Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.115 | The Matt Masur Interview

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

The Journey of Growth Mode Technologies: From Freelancer to Team Builder In this episode, the founder of Growth Mode Technologies discusses his career journey from starting as a freelancer in IT to founding his own company during the pandemic. He explains the inspiration behind launching Growth Mode Technologies, the challenges faced, the philosophy of providing comprehensive IT services for a flat fee, and the importance of treating employees well. Additionally, he touches on the recent expansion into content creation and the future growth prospects in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. 00:00 Introduction and Early Career 01:16 Entrepreneurial Journey Begins 02:01 Inspiration and Influences 03:34 Founding Growth Mode Technologies 04:56 Growth Mode Technologies' Unique Approach 09:20 Growth Mode Content: Expanding Horizons 12:58 Building and Sustaining the Business 18:27 Balancing Personal Life and Entrepreneurship 24:15 Future Vision and Closing Thoughts

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Newman and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises L' Week Bali to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been sailing there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts to hear about river cruising and Unirond's 50th anniversary summer specials. Awesome. All right. Ashley, dig in. Okay. So before founding Grove Lake to Grove Mold's Ignat.

What does your career path look like? I've been in IT since probably before it was called IT. I started when I was 14 at a local computer store and just kind of was in that field ever since. And leading up to this, the majority of my experience was either a freelancer. It was kind of a one-man show doing a lot of things. or at different points in my career. I worked in IT leadership in different places, in schools and in government in a few different places.

But basically during the pandemic, I decided it was time to try to do something that was bigger than I could do as a one-person operation, try to build something with a team and really try to create some good jobs and do some good stuff. And that's where growth more tech came from and how we got here. Okay.

Awesome. Was entrepreneurship always a part of your plan or did it happen kind of unexpectedly? I don't know that I ever really thought about it that way, but yeah, I would say, I mean, I started my first company when I was 18. So I think it's fair to say that that was sort of part of my plan. Like I said, I don't know that I ever called it that maybe until recently. But yeah, I started my first job at a local computer store started with a guy who, built that business and that really inspired me and taught me so many things that I still stick to today and that's probably like I said the inspiration for that and just the way I saw the only way to do it. Okay. And growing up, you just kind of mentioned that, but growing up where there are people like family members, mentors, business figures who shaped your mindset or approach to work? Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, my first boss, his name is Joe. probably taught me more about the professional world than anything else.

But even before that, when I was a little kid, my parents bought a home computer when I was five years old, which at the time in 1985 was not super common yet. I'm like those old people. We were the first to have a color TV. We were the first to have a home computer on the block. And that sort of definitely helped set my nerdy peasant. from that stage forward.

Understandable. Was there a moment or experience in your life that made you realize you wanted to build something of your own? Yeah, I mean lots, right? First and foremost, I'm probably not a great employee. I don't necessarily work well for other people, depending on the people, but in general. And I think that's one of the biggest things

that is the inspiration. but also you look around and you see that the only way to really achieve the things that you want is to do it yourself. And that's how I've come to be here out of pure necessity. Yeah. What inspired the launch of Girlful Technologies and how did the idea first take shape? Yeah. So like I said, I had been an IT freelancer for the majority of my career.

But the problem is that's sort of, you know, that's, you are your own business and in your own boss. in that situation. But it's really just a matter of creating a job for yourself, where I wanted to build a company and I wanted to be able to, you know, kind of, kind of live my values, which is to help people and build jobs and things like that. And I thought rather than screaming on the internet, hey, you should pay people and treat them well, so let's prove it, right? And start an organization that is designed to create good paying jobs and demonstrate that if you treat people well, you can be successful and knock on wood. That's exactly what's happened.

And yeah. Is there like a certain experience that made you like start thinking that way? Not really. I think just overall life, you know, kind of seeing what's happening in society and things that I'd like to change or have a different way. And like I said, at some point you sort of realize that nothing will happen. unless you make it happen. So that's what I've at least attempted. I think you're doing a good job.

How did you identify the opportunity or market gap that growth folk technology now serves? Yeah, so that's a great question. So like I said, growth mode technology primarily is an IT company. And I've worked over the years in sort of multiple capacities, right? So what we do primarily is provide IT services to businesses. We are their IT company, or their IT department, rather, instead of typically having internal employees. And I've worked with companies. I've brought in folks like me, and I've worked with other organizations like me to provide these services.

