Default Profitable

Matt Nettleton
  • 5.0 (13)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner looking to sharpen your skills and grow your business? The Default Profitable podcast delivers powerful lessons from real bootstrapped business owners who have navigated the ups and downs of starting, running, and scaling their ventures. Join Matt Nettleton and tap into a wealth of knowledge and firsthand experiences, learn to avoid common pitfalls, and stay ahead of industry trends. Whether you’re launching your first venture or optimizing an established one, each episode provides actionable insights and fosters a community of support, helping you achieve sustained, profitable success.

  1. 5d ago

    Ep195 The Market Will Fix You: Ian Illig, Co-Founder of Stompbox

    Ian Illig’s first job out of college was a choice between a bank and a startup with no customers and no finished product. He picked the startup, joined as the first employee, and since he couldn’t code, his job became sales. In this episode of the Default Profitable podcast, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Ian Illig, co-founder of Stompbox, an Indianapolis sales consultancy that scales founders out of sales. For about a decade Ian was the first non-founding salesperson at early-stage companies, taking the baton from the founder and figuring out how to sell without them in every meeting. He kept watching founders hit the scale button, hire a salesperson, and lose all their momentum. So he and his partner started Stompbox to shorten that learning curve for other companies. Outside of work, Ian plays guitar and sings in the band GREGØRIAN, which he calls his anti-revenue-generating machine, and he has a baby on the way. Ian and Matt get into the stuff nobody warns you about when you start, like accounting, payroll, and categorizing transactions. They also cover why a founder’s title, credibility, and magnetism are cheat codes a new salesperson doesn’t get, and why buyers want the painkiller, not the vitamin. Ian learned that last one the hard way: his best client isn’t the founder who hasn’t tried a sales hire yet, it’s the one who’s tried and failed a few times. Matt runs his usual three questions, and Ian claims one, six months of savings, then admits he never actually checked. His advice for day one goes further than sending the email: make a list of thirty people, call them, and find your own way of asking for help. Matt’s version is shorter. Start selling. The market will fix you. Learn more about Ian Illig and Stompbox at https://stompbox.io/. Listen to more Indianapolis Business Leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com or subscribe to Default Profitable on your favorite podcast platform.

  2. Oct 6

    Ep194 What You Say No To: Jireh Gibson, Founder of Skyscraper Digital Marketing

    Jireh Gibson's first pitch was "I do marketing." People changed the subject as fast as they could. In this episode of the Default Profitable podcast, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Jireh Gibson, founder of Skyscraper Digital Marketing, a Fort Wayne agency that works on brand visibility for local service businesses doing one to ten million a year. Jireh has a master's in marketing and years in sales and customer service, and his last job was consulting for a full-service marketing agency. That ended in 2022 over unmet expectations on pay. What followed was two years of interviews, freelance work, and "we picked someone else," until he got fed up and opened his own shop in December 2024. He's married sixteen years, part of a blended family with seven adult kids and a pile of grandkids, and he says he wouldn't trade the daily hustle for anything he's seen on the other side. Learn more about Jireh Gibson and Skyscraper Digital Marketing at https://www.skyscraperdigitalmarketing.com/. Listen to more Indianapolis Business Leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com or subscribe to Default Profitable on your favorite podcast platform.

  3. Sep 29

    Ep193 Calvin Ellison, President of The Executive Impact Group: The Paper Doesn't Lie

