I recently sat down with Vlad Strizheus from Vavosa, a Sioux Falls-based agency that manages YouTube ads, to discuss business.
Vlad had a bunch of questions he wanted to ask me, and I figured if he was asking them, there were probably other founders and entrepreneurs wondering about some of the same things. So instead of the typical coffee meeting, we ended up utilizing our new MarketBeat video studio.
We talked about everything from scaling a company past $10 million in revenue and hiring good people to advertising, building wealth, family, and when it actually makes sense to buy a private jet.
It ended up being a pretty wide-ranging conversation, but a few themes kept coming up. Most of them are things I’ve learned through building MarketBeat over the last 15-plus years, usually by doing them wrong at least once.
Here are a few of the lessons that stood out.
Your 20s Are for Trying Things. Your 30s Are for Editing.
Vlad started by asking about something I had posted on X.
In your 20s the right move is to just try it, even if it’s not perfect. The trip, the job, the deal, whatever.
Later, the right move flips. Wait for the exact thing you actually want instead of settling for whatever’s available now.
— Matt Paulson (@MediaKing) July 19, 2026
My advice to people in their 20s is generally to try a lot of things. You probably have fewer commitments than you’ll have later in life. You may not be married yet. You probably don’t have kids. Your parents are still relatively young.
That gives you a window to experiment.
Start a business. Take the weird job. Learn a new skill. Get involved with different organizations. Figure out what you’re good at and, equally important, what you’re not good at.
By your 30s, I think the job starts to change. That’s when you begin editing.
You’ve had enough experience to know that you’re really good at a couple of things and probably mediocre at several others. Start getting rid of the things that aren’t a good use of your time and put more energy into the two or three areas where you can really make a difference.
Now that I’ve hit 40, I think that process gets even more important. I have a pretty good idea of what I want to spend the prime years of my career working on.
The catch is that editing your life takes time. If you made a commitment, you still need to honor it. You shouldn’t quit something tomorrow just because you’ve decided it isn’t part of your long-term plan. Wait for the natural end of the commitment, finish what you said you would do, and then don’t sign up for another round.
That lets you simplify your life without burning relationships along the way.
When Your Business Grows, Your Systems Have to Catch Up
MarketBeat grew very quickly around 2020 and 2021.
Before COVID, we were doing a few million dollars per year in revenue. Then we went from roughly $7 million to $14 million and eventually $25 million.
The business grew faster than some of the systems underneath it.
Our financial processes, for example, were still built for a much smaller company. We eventually hired a CPA as our vice president of finance, cleaned up our financials, had an audit done, and put more professional systems in place.
I think this happens to a lot of growing companies. Something works, revenue takes off, and everyone celebrates for about five minutes. Then you realize the infrastructure supporting the business is two years behind.
There isn’t necessarily a way to prevent all of that. You don’t want to build the accounting department for a $50 million company when you’re doing $2 million in revenue.
You just have to recognize when the business has reached a new level and be willing to upgrade the systems around it.
Scaling Usually Comes From Doing Fewer Things Better
When an agency is getting started, it tends to do everything.
You need revenue, so you take whatever work comes through the door.
Over time, you start figuring out where you actually create the most value. Maybe you don’t do advertising anymore. You do Google Ads. Then maybe you realize you’re especially good at Google Ads for a certain type of company. That narrowing is often what makes scaling possible.
Once you know exactly what you’re good at, the problem becomes much simpler: get more customers who need that thing and get better at delivering it.
Eventually, you can add something new. But I think a lot of companies add the “new” part before they’ve gotten enough out of what’s already working.
I’d Rather Hire Slowly and Get It Right
There’s an old startup saying: hire slow, fire fast.
That’s not really how we operate at MarketBeat. We hire slow and fire slow.
When we know we’re going to need someone, we may spend two or three months just thinking through the position. We’ll take applications for 30 or 60 days, score the resumes, interview five or six people, bring a couple back for second interviews, and have the final candidate meet the team. It can take months, and I’m okay with that.
We’ve also only fired a small number of people over the history of MarketBeat. If someone isn’t doing something correctly, I would rather tell them what needs to change and give them a reasonable opportunity to fix it.
I’m not trying to build a company where people are constantly wondering whether they’ll have a job next month. I want people who will work at MarketBeat for a long time and enjoy working here. Spending more time getting the hiring decision right on the front end has helped us do that.