So I've got a really good idea of, A, the need and also what everybody else in town is providing. And there is a massive gap in a kind of a mismatch. And that's kind of been the area that I've tried to fill is to do things a little differently than everybody else in town with a strong focus on getting people what they need more than anything else. For someone who has never heard of the company, how would you describe what growth over technology's dozen simple terms? Yeah. Technology services for business is the shortest description. And probably the most accurate, honestly. Okay.

You know, we used to say we're the computer guy. Nobody really uses those terms anymore, but yeah. When did you officially start the business, and what did the earliest version of it look like? I started, let's see, it's going to be four and a half years ago now, Growth MoTex. The earliest version, the first few months started out with me just working out of my house by myself. And then after landing some business, we rented a small office in downtown Syracuse where you could rent literally buy the room. And that was kind of our first real business location in the spot where I brought on the first, I think, two or three employees. And then we moved to this location.

What is unique about growth world technologies compares to competitors in the IT and podcast media space? Yeah, so a couple things. In the IT space, one of the things that really stands out with us is we do everything as a sort of all you can eat service. So what that means is our clients pay us a flat monthly fee. And for that, they get everything they need. Unlimited tech support, remote and in person, cybersecurity protection, their Microsoft licenses, their phone service, laundry list of things. for a very, very affordable price, but one that doesn't nickel and dime. And that's one of the places that I think really stands out. There are still a number of organizations in town that do things hourly. So they bill you by the hour like your lawyer. And it's a horrible situation for both parties. It can be expensive.

It can get, you know, companies can suddenly get a bill one month for five times the amount that they had been paying just because something occurred. And for the IT provider, if they're good at something, they get penalized when you charge by the hour, right? If I can solve a problem in 15 minutes that most people takes them three hours, I'm going to be paid less than all those people. Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.

And what happens is it drives organizations who have good people to then, I don't want to say over bill, but. purposely spend more time than they might need to on things. And at the same time, when you're billing by the hour, you get to pick and choose. So a lot of times companies will go, I don't know if I want to spend five hours on you addressing this problem. I don't know if that's a super urgent problem. When in reality, that's that kind of like basic maintenance that can save you massive amounts

in the future. So it's a big deal to be able to offer people just like I said, everything they need for a flat price. that works out to be less than they pay from other people. Yeah. Do you have like that same mindset when that comes to growth mode content, like the podcast? Absolutely, yeah, yeah. So growth mode content, just to give you a little background on that,

that started at the beginning of this year, here just in the beginning at 2025. And the idea there was first and foremost, I grew growth more tech, I grew my IT business by making podcasts and content about the business. Well, what would happen is I would, would make content and then I would get some business and be too busy to make more content, right? So I needed some help. At the same time, I had a couple friends in business who

saw what I was doing with that, wanted to do the same thing for their business. And the idea was I'll start a co-op, so to speak. Basically, two or three of us business owners will split the cost of one person who can do this editing and, you know, the basic stuff so we can crank out content. I started talking to it to more and more people and I finally put it out. there and people came out of the woodwork. And suddenly we had more than a co-op. We had a full-on business and enough clients to support a full team now. So that kind of popped off immediately. But to your original question, yes, I do kind of take that same mindset to that where we try to provide more value than anybody else possibly would for the price you pack. So for example,

Most of our clients are on a package where we shoot a podcast for them, take that, and create 30, 60, 90 pieces of content that we distribute for them on their social media and manage all those different things. And it's really probably a suite of services that in many cases people pay three different parties for and end up spending three times the amount of money. And that's, you know, it's that type of thing that, like I said, I guess is always my philosophy is, yes, I can provide a high quality service, but nobody knows that until you can work with them. And the best way to work with them is offer them as much value as possible. So it's a no-brainer.

Yeah. Very true. Who did you talk to research or learn from when evaluating the idea early on? That's a very question. really just other people doing it first and foremost, which there aren't many. And that's one of the things that sort of led me to this. I saw a great demand, but not necessarily a huge supply, you know, which to me as the entrepreneur is immediately, you know, ring bells. Hey, this is a great place to be.

