Latest / Mork Unfiltered / "How Do You Give Up An Identity You Carried For 25 Years?"

Transcript

"How Do You Give Up An Identity You Carried For 25 Years?" · Mork Unfiltered

• Patrick Mork: I'm just gonna be brutally honest here. I don't think a lot of entrepreneurs realize that with growth comes a significant amount of pressure. I was terrified in those first few months. I mean, the phone just did not ring. How is that visible? When you start to hire the wrong people, he told me I really think you should do something on your own. But the world has a glaring lack of leadership. It's so unbelievably easy to be average these days. Signs for you that it was time to start thinking about that transient. Welcome back to Mork Unfiltered, folks. Let me ask you a quick question. What does it look like when you build something from absolutely nothing, like literally a one-man operation? And then 25 years later, it's like a thousand people in over 60 cities. But here's the kicker. And then you decide to walk away from all of it. Not because it failed, not because somebody pushed you out of your own company, but because you decided that the second half of your life needed to be something different than the first half. My guest today did exactly that. Matt Aston founded GPRS, the largest groundbreaking ground penetrating, sorry, radar company in the United States, built it through three rounds of private equity, and recently walked out the door for the last time as CEO. This is a conversation about building, leading, letting go, and finding out what's next. This is Mork Unfiltered, and this is the story of Matt Aston. Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot, Patrick. First time I've I've heard somebody else say it. So ⁓ I appreciate it. How does that feel? I appreciate the introduction. It feels good. Yeah. Twenty-one months of planning went into this. So I I think that we've executed the plan well. And then ⁓ June 30th was the culmination of that plan. So it it's it's good to see a plan come together and get carried through. Wow. So so you know, take us back to I think it was two thousand and one. Yeah. Right? Take us back. You know, you're you're like a financial analyst at Dana Commercial Credit. What was happening inside your head that decided, you know, that helped you kind of make this decision, you know, to leave this this role and and and and this corporate entity and to venture out and start your own thing? What what what happened there? There was there were a few things going on. My daughter, who just got married on July fourth, she was born in in July of two thousand one and ⁓ I had been at Dana for about a year working as a entry level financial analyst, but as humbly as I can say this, I I was I I was pretty good at at at what I was doing. And Dana a huge company. Dana Commercial Credit was a subsidiary of Dana Corporation, which was a tier one automotive supplier. At the time, I think there were about eight billion in revenue, publicly traded company. And ⁓ Dana Commercial Credit was the financial ⁓ leasing arm of Data Corporation. And so I I was I was working there, had been there for about a year and had my review. I was giving a glowing review. You know, basically the highest rating I could have been given. And my boss told me, Hey, we're really proud of you. We love having you on the team. You're doing a phenomenal job. You're actually getting the highest percentage raise out of anyone in the group and you're getting a bonus. And ⁓ I was pretty pumped. Yep, sure. And ⁓ the highest percentage raise was six percent. And The bonus was two thousand dollars. Mm-hmm. And I was twenty-three and my daughter had just been born and my wife was a she had been a teacher and I knew she wasn't gonna go back to work. I knew she was gonna want to stay home with with the baby. And I just didn't see the corporate world being my my place. ⁓ I saw a lot of the yeah, corporate inefficiency and bureaucracy and and red tape that I just didn't didn't want to be part of. And my dad had always had his own business since I can remember. ⁓ he started his own company when I was three years old cutting concrete. And I talked to him about going into business with him. And he told me, I really think you should do something on your own. When he did, ⁓ he gave me this magazine, and in this magazine there was an advertisement for ground penetrating radar. One of the applications that it identified being able to help with was identifying electrical systems that are embedded either in or below concrete prior to saw cutting. And I knew if I go back to my high school and college days, whenever I helped on those jobs, it seemed inevitable that if they were going to be cutting through concrete or drilling holes in concrete, eventually they were going to hit electrical that nobody knew was there, that nobody had marked. And it always just it was this infusion of chaos and panic ⁓ into the job site and Unexpected cost obviously and yeah, downtime. And I thought if there was a way to solve this problem, if this technology can really do this, I think we could build a business kind of around that that one application. Why that problem? It was one that I was familiar with. ⁓ it was one that I had experienced firsthand. Remember I was on a on a Kroger ⁓ grocery store and this work had to be done ⁓ in the middle of the night. And so it was yeah, third shift when this stores closed or there's nobody in the store. And we were running a trench. They were gonna install some new chiller lines. But we had