Who is Matt Conner?
This is a blog about the many pursuits of Matt Conner. As the header tag line says, Matt will be blogging about “life, liberty and the pursuits of an entrepreneur”. Look for interesting things happening in Matt’s life with an emphasis on his entrepreneurial pursuits!
Matt’s Story
I was born in Castro Valley, CA and spent the first 18 years of my life through the end of high school in the Bay Area. I then attended the University of California at
San Diego (UCSD) using an NROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corp) scholarship and majoring in Political Science.
In 1995, I graduated from UCSD and was commissioned as an Ensign in the United States Navy. Having been accepted into the Navy’s pilot flight training program I moved to Pensacola, FL in the sum
mer of 1995 to begin my naval career and pursue my lifelong dream of flying in the Navy.
In 1997, I received my Naval Aviator wings of gold and was selected to fly helicopters on the West Coast at San Diego, CA. After some advanced training learning how to fly and operate the Sikorsky SH-60F/HH-60H I was assigned to my first operational squadron, HS-6 (Helantisubron Six). While at HS-6, I did two deployments with Carrier Air Wing 11 (CVW-11) on the USS CARL VINSON (CVN-72) in support of Operation Southern Watch and Operation Enduring Freedom.
In 2001, I married my beautiful wife Cheri while she was still attending medical school at the University of Washington. She graduated medical school in 2002 and matched for
an anesthesia residency at UCSD so at last we were able to live in the same house and city.
In 2004, I left active duty in the Navy and became a resrve instructor pilot at HSC-3 SAU (HelicopterSeaCombat Squadron Three-Squadron Augment Unit) flying the new Sikorsky MH-60S (Knighthawk). After almost two years at that squadron, I transferred over to HSC-85.
In 2005, my son Griffin was born.
In October of 2006, I moved my family from the sunny skies of San Diego, California to the big sky of Bozeman, Montana, my wife’s hometown. Cheri had just graduated from her anesthesia residency at UCSD had always dreamed of returning to her home town, and when a job opened up with the anesthesia group in Bozeman we took the opportunity. I continued at HSC-85 as a reserve pilot making the trip down to San Diego once a month to fly and participate in reserve duties.
In 2007, my daughter Caleigh was born.
When we moved to Bozeman, I began work as a stay at home dad and a DoD (Department of Defense) consultant in addition to my job a Navy reserve pilot. I was working very hard without much income to show for it.
In 2008 I decided I was working too hard and gone from my family too much to justify continuing what I was doing. I left the active Navy reserve in October 2008 and I started looking for something else I could do part time while still taking care of our two children, ages three and one.
I knew getting another conventional job was not going help our financial situation long term as we have always sought the path to achieve financial freedom. Several years prior to this I had read Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and since then had tried to grow my financial literacy and knew ultimately that I wanted to be start making some passive income through real estate, business and investing. I first began looking for opportunities to own a 
business where I could use the cash flow from my business to buy the assets necessary for us to achieve the goal of financial freedom.
I looked at buying an established business and I looked at buying a franchised business. I also looked at starting my own conventional business, but I soon came to realize that it took massive amounts of capital to do any of these things. Worse yet, the chances that a business of this type failing within a couple years was astronomically high, and that wasn’t a risk I was willing to take. Besides all this, the other major drawback for me to start or buy a business like this was the inherent time commitment it would take to succeed. I had left the Navy because I was tired of the separation from my family, and I knew a new start-up business would mean even more separation from them.
In November 2008, an ex-Navy squadron mate of mine, Mark Archer, introduced me to a totally different business concept. It was a business concept where one can be a true business owner yet have the flexibility to work wherever, however and as much or as little time as they want. This sounded like exactly what I was looking for, but when I found out the business concept he was talking about was in the network marketing industry I put on the brakes and became very skeptical.
I had experienced network or multi-level marketing before in the mid-1990’s when I joined a company at the bequest of a good friend of mine. Just two months after I joined, the company went bankrupt and I had lost the several hundred dollars I had invested. I then swore off network marketing forever.
Fortunately, my friend Mark helped me get over that bad experience by also sending me another Robert Kiyosaki book, “The Business School For People Who Like Helping People”. As it turns out Robert Kiyosaki wholeheartedly endorses the network marketing industry and actually recommends that people start a netw
ork marketing business as a way to make their first transition from lifelong employee to first time business owner. He goes on in his book to say that he recommends building a network marketing business because it is very inexpensive to start one, the training received is superb, and the business model itself is built around incredible leverage.
Once I was convinced that network marketing was indeed legitimate and something I could do, there was no stopping me from joining Mark as a partner in his company. Of course, along with anything else in business, due diligence must be done on any business opportunity you are contemplating. If I had done due dlligence before my first experience with network marketing in the mid-1990s I probably would have never joined that company that went bankrupt two months later.
After I had done my due diligence I was convinced that this was a legitimate, financially secure company that had positioned themselves for the long term, I became a business owner and part of Mark’s team.
I was now a business owner! And a very excited one at that.
My background and training up to this point had not really prepared me to be a business owner so now it was time to buckle down and learn about business and what it would take to be successful.
I quickly found out through my training and research as well as from Mark himself that the world of network marketing has changed quite a bit since the mid-1990s. The old methods of making a warm market list, and then chasing down every family member and friend you know to join you in your business was not the mos
t efficient way to grow your business any longer. The most efficient way to run your business these days is through the use of the internet. The internet has opened up worlds of possibility to change the way that things have been done since the beginning of the network marketing industry 30-40 years ago. No longer do you have to chase down friends and family to join you, but now you can actually have people calling you and chasing you down wanting to join you in your business through the use of the internet. It is a paradigm shift for most network marketers to think in these terms, but it is by far the most effective and efficient way to market in this day and age.
As I continue to grow my business through the use of the internet and reach new pinnacles of success from it, I invite you to come along for the ride as I document this journey.
Matt Conner
April 2009