    Calvin Ellison figured going independent would be a slam dunk. Six months in, he was calling his dad to borrow money. In this episode of the Default Profitable podcast, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Calvin Ellison, president of The Executive Impact Group, an Indianapolis executive coaching business built around peer groups, where CEOs and senior leaders meet on a regular basis and use each other as an advisory board. Calvin grew up in California, went to UC Davis, and worked his way east through Philly and Detroit before landing in Indy, with three Fortune 500 companies on the resume along the way. The last one was Xerox, where he taught sales training, and when he left in 1993 the business started as exactly that. Around 1999 it shifted to management development, and it's been leadership work ever since. He and Matt have known each other for twenty-some years, so this one has war stories in it. Wife, four kids, grandkids. Pretty busy. Matt usually asks every guest the same three questions. This time he skips them, because Calvin has spent close to thirty years inside other people's businesses and Matt wants what he's seen. Start with who belongs in a peer group. Not every CEO does. The ones who fit are green and growing no matter how long they've had the seat, and they've got the courage to hear feedback they'll never get inside their own company. Why they don't get it: a business starts with friends and family, then fills up with strangers who have a paycheck to protect, so problems go to a buddy instead of the boss and the leader ends up the last person to know how bad things are. It's worse in a second or third generation business, where the employees are still loyal to the founder and the new leader is building trust from scratch. Calvin's advice there is go slow to go fast. He tells the story of a next-generation leader whose rapid changes set off rumors that the company was about to sell, and how the group got him to hit pause and start over with the why instead of the what. Buy-in isn't a features-and-benefits pitch. It's modeling the way, saying it consistently, and saying it again after you're sure you already said it, until behavior changes. Calvin left corporate for freedom, not money, and says the first thing nobody tells you is that it's harder than it looks: the umbrella is gone, and revenue, the P&L, taxes, and your own sanity are all yours now. Ask what he'd tell himself the night before going out on his own and he's got it. Document the plan, put it away, come back and edit it. Everything sounds great in your head. Like game film the day after a win, the paper doesn't lie. Learn more about Calvin Ellison and The Executive Impact Group at https://eigcentral.com/. Listen to more Indianapolis Business Leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com or subscribe to Default Profitable on your favorite podcast platform.

  4. Sep 15

    Ep192 The Layoff He Prayed For: George Powell Jr., Founder and CEO of Exponential Equity Group

    George Powell hated his name until he looked it up. It means "farmer," and today he's planting affordable housing across Indiana. In this episode of Default Profitable, host Matt Nettleton talks with George Powell Jr., founder and CEO of Exponential Equity Group. It's a faith-driven Indianapolis real estate development firm that builds affordable housing alongside churches, nonprofits, CDCs and grassroots groups that have land and a vision but lack the capital or capacity to develop it. In this episode: 🏝️ Years at RCI in the vacation industry, and sensing a shift was coming 🏠 How his dad planted real estate in him early 📉 Founding the company in 2020 to fix a family portfolio in distress, and what happened when Dad wasn't ready for the fix 🧭 Asking "What lane am I supposed to be in?" and finding the answer through mentors in community development 🏗️ Growing from single-family investments to an affordable housing project in Anderson to multifamily 🙏 The building where he took lunch walks and dreamed up the company is now being torn down 🔗 Learn more about George Powell Jr. and Exponential Equity Group: https://www.exponentialequitygroup.com/ 🎧 Hear more Indianapolis business leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com, or subscribe to Default Profitable wherever you get your podcasts. #DefaultProfitable #AffordableHousing #IndianapolisBusiness

  5. Sep 8

    Ep191 Seventy-Six Simple Steps to Running A Service Business: Katie Smith of All Pro Heating, Air & Plumbing

    Her team named her "Bosslady," and she kept it. In this episode of Default Profitable, host Matt Nettleton talks with Katie Smith, co-founder of All Pro Heating, Air & Plumbing. It's the Indianapolis HVAC and plumbing company she and her husband started at their kitchen table in 2012. In this episode: 🏠 Direct sales, legal services and a general contracting company they closed on their attorney's advice, all before All Pro 🛋️ The decision on a sofa that started it all (nobody has a passion for crawl spaces in July) 🔧 Running punch-list work, HVAC and plumbing at once, and learning they're three separate businesses with three kinds of people ❄️ Focusing on HVAC for more than a decade before adding plumbing back in the last two years 📋 A Miami convention that forced the question: scale it or get out 🔢 She thought a service call had 13 steps. She mapped it, and it has 76. Her leadership team guessed 5. 📈 Firing her first employee after two weeks, and why growing and scaling are different problems 💡 Her advice the night before going full time: document your processes, then do the market research she skipped 🔗 Learn more about Katie Smith and All Pro Heating, Air & Plumbing: https://callallproindy.com/ 🎧 Hear more Indianapolis business leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com, or subscribe to Default Profitable wherever you get your podcasts. #DefaultProfitable #HVAC #IndianapolisBusiness