to start at the front of the store and then they were gonna run these chiller lines down the the freezer aisle. So this trench is gonna be probably sixty five or seventy feet. And it yeah, it's one o'clock in the morning by this time. Just a few of us in the store. And we get about ten feet into this trench in Big flash when when the when the saws run it, there's there's this big flash and the saw stops, everything goes dark, and we just we just cut through the primary power and it wasn't marked and nobody knew. And now we've got a real problem on our hands. So we're waking up the construction manager, having to give him a call at one o'clock in the morning to let him know. And I saw that advertisement. My my mind went right back to that that one spot at that grocery store in Dundee, Michigan. That you know if if we would have had this, if someone would have been able to mark this on the surface, yeah, we we could have avoided this and and this has to happen every single day at job sites in every city, in every state across the country and really throughout the world. Sure. Sure. Not to mention that it is there an element of danger to it? I mean, cutting into a freaking power line. I mean percent. Yeah. There's there's been there's been stories of people getting electrocuted and I actually I know somebody who got stuck on a saw. We actually I got the call ⁓ you know shortly after that happened. Hey, we just cut through power and we need you up here to mark out anything else before we do any more cutting. The guy who was cutting, he got stuck on the saw for five or six seconds before the breaker tripped and ⁓ he was pretty must be scary as hell. He was okay. ⁓ he was he was okay, but he was they said he was very sore the next day. As you can imagine, all of your muscles would would lock up and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be it'd be a bad day for sure. Yeah, I could imagine. And so what did what did the first couple of months feel like? I mean, starting your own operation, your own business. You know, so many people dream of being an entrepreneur, of starting their own thing, you know, and for many reasons they they never get there. There's some whole mix of emotions. What what were some of the emotions that went through your mind, you know, the first first three to six months? I'm generally not a worrier. Okay. I Tend to be pretty confident. I tend to be very persistent. I was terrified in those first few months. I mean, the the phone just did not ring. I would even call my wife and say, hey, I'm gonna hang up. You need to call me back. I just need to make sure. Pretend you're a customer. I just need to make sure the phone works. If somebody's trying to call me and ⁓ I actually so I did it started out, it was just me. I I I was the only person in the company and I was serving the Toledo, Ohio area as well as southeastern Michigan, Detroit and Ann Arbor. And I failed on two out of the first three opportunities I was given where I was called out to help the specific application and I I I didn't do it right. I was not effective. I missed what I was looking for. And so my confidence was really shaken. And ⁓ it was just this this this constant pursuit, this constant push towards myself, yeah, training myself, getting better, learning how to communicate more effectively. And then any time I didn't have a job, I just told myself, There's a reason you don't have a job today. You d not enough people know about the service. You have to go create awareness. And the best way to do that is to go to offices for contractors, offices for engineers, and then absolutely the job sites. And I made myself a rule. You cannot drive by a construction site and not stop and go make every legitimate attempt possible to talk to someone. So I was like the the U turn king in in Michigan. If I dri if I drove past the job site in the Metro Detroit area, I'd whip it right around and go back, park wherever I could and throw on a hard hat, throw on some safety glasses and a a vest, act like I knew where I was going and you know, walk into the trailer or walk up to whoever looked like they might be in charge on site and just ask for a few minutes to let them know what I was doing, how I think I could help. And people started giving me shots. And and yeah, small opportunities led to bigger opportunities. And yeah, it we were we we were blessed early on. I wound up getting a big job at the airport. ⁓ the West Hotel at the Detroit Metro Airport. That single job started in January of two thousand two. So about four months after I I started the company. And they needed me a lot. I was there three to four days a week for about ten months. And that gave me the cash flow I needed to buy another system and to get caught up and get it a little ahead on expenses and I bought another system. We I hired a friend of mine and ⁓ he was just graduating college and he moved to Cleveland. So instead of yeah, putting him in Toledo with me, said, Hey, let's go try to gain some footprint in in another city. And that was kind of the early strategy, I guess, for for how GPRS would grow was right. Yeah, well let's let's if we can do this in one city, we can do it in others as well. How did you You know, I mean, one one of one of the things particularly for solo founders, you know, I've I've been a solo founder multiple times, man. So you're you're you're preaching to the converted. ⁓ but for other people who are considering starting a business or who are maybe, you know, a couple of months into starting their