Eventually, You Have to Trust Your Leaders
MarketBeat has grown to the point where I can’t, and shouldn’t, make every decision.
We have leaders responsible for finance and HR, editorial and content, advertiser relationships, and development.
If our CFO tells me we should switch benefits providers, I’m probably going to tell her to do it. She knows that part of the business better than I do and that’s the point. If somebody has earned a management position at MarketBeat, I trust them to run their area.
That doesn’t mean mistakes won’t happen. Sometimes delegating decisions means someone will make a decision differently than you would have. Occasionally, that costs money, but that’s all part of growing a company.
Once you have 20 or more people, trying to personally control every decision becomes a bigger risk than trusting good people to make some decisions themselves.
Cheap Leads Aren’t Necessarily Good Leads
We spent quite a bit of time talking about advertising because both Vlad and I spend a lot of time thinking about it.
One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is focusing too much on cost per lead. I don’t really care whether a lead costs $1 or $12 by itself. I care about what we paid to acquire a group of customers and how much revenue those customers eventually generate.
At MarketBeat, one of the numbers I watch closely is return on ad spend over time. Generally, I’m looking for roughly a 60-day break-even and about a 3X return after 12 months. There are channels where we pay substantially more for leads but make much more money from them. There are other places where you can buy incredibly cheap leads that never turn into meaningful revenue. I’ll take the expensive profitable lead every time.
Cost per lead, clicks, open rates and conversion rates are useful diagnostic numbers. But ultimately, they’re supporting metrics. The business outcome is what matters.
Protect the Empty Space on Your Calendar
This may be one of the lessons I’m still working on myself.
I have a tendency to load up my calendar and then regret doing it. It’s easy to assume we have more capacity than we actually do. There’s always another meeting, organization, event, investment, project, or opportunity that sounds worthwhile.
But I’ve found that some of the most valuable time I have is when there are three or four hours on my calendar with nothing scheduled. That’s when I can actually think. Those blocks are often when you figure out the next big opportunity in your business or finally solve the problem you’ve been working around for six months.
If every hour of your day is spoken for, you don’t leave much room for that to happen.
I’d Rather Cheat on My Business Than My Family
At this point in my life, MarketBeat is an established business. I’m married, have two kids and a couple of dogs. That changes the calculation around work.
If somebody asks me to attend another business event from 5:00 to 7:00 at night, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to say no. I’d rather cheat on my business than cheat on my family.
I’m going to have a high schooler next year. When you look at the amount of time you actually get with your kids while they’re living at home, it isn’t very much. There will always be another business dinner, but there won’t always be another Tuesday night at home with your kids.
That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about growing MarketBeat. Far from it. It just means that after doing this for a long time, I have a better sense of which things actually need my time and which ones will be perfectly fine without me.
Yes, We Talked About Private Jets
Vlad asked a more entertaining question: When does it make sense to buy a private jet?
The answer has less to do with net worth than you might think. It mostly comes down to how much you fly.
If you’re only flying privately 50 hours per year, a charter company or fractional program probably makes more sense. If you’re flying 100-plus hours, ownership starts becoming more reasonable.
What people don’t always appreciate is that owning an airplane is basically owning another small business. The plane has its own company, accounting, pilots, management, maintenance and operating expenses. A decent starter jet might cost $4 million, require $1 million down, and still leave you eating a couple hundred thousand dollars per year in expenses.
I started chartering private flights when MarketBeat was doing around $2 million in annual revenue. I didn’t buy an airplane until the company was doing around $30 million.
Sometimes paying someone else to deal with the headaches is the better deal.
Keep Doing What Works
If you’re reading this or watched the full video, you’ll see there wasn’t one grand lesson from my conversation with Vlad.
If anything, the recurring theme was pretty simple: as your business and life grow, you have to get more deliberate about where your time, money, and attention go.
Try things early. Narrow your focus as you learn. Build better systems when your company outgrows the old ones. Hire carefully. Trust good people. Measure the outcomes that actually matter. And leave enough room in your life for the people and things that aren’t on your P&L.
I’m still figuring plenty of this out myself.
If you want to hear the full context of the conversation, you can watch the video above this post or click here to visit my YouTube channel, where I plan on posting more context. Feel free to leave a comment on the video and let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to talk about more.