From the course: Matthew Hoffman: How a Kind Word Can Make the World Better

A burgeoning movement of hope

(gentle upbeat music) - [Interviewer] As Matthew's work continued to grow in scope and reach, he began to hear from people that had been touched by the simple message. In many ways, this small sticker became something of a movement, an expression of hope for people who were going through a rough season of life. - [Matthew] Yeah, I mean, like, a lot of the letters were very supportive and basically they had a lot of the same tone that they had come across one, and they had a moment, and now they wanted to kind of share that moment with other people, so they'd send me like 3000 stickers. (laughs) Just write back like, you know, less than five. - [Interviewer] Yeah. As luck would have it, the closing of one door soon meant the opening of another, and this is really where the You are Beautiful project took off. - [Matthew] So I've been there 11 years. I love the people. My boss is my son's godfather, the CEO and his wife came to every show that I did and bought the biggest piece. The company greatly downsized. So they let go of like 100 people, and then another 100 people and then kind of kept kept going until, it's still around as of now, not to the size it was. And so I was a part of one of those layoffs. But they kind of took me aside and said, like, "You've been here for 11 years, "we know that you've been, like, kind of working "your tail off, nights and weekends, "and so we want to give you a year severance "to figure out how to make your dreams come true." - [Interviewer] That does not happen. - [Matthew] Yeah. - [Interviewer] That is so cool. - [Matthew] Yeah. So that gave me just a little moment to kind of figure everything out. And so I didn't start from scratch. I think if I would have been starting from from scratch, it would be much, much different. I might not have been able to sort of do it. But all these balls had been sort of, like, moving, and I kind of hit the ground running and then had a little bit of padding. And then, so as I'm walking out to my car, it's one of those stories that, like, you literally don't believe, but it just happens (laughs). I'm walking to my car, and for I opened the door, I'm like, "I don't know what I'm going to do now." Like, I've, this has been my entire life, you know, I've never worked a different job, you know. And I've gone here every day for 11 years, and yeah, life is going to be a little different. And glued to my phone and was an email from Oprah's people. - [Interviewer] Come on. - [Matthew] And they're like, "we want to do a story on you." And so I literally, like, sat down the car right on my back, and I'm like, "Here's literally what's happening right now." - [Interviewer] Yeah. (laughing) I've got time, I'm now available. 'Cause Oprah was still in the city at the time, so, yeah. - [Matthew] And so then a few months later, yeah, we did a piece and it aired on a Sunday morning, part of her "Super Soul Sunday". And I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I was not at all prepared. And at that point, it was just like a PayPal button on the site that was like, if you want some stickers, and if you want like five stickers, send five bucks. If you want, I don't know, 100 stickers, send a little bit more. If you want to help with postage gray, if you're overseas, maybe throw in a couple, but I mean, like that's what it said. And then there was, and then just a thing you just fill in an amount and then hit give money. And that piece aired. We watched it because you could stream it. And we're like, "oh, my God, that's so cool." And then we started getting pings. And was like, "Oh, this is this is really, really cool." And then more and more pings. And there was like 6000 pings in like 20 minutes. And so I took it off the site. - [Interviewer] Were you freaking out? - [Matthew] Yeah, well, there was like, I don't know, like 200 stickers sitting on the shelf. - [Interviewer] Yeah, that's all you had. - [Matthew] Yeah. And so I learned a lot, again. (laughing) And what I was bad at and what I didn't, so yeah, they're just these thousands of orders I had there, you got no sort of confirmation that you had done anything, You got no confirmation from me that I know that you did something and that you're expecting something. And so I think, you know, I just tried to figure out how to get stickers printed as fast as I could, and the printer got them to me in I think six weeks, and I didn't really reach out to these people 'cause I didn't really have a way to reach out to all these people. So when people are in the vacuum, they get angry. - [Interviewer] Sure. - [Matthew] And so, yeah, I started getting all these angry letters, and I'm going to tell Oprah on you, and I responded to the people that emailed me. And in retrospect, I should have just, you know, - [Interviewer] Put them on the page and say, "Yeah, sorry about the over demand, yeah." - [Matthew] But most people were happy. And then at that point, though, too, I was just shoving stickers in envelopes and then, like, licking them shot or putting tape on them and then they were like it's just exploding in the mail and like post office all across America just full of stickers in their back room. And so yeah, I get like pictures of these envelopes just like ripped up. So, again, I learned my lessons and now we have, you know, almost a seamless, perfect system. - [Interviewer] So was the Oprah moment one of those things that you think gave you some nice runway and stability to go to, like, another level or was it more just a moment and then it kind of moved on? - [Matthew] Yeah, I think it was an amazing moment. I think oh, and then they ran it for like a year. - [Interviewer] Were they telling you when it was going to air? - [Matthew] No. So some Sundays, no pings, some Sundays, a bunch of pings, never as much as that first one. - [Interviewer] Right. - [Matthew] But it was a great thing and actually that helped through that whole year. And by that point, I was really getting, and by I think, like, the next time it aired, I had a full operational web store and everything was starting to tick. - Be ready to rock. - [Matthew] Yeah. But I think, yeah, I think it was a great moment. I think it took things way up. And then I, it was a bubble. But I think it didn't come down to the same level. - [Interviewer] Okay, so you stayed up and benefits every sense. - [Matthew] Yeah. - [Interviewer] Well, that's very cool. - [Matthew] Yeah, and it's so interesting, because I was talking to somebody recently who was writing an article, because we did a bunch of billboards out in Buffalo. And so he's kind of writing an article about that. And he said, it's, he thinks that it's absolutely amazing that you've got, like, young street art skateboarder kids putting these up and you've got Oprah moms putting these up on their way to brunch. And that there aren't many things that sort of, like, are like so accepted across so many different types of people and that I've been really excited about. (upbeat music)

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