their first company by themselves, how did you build the resilience to keep going when things got very tough? I you you mentioned a couple of those opportunities, the initial ones that didn't go so well that you kind of botched and that really affected your self-confidence. What what kind of rituals or routines or habits did you build that allowed you to get back up when you get knocked down like that. Yeah. It it's it's really a mindset that that just that refusal to allow yourself to lose. I wrote a book years ago called Winning Every Day by by Lou Holtz and he broke down he he took the word win and turned it into an acronym for what's important now. I like that. you know, whatever is important now is what you had to focus on. So in that in that early going, what was important was creating that awareness, building a customer base, finding a few people to give me that opportunity. And it until I did that, I just I I wouldn't let myself stop. And and it did actually Patrick, it got kind of weird where the phone would start to ring and I would have these people, you know, want me to come out and and do the work for them, which is exactly what the business is designed to do. But I started thinking, ⁓ shoot, if I have to do that job, I can't go do I can't go do sales. I can't go create more opportunities. So true. And so that that yeah, ⁓ what is that the the paradox that that you find yourself in over what what what's more important. And obviously, yeah, we have a way we started a saying very early on when there were just a few people in GP ⁓ our best sales call is a job well done. Yep. And so true. That still rings true today. And today we do seven or eight hundred jobs a day across the United States. Wow. But it starts with that mentality that every single job we do it's either an opportunity to win a customer forever or push them away. And yeah. W one of the things that struck me about you, Matt, when we when we spoke, you know, that first time ⁓ whatever, I think it was three or four weeks ago before before I went on holiday, but you know, I think you were maybe two weeks out from from your your retirement day was how important faith is for you. Right. And you struck me as a person that is very, very faith driven, which which, you know, it's weird because, you know, you see this pattern repeat itself w ⁓ among a lot of people who are successful. And I was curious about how important your faith was when times were tough, when when you had to really be resilient work. I don't know, you know, cash flow problems or health problems or businesses not going well or issues at home. How much of a role did faith play and how did you use your faith to stay strong when things were really hard? Yeah, probably about six months into so I've been I've been reading through the Old Testament, you know, right now. And as you read through the Old Testament, you you see it it gets really frustrating where you see Israel, the Israelites when things are going well. they kind of lose their focus on on God. And then when they start to struggle, when they're under attack, when they need help, all of a sudden they're there, they're they're looking, they're looking back to God. And it I think, man, why how does that this it that's basically the whole old testament? It's this cycle that just repeats itself for hundreds and hundreds of years. ⁓ I think I think we do the same thing oftentimes. Where when when when we're doing really, really well, you know, sometimes we get to I think we what a great job we are doing and what a great yeah how how good things are going and we kinda lose our focus. But in that early in those early stages when I'm just struggling. I mean, the first three and a half months of GPRS, the total revenue was four thousand dollars. Ouch. It's like doesn't even cover the rent kind of thing. Yeah. Dollars in in in three and a half months. No, I'm I'm getting my tail kicked every single day. And I I was able to Yeah, find that job. But one thing I started doing in the morning after getting my tail kicked for a few months was if I'm going up to Detroit and Ann Arbor, I had roughly forty five minutes to an hour in the car every morning. So instead of just turning the radio on and listening to sports radio, which I listened to a lot back then, that was that was some quiet time where I could just pray and I just just just started praying. Give me the wisdom, give me the perseverance, give me please help me see what's next and like give me some clarity. ⁓ I I I get skeptical when I hear people say, you know, God told me, but I have no doubt that God's hand was on this business and some of the direction and some of the decisions that I made early on. While not bluntly, hey, do this, Matt. I do feel strongly that God's hand was on this business from an early, very early point. So you go from one guy, yourself, your phone, right? Your wife calling you on your phone to all of a sudden You know, 25 years later, you get something like 1100 employees, 60 states, you know, three rounds of private equity. Not going to talk about your revenues because that since you're private equity, you're probably a private company. You know, when when you go through that kind of growth, right? ⁓ there are moments that you feel, you know, you the growth might just break you, right? It's like people, everybody wants to grow. But I don't think a lot of entrepreneurs realize that with growth comes a significant amount of pressure and all sorts of other problems. Take us back to an episode where you guys were like growing