and I got lowballed into depression.

In July, I negotiated an asset purchase agreement! Hooray!! Not! That deal was blocked by one particularly special person, so, I quit. I gave up, but I wasn’t able to move on.

I had to keep the business open through the end of 2013 to collect on outstanding accounts receivables. I got to relive my failure everyday for a year… Now, I’m finally filing taxes, closing the bank accounts, giving all unsecured lenders their pro-rata share of the cash back, and moving on. Lesson learned. Startups fail. I failed. Life goes on. Finally, I am starting to see that more clearly.

After I disembarked from the B.O.H.I.C.A., I called up my friends at Science-Inc and asked if they needed any help. And they did. They hired me as VP of Social Marketing because I have a particularly special set of skills. I can growth hack any platform to get attention and drive revenue.

For example, I was one of the most view SlideShare contributors in 2013. I land on the front page of Medium with every post. Companies relied on me to get silly apps to the top of the app store. I’ve made a few highly profitable fan pages on Facebook selling [redacted]. I drove millions of YouTube views for a very famous musician you might have heard of called [redacted]. And, my proudest hack… I used Tinder’s linking feature to get a bunch of perverted dudes to follow a fake girl I created on Instagram. Now, I sell those guys dick pills and dating advice one Instagram photo at a time. If you follow [redacted] on Instagram — you are a sicko.

Now, after 3 months of working my ass off (that is a long time for me), I have identified a new opportunity. It is growth marketing as a service. Ryan Holiday wrote a book about it. Silicon Valley made it a buzz word. But still, it is something not a lot of people know how to do. Even super sophisticated technologist have a hard time finding themselves at the intersection of analytics, psychology, and creativity — my sweet spot. A spot that most smart people can get to with the right coaching, frameworks, work ethic, and mindset.

Here are the facts: New businesses are getting funded everyday. Brick and mortar businesses are desperately trying to figure out the Internets. Growth is a key performance indicator for almost every business. And, it is highly unlikely that technology will ever fully automate growth marketing thinking in the dynamic world of emerging social channels.

I think my next million dollars of income is going to come from building an agency and developing content to help other people’s businesses grow.

In the last month, I’ve hired and trained a team of creative and analytical account managers and media buyers, built out standard operating procedures to make growth marketing scalable, and packaged a deal that is economically viable for almost any business looking to grow online. As a result, this new faceless business has grown to 6-figure revenue, is cash flow positive, has a great team, and has serviced dozens of clients. BOOM! Matty Mo does it again.

Over the next few weeks, I am working on building branding and positioning to help grow my growth marketing business. Meta, I know…

That means I will be posting more content on SlideShare, teaching more classes at online schools like General Assembly, hiring some commission based sellers to identify new customer segments, and expanding our offering past Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to other emerging channels.

I’ll try to write a followup post to let you know how it is going. But for now, that is my plan. If you have any interest in learning more, joining me, becoming a customer, or just want to talk about the weather, email me: hello@warandporn.com