And that's really kind of where I did it. I had a background in the content business for quite a while, actually. I opened the first content studio in Syracuse over a decade ago as part of another venture that I was in. At the time, nobody knew anything about a podcast. And the social media stuff that we do now with the clips and the reels and the shorts, that didn't exist at that time. So it was a different world. And it was not a successful business at that time. But I had been in it since then.

and worked with a lot of people and done a lot of things in that. And that gave me a really strong background in these things. That's what helped me leverage that initially to initially grow the IT business with content. And we've just sort of taken it from there, you know. Yeah. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, yeah, it does. What are some of the first?

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And people go, cool, I want to check it out. I'm like, oh, well, the web's nice. It's not ready yet. Yeah. That's not cool. So, you know, it was those basics, some business cards. I'm a big fan of swag of all sorts. So I'm, I likely ordered some of the company shirts and hats and mugs pretty early, if I remember correctly.

But it's, you know, it's those basics, really, to get things going. And that's a matter of finding clients. Yeah, makes sense. And on the basis of ordering stuff, did you require funding in the beginning? If yes, how did you secure resources? if not, how did you sustain the early stage? So I luckily did not, A, because I had, you know, enough of my own revenue from everything else that I could sort of float that to some degree.

Also, we really came out of the gate with a full suite of clients. And that's, you know, one of the things that I was able to do is sort of pre-sell. So I think we had over a dozen on the day that our team started. You know, so, and I've always tried as much as I can. I've never actually had investors or loans or anything in any business I've done. It's always been bootstrapped. And it's a matter of finding enough business to pay for the resources. And when you find more business, you can get more resources.

Yeah. I'm not necessarily saying that's the best way to go about things. But that's what I had available and that's how I've done it. Awesome. All right. I kind of talked about us a little bit with Amanda, but did you build the team right away or gradually? And how did you decide to bring in and went? Yeah. So gradually. Really, again, like I said, because we've been completely bootstrap, it's a matter of as soon as we can afford it, right? We didn't necessarily start with a bunch of capital where we could grab folks before there was businesses support them. So it was just, you know, kind of naturally that way. In the IT business, The first position that we needed to fill was a tech, another person to go do the work, right? And I got incredibly lucky that I found our guy, Anthony, who's running around here somewhere. And like I said, it was incredible luck because he's been an incredible, experienced member of the team.

And the fact that he was our first hire is one of the reasons we've been so successful. And again, from there, it's just kind of continue as we have the need and the funds to add folks. I believe in, you know, paying and treating people really well. So that also factors into it. It's not a matter of do we squeak every penny to get one more person, it's first and foremost, as everybody else who's here taking care of. Should we give them more before we do something like that? That's always a consideration.

But other than that, you know, in the IT world, what's unique about us as well is I hire folks for their personality as much as their technical skills. Because what we do, as much as we kind of play the role as the IT department, we're not their IT department. We're not employees. And we are a contractor. And at the end of the day, it's our job to provide customer service. Yeah. And so we need technical people who can. speak to the computers and the humans, which is a little bit rare. But like I said, I've been lucky enough to find a number of folks who have those skills, and that's really been everything for us. Yeah, true. What were the biggest real challenges you encountered early on, and how did you overcome them? I think the biggest challenges are just a matter of having those resources when you need

them. So when we get to the point where we need three people, do we have the funding for three people? You know what I mean? Those sorts of those sorts of things. And luckily, we were able to grow at a rate to where it wasn't, that wasn't too big of a deal. But I would definitely say those are always the biggest challenges. Yeah. Have there been any moments where something didn't go as planned that taught you important lessons? Yeah, nothing goes as planned. I mean, that's the lesson in all honesty. Nothing goes as planned and everything takes longer than you would expect it to. Okay. And if you just sort of accept those realities, it gets a tad less stressful. It's just nothing you can do about it. You just have to accept that.

Okay, this is also a question. I was wondering too. How do you balance your personal life and the demands of entrepreneurship? That's a great question. Someone say I don't. But the reality is I do. So I constantly am making time for family and for even myself to do nothing whatsoever. People might be surprised to know the amount of TV that I watch. And it's because I'm up all night. But I need to do things like that to disconnect and just take a couple hours to be mindless and play a video game and, and, uh, you know, take the family out of town for the weekend and, and things like that.