like crazy and you thought maybe, you know, maybe we're growing too fast. Maybe this is gonna break the company. Did you ever go through moments like that? There was only one. It was in two thousand eighteen. And it was our first year of private equity. So we we took our first private equity partner, C I V C partners out of Chicago. We we closed with them in November of two thousand seventeen. So we it was the first time that we put a budget together. We never really worked off of a budget, you know, the first sixteen years of the company. We set sales goals and we set like growth growth targets, but we didn't break down the operational side. I I my philosophy was, hey, look, if we take care of the top line, the bottom line is going to fall in place. Right. Let's focus on growing the top line. Our fixed costs are pretty fixed. Our labor flexes with with revenue. Let's just focus on really growing the top line. So we we have we had like a thirty percent growth target in in our first year with private equity. So it was about we had to go from forty million to fifty two million of of of revenue in that in that first year. And to do so, we were going to need to beef up our our field team. One thing that ha we had done really well was I would say we were picky about the people we brought onto the team. And in two thousand eighteen, I think we felt some of that pressure out of having to hit that revenue target. We knew that we had to have more people. And I do believe that we compromised a bit on the the quality of the individual that that we that we brought in. We settled for a few people that we probably wouldn't have brought onto the team otherwise. Yeah. And we paid for it. And we still had a good year. We we hit the target, but we made it much more difficult on ourselves and much more expensive on ourselves. Yeah. For a minute carrying these people for, you know, weeks or months and then having to cut bait because we compromised on you know several and then we just stacked hands and said, Look, whatever we do, if we want to put the best quality person we can in front of the customer, this is just one area that we cannot compromise on. So we've had this mantra within our business for a long time hire character and teach skill. If we get the right person love that We can teach them whatever they need to know. Right. But we do not want to compromise on the quality of the of the individual that we put in farming cluster. I love that because, you know, it's it's especially now, you know, in the age of artificial intelligence where you just have this insane amount of capital flowing into these very young companies with, you know, first time CEOs. I mean, you were a first time CEO, right? We've all been first CM CEOs. If you start a company, you're gonna be a first time CEO. And I see it so much in the work that I do, you know. A good part of the executive advisory work that I do is with young founders, you know, who are venture backed. And man, it is so difficult to get them to realize that sometimes you need to slow down in order to speed up, right? You need you you know, what you're talking about, the hiring piece gets compromised very quickly as you accelerate your growth. And I was just curious, how is that visible? When you start to hire the wrong people because you're growing you're trying to grow too quickly. How does that actually show up in the organization? What what are the kind of visible signs that entrepreneurs need to be aware of that potentially they're making the wrong hires? I I think if you if you you've got a strong culture to begin with, you'll have some of those stalwarts of of of your I would say your cultural torch bearers. They'll come to you and say, Hey, how did so and so get here? Like, what's this mad guy doing here? Who who hired him? Who hired this dude? ⁓ So that that's I mean, if that one doesn't smack you right in the face, yeah, then you're you're probably not long in your role. But the other things I would say you know, where you just see maybe dips in productivity. You see dips in so that the two things that really drive GPRS are accuracy, our performance on on job sites, and and productivity. I mean, if if if we look at how GPRS makes money. We have to be productive and we've got to be accurate. We're not going to get paid for work that we do if we do a poor job on that work. If we say, Hey, there's nothing to worry about in this trench, you can go ahead and dig, cut, drill, whatever you need to do. And then they go and dig, cut, drill, and they yeah, hit a gas line, they're not gonna pay the invoice that we send them. If they if they do it fast enough, they're not even going to get an invoice from us because we failed to execute. We failed to provide the value that we're trying to create on that on that job. So I think the that the that's the probably the two most painful ways. ⁓ is that you see those dips in productivity, those dips in accuracy. I also think just just those, as I said, the the general dips in morale, they all tend to manifest themselves when you when you bring the wrong people onto the team. Yeah. So dips in productivity, dips in morale, and then you start to get feedback from your cultural star words on on on why you're hiring certain people. How You know, and all of that makes a lot of sense. But then again, I'm I'm thinking to myself, you know, young entrepreneur, you know, you're getting private equity into your company for the first time, or you're perhaps, you know, perhaps perhaps you're venture funded for the first