  6. Sep 1

    Ep190 Larry Lannan, Founder of LarryInFishers.com: Fourteen Years Free, Then a Business

    What do you do when the news business is dying and you've just retired? Larry Lannan started covering it himself. In this episode of the Default Profitable podcast, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Larry Lannan, founder of LarryInFishers.com, a local news website and podcast covering Fishers, Indiana. Larry moved to Fishers in 1991, when about 9,000 people lived there. After more than a decade as a journalist and broadcaster and 28 years with the federal government, he retired and launched the site in January 2012 as a volunteer effort: concise summaries of the government meetings busy people can't attend. His first big story was the 2012 vote that turned the town of Fishers into a city. Today Fishers is past 100,000 people, and for a little less than a year Larry has been running the site as a business. Learn more about Larry Lannan at https://larryinfishers.com/. Listen to more Indianapolis Business Leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com or subscribe to Default Profitable on your favorite podcast platform.

  7. Aug 25

    Ep189 Amanda Hill of Connections of Hope: The Founder Who Actually Had a Plan

    Amanda Hill started her business because her therapist told her to. In this episode of the Default Profitable podcast, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Amanda Hill, founder of Connections of Hope, a private counseling practice she launched in 2020 and has grown to five locations and 14 therapists. She'd been a counselor for 20 years and was working four jobs, teaching college on top of multiple counseling agencies, when her own therapist, a private practice owner, told her she couldn't keep going the way she was going. Amanda ran with it. What she didn't see coming was how much she'd like the business side. Six years in, she says she enjoys building the company about as much as she enjoys the counseling itself. The reason she keeps opening locations is simple: people who need a therapist end up on waiting lists, and every new office is a way around that. Learn more about Amanda Hill and Connections of Hope at https://connectionsofhope.com/. Listen to more Indianapolis Business Leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com or subscribe to Default Profitable on your favorite podcast platform.

  8. Aug 4

    Ep188 Nobody Gets Into Insurance on Purpose: Jenna Romens, Owner of Martin & Martin Insurance

    In this episode of Default Profitable, host Matt Nettleton sits down with Jenna Romens, owner and agent at Martin & Martin Insurance in downtown Noblesville. Jenna spent 16 years at Erie Insurance, moving through customer service, marketing, and agent roles before being promoted to district sales manager over agents across Hamilton, Marion, and Tipton counties. Then one of the agents she supported asked her to come to the agency side as part of a perpetuation plan. It took three asks before she and her husband Andy sat down and weighed the company car, the health insurance, and the steady paycheck against the chance to own something. Nine years of working side by side with the owners later, they retired, and last July she took over an agency that had been in business 37 years. The insurance part she had down. What she didn't expect was everything else: payroll, the bills, hiring decisions, and a line of people asking her to sponsor things she now had to fit inside a marketing budget. The thing she got right early was the team. Before the purchase closed, she and Andy sat down with every employee to make sure they were on board and staying, then found ways to pay them better once they owned it. Matt runs his usual question about whether there was an actual business plan, and this time the answer is yes. Jenna and Matt also get into why the agency competes on coverage instead of price, what she tells people thinking about leaving a steady paycheck to run their own shop, and the one thing she'd tell herself on day one as an owner. Learn more about Jenna Romens and Martin & Martin Insurance at https://martinandmartin.biz. Listen to more Indianapolis Business Leaders at https://defaultprofitable.com or subscribe to Default Profitable on your favorite podcast platform.

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5
out of 5
13 Ratings

About

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner looking to sharpen your skills and grow your business? The Default Profitable podcast delivers powerful lessons from real bootstrapped business owners who have navigated the ups and downs of starting, running, and scaling their ventures. Join Matt Nettleton and tap into a wealth of knowledge and firsthand experiences, learn to avoid common pitfalls, and stay ahead of industry trends. Whether you’re launching your first venture or optimizing an established one, each episode provides actionable insights and fosters a community of support, helping you achieve sustained, profitable success.

Information

  • Creator
    Matt Nettleton
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    208
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 All Rights Reserved
  • Show Website
    Default Profitable