And, um, I am likely answering emails and texts as I'm doing all of those things. Um, but at the same time, that's what I signed up for. So, um, this isn't a job. Uh, this is, this is everything for me, uh, out of necessity and passion. Right. So, you know, it's not quite the same. When your employee, you talk about work-life balances as an owner, you know, like I said, this is really unfortunately my whole life or fortunately maybe. And that's what I've signed up for. So everything I'm building is for my family and they get that.

My kids are a big part of the business. My adult kids both work in the business. My younger ones are determined to take over one day. Yeah. You know, so that's the balance is this, it's what we do. Amazing. How do you think about innovation and staying ahead in tech plus media? Yeah, great question.

You 100% have to do that in both counts, right? And the crazy part is both move rapidly fast and it's incredibly changing. IT, they used to say reinvents itself 100% every six months. And that stat was from years ago. It's before the days of AI, so it's more likely doubled. You know what I mean? The way to stay on top of it is to be plugged into the communities, right? So whether you're going to industry conventions, you're part of even online forums and things

like that for people in the industries, networking with other folks. I don't really believe much in competition. I think there's more than enough business for everybody in all these fields. And we can only get better when we sort of collaborate and share news and things like that. And that's just kind of what you've got to do. You've got to just have to try your best to stay on top of these things. And it is a challenge, but it's, you know, it is a big part of the game. Yeah, that's definitely big.

When you look back, what is something you wish you? you knew at the beginning. That everything takes longer than I would expect it to and nothing will go right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And what advice would you give to someone starting their own business to that? That's a wonderful question.

You know, it all depends on what they're doing. My biggest advice, and I guess I would just say generically without real context, is to A, make sure you're not over leveraged, meaning I really just personally don't like businesses like restaurants or retail where you have to have a large amount of inventory and equipment and a lot of things just to do business is not my game. And there are folks who love that and they do great in it. But, you know, just kind of have a plant is the biggest thing. And that doesn't mean it needs to be an MBA-style business plan.

Yeah. But you need to at least have some semblance. You know, everybody says chase your passion. And I agree with that. But, you know, just because I'm passionate, it doesn't mean I'm going to make money, right? You really have to understand how to put those two pieces together. We had yesterday on the show, we had a musician and producer. And that's one of the thing I asked them, how do you take the artist and then learn the business piece of it?

Because it's a whole other world. Yeah. But it's something that you have to figure out how to meld together. Definitely. What do you think separates successful entrepreneurs from those who give up? They didn't give up. In all honesty, right? So that's perseverance is the biggest thing.

And some might even say it's a matter of how much shit can you take. because there will be a lot and business ownership entrepreneurship is like a it looks like your EKG chart where it goes like this right one day you are on the absolute top of the world in the next day is the worst day of your life and repeat every other day forever yeah that's that's kind of how it goes and for a lot of folks they don't want to deal with that and it's completely understandable and they bail I know The ones that make it are the ones who sit through all the,

make it through all the horrible pieces and still want to do it. Yeah. Okay. And we'll end up with looking to the future where do you see growth post technologies in the next few years and what excites you the most about that direction? Yeah. So what really excites me is that both of our businesses, both growth mode technologies and growth mode content,

are growing rapidly because we're in high demand. spaces, you know, every company on the planet, not only needs IT, but it is now probably one of the most important things. Technology is what drives every business from the oldest traditional company to, you know, a modern app. So there's no shortage of that. And then, you know, when we come to the the content business, social media marketing, content marketing is clearly not going anywhere. and it's something that's booming and still there is a small number of agencies like ours that are dedicated to just that. And so I feel like we've got a wide open market in an area that's high demand. And then you mix in all the fact that central New York in general is on a massive upswing.

You know, this area is booming. It's one of the top places in the country that people are moving to. and that's because massive businesses are expanding and opening up. And we talk about Micron, but there's just one of many. So as a company that provides services to other companies, we're in a great town. Yeah, definitely. Okay, awesome. That was all my questions.

Awesome. Thank you. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman, and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises L'ouique Bali to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been setting there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection

with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts to hear about river cruising and Unirworld's 50th anniversary summer specials. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog.

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