time, your investors are pushing for an excessive amount of growth. How do you how can or I guess the question is two part? It's like, can you push back? And secondly, how do you push back on your investors when the pace of growth that they are demanding puts your culture and therefore execution productivity and morale at risk? So can you push back? Can you push back? And if so, how do you push back? Absolutely you can. I think we we've been blessed in three rounds of private equity where we've had very good partners, but that's just what they have been. They have been partners. And I think the best private equity firm is we'll tell you we want to be your partner, but we are not operators. Right. So you understand what's going on in your business. And I think that's that's your responsibility as CEO or someone on the executive leadership team to be able to communicate that to your private equity partners, say, hey, this is your expectations are probably a little out of line. And if we execute every initiative that we have perfectly, we still would probably fall short of that goal. And the reality is we're not going to execute every one of these initiatives absolutely perfect. There's going to be some obstacles. There's going to be Yeah, some unforese unforeseen circumstances that we have yet to deal with. So let's give ourselves a little bit of room. How frustrating would it be to be part of a company where part of your compensation is based on performance to plan and you see you're twenty plus percent growth, yet you don't achieve your full comp target because you fell short of the goal. I mean That's that would be frustrating. So you're talking company grew twenty plus percent ⁓ on revenue and on earnings, yet I I'm gonna I'm gonna see less than my full bonus. Yeah, that doesn't sit real well. You're probably gonna have a hard time retaining y ⁓ top level talent i if if if that's the case. Now now you know, obviously You had the benefit of going through this as your own company. You went through 25 years of it. You saw all the different stages of growth. And one of the things I'm very curious about is as the company grew, particularly after 2017, when you bring in your first round of private equity, how did your leadership need to evolve? I think one of the things that founders struggle with is that depending on the stage of the company, the needs of the leader change. Right. At the beginning, you have to be very operational. You're all in the details. You're literally, you know, out there with like, you know, the radar system doing the work yourself in the construction zone. You're going in, getting your heart hat, and going to talk to the construction zone manager. But then all of a sudden it becomes about hiring people, it becomes about managing people. You're less operational. And then as you grow, other challenges ⁓ arise as well. What was the biggest challenge for you in terms of evolving as a leader? And how did you actually evolve as a leader? Like what'd you what did you actually do? So I hope this doesn't come across as arrogant. I really try not to be I I try to be conscientious about not sounding arrogant in any way, but I'm just gonna be brutally honest here. There there was a reality in twenty seventeen, you know, we had two hundred people in the business and ⁓ you know, we were forty million in revenue influenc like I said, and ⁓ I felt myself getting a little bored. Like it wasn't all that challenging, you know, to to grow twenty percent or so per year. And I knew I had a really great team of people around me, high capacity, ⁓ leaders that that that were really helping me get build the business. And one of the appealing aspects of bringing on a private equity partner was it created a new sense of accountability, you know, within me. Right. To have some outside partners, ⁓ that that would push us and you know raise expectations, probably give us ⁓ strategic horsepower that we had yet to to realize. Yeah. And that really pushed me to to level up. And not only me, but it pushed the rest of our team. And and we and we did level up around and and really take that challenge on. ⁓ I was I was I remember I was sitting on a plane, I was reading a book and ⁓ The author said, ⁓ we were talking about goals and kind of vision and said, Yeah, just close the book for a second and I want you to think about something that seems really far out there that you don't think you could really achieve. And then when you when you're when you write down a few things, open the book back up. So I'm on this plane, I've been starting to think, like, okay, if things went perfectly, where could this get? And so, man, if we could get to if we could get to a hundred million of revenue, that would just be unbelievable. Probably close to forty at the time. This is the beginning of private equity. And so I I open the book back up and start reading again, flip the page, and literally on the next page, the author says, Maybe you think your business could never get to a hundred million of revenue. Okay, that that that's cool. So I just took that as a this is something we have to do. And a few years later, you know, we we went over a hundred and now that we're north of two fifty in in total revenue. I think we can grow this to ⁓ not we, I think the leadership team and the rest of the rest of the team at at GPRS can grow this into a billion plus of annual revenue given the trajectory. So it seems that you have like, you know, one of the things I noticed about you, and I I've noticed this, you know, in all the people that I interview, and and I'm you know, I'm very blessed to be able to interview some some remarkable people. All of you have this thing in common where it's like you get to your comfort zone and you feel that you're in your comfort zone and you're like, all right, what's next? Like I need to step out of my comfort zone and I need to shake things up. And then so for you, the private equity move, you know, aside from the growth was a little bit of that forcing function. But what I'm more curious about is what had to change in terms of your leadership style? Like, you know. Everybody goes through phases, especially as the business grows, where your your your ability to lead changes and the skills that you need, sometimes you have them, sometimes you don't. Oftentimes there's a bunch of leadership skills that you don't have. What f was there a moment for you, and I'm curious what what what what what it looked like where you just became very cautious, you're like, ⁓ my God, you know, we're at this whole new level. I need to really learn how to do this because I'm not really good at that. And then how do how did you go about doing that? There was I think I had to really get comfortable. pushing other people. And I think that the the true essence of of leadership is when you recognize an ability or gifting in in in someone before they've recognized it in themselves. Yeah it's and then you help them to achieve, develop and ultimately realize that unlocked potential that they that they were kind of keeping suppressed within themselves. And I think initiating not even Tough conversations, but helping people to see you are really talented in this area. I mean, you could really do something incredible, you know, if if you would just push into this, if you would just focus on this. And I think after private equity yeah came on, I think that's probably the one thing that I did a little bit differently w with with with certainly with the team that I worked closest with. I've my job as CEO was to lead the leadership team and to make sure that they were all working well together, that there were no silos being built in their in the organizations within the company that they that they oversaw that all were working well together and really that there was if not agreement among them, at least there was alignment among them. That they were all you know working in harmony, working together, pushing everything in the same direction at the same time. And I think that that's really where I grew mo most most as a leader. Not I am not operational in nature at all. We had a ⁓ in twenty eighteen, I think, we did a new enterprise system. I never had it installed on my computer. ⁓ I didn't want it. Anything that came out of there, I figured I would get through the conversations I was having with yeah, the others on on my leadership team. We did another changeover in two thousand twenty three, I think. Same thing. I never had it loaded on my computer. I've I like the Excel reports that they they they feed me. But I never got into our Net suite not a single time in in in my in my career. Much to the chagrin of the sales folks at Net Suite, but I what was what was for you, you know, I mean, you know, when when when you're running and scaling companies or just running companies, you go through different leadership challenges, right? What was for you? And when you look back on these last twenty five years, what what do you think was one of the single hardest leadership decisions that you had to make and what did it cost you personally? I think the the the single hardest when you recognize so ⁓ this this happens to everybody. I'm I'm I'm a sports guy, so I'm you see this in athletes a lot. It I I tried to walk on to my college baseball team. I went to a small college, I went to a small high school and I figured the only reason I wasn't getting scholarship offers is because of the size of the school that I that I went to. So I went to a small college and yeah, try to walk on to the baseball team. Yeah, coach calls me into his office and says, Hey look, Aston, we're giving you a uniform. Don't you get any ideas about seeing any time on the field? Yeah, that this it's a great way to start. And he said, If you get better, yeah, maybe you contribute a little bit next year, maybe you carve out a little bit of a role, yeah, junior or senior year. But we've got scholarship guys on the team now. We've got scholarship guys that are gonna be coming up behind you. You're not getting any money from us. So I'm I'm in his I'm in his office and behind him on his in his desk there's a ⁓ picture of him in a Chicago Cubs uniform at the top of a swing. And I said, Coach, what's what's that picture? And he said, ⁓ that's my first major league home run. This is a guy who knows what he's talking about. Right. This guy's done it at the highest level. And I just said, Okay, I understand what you're saying. I appreciate you having this conversation with me and somewhere years later I realized Everyone has that conversation where hey, this is the end of the road for you. I can I can empathize. I know I know what that can feel like. Yeah. You know, w one of the things that ⁓ that you mentioned in our first conversation, you know, I think you you guys have an expression at GPRS, which is something like candor over diplomacy. Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that and where that where that came from and why that was so important at GTRS. So yeah, we're we're we're growing and we we feel like we're on a really good trajectory, but I just kept feeling like I was late getting information. Okay, so the I'm gonna reveal something about myself here. So I'm a huge Sylvester Stallone fan. First blood? I love the Rocky movies even more than the Rango movies. But there's a there's a scene in Rocky Three where ⁓ he's kinda half assing his way through his his training and this is after he's lost ⁓ Mr. T and they're on the beach in Santa Monica. And he kind of gives up in this in this sprint that he has against Apollo. And yeah, his wife is walking on the beach with him and and she says, Hey, I want to know what you're scared of. Tell me what you're scared of and you tell me the truth. And he says that the truth is, the truth is I'm afraid and I don't want to lose what I what I've already got. And I played that scene for the leadership team and said, Look, we can be one of our core values is respectful. the is I'm sorry, is mutual respect. We can be respectful of one another, but we can also have to be absolutely truthful. And if you're thinking something, we need to know the truth. And I wanna know that what the truth is. I don't wanna be I don't want to be sugarcoated. If there's a problem, I wanna know right now. I wanna work on it together. I don't want to find out late and we can't be scared of, you know, whatever the result is or whatever the the work is to get it done. We we've we've we've got to solve for it. And so new rules, you know, in all of our leadership meetings going forward, we're calling it candor over diplomacy. We don't sugarcoat anything. We can be very blunt in our feelings. If we disagree, we're not here to agree on every single thing. In fact, if we do come here to agree on everything, these meetings are probably not necessary because we're holding back at that point. Not every one of us is going to agree on every single initiative or topic or you know what's important now. So can over diplomacy. Yeah. If you're thinking it, you have to say it. You can say it in a respectful tone, but it's gotta be, it's gotta be you you've gotta err. Your voice has to be heard. How do you, as a CEO and as a founder and as a leader, how do you intentionally build culture like that? Because everybody, it's like I find that, you know, you either have the people that don't understand the value of culture, and sadly there are many of those ⁓ in corporate America, And then you have people who kind of pay lip service to it, you know, especially the startup the young startup entrepreneurs who talk a lot about culture, but for them culture is like, yeah, you know, we have all these perks and free food and here nobody ever has conflict and we all get along, which, you know, as you and I talked about in our in our initial call, you know, when there's no conflict, that's that's the first sign that you have a problem with your culture. Yes. How like what actions can you take as a CEO and as a founder to start intentionally creating and shaping the kind of culture that you want to have. That includes something like candor over diplomacy. What what do you do? Yeah, I I I think ⁓ going back to the beginning of the call, I talked about the corporate bureaucracy that I that I saw firsthand. And that was one of my goals early on. Hey, look, however, whatever happens with GPRS, I never want it to be run like a big company. So we have ⁓ one of our goals is to be the biggest small company we can be. That I mean, that could be ten thousand people. But we don't want to run it like a big company. We we we we want to run this like a s we wanna maintain the ability to be agile and pivot quickly and not be so committed to one course of action that we yeah let it crush us as we you know fail at it. I think being overly transparent and you know sharing ⁓ company performance. I think including the people who are responsible for delivering the goals, the the the revenue targets, including them in setting those targets. make them feel like they have ownership there is what is not just, hey, this is what you need to do next year. But I I actually had a voice in contributing to this. Ultimately it's going to be readership and then ultimately ownership who you know gets the final sign off on it. But listening and I honestly just try to do this without choking up. As I was leaving, I got a just a ton of email messages and and and thank you notes. You know, One of the things that really stood out to me, ⁓ yeah, there was a few people that said, Look, you went out of your way to to get to know people and ⁓ really make them feel like like they were part of a family, like like this was not just another job. They weren't a number. One of the things that I'm I'm happy is going to continue, yeah, after I've stepped out of that CEO role. Every two weeks we have a new group of project managers come into Ohio for for training. It's a it's a two week course and the leadership team, who whoever from the leadership team is in the office, we have lunch with them and we ask them, How'd you get here? How'd you find out about GPRS? What were you doing previously? Where are you from? What's important to you? Just somebody told me it's yeah, this is my third week with the company. I just had lunch with the CEO. I never met a CEO of a company that I ever ⁓ worked with before. There's not much that separates me from them. Yeah, I started a company. It it it grew, but I care about the same things that they care about. I wanted to provide for my family. I wanted to be part of something special and and unique. I wanna be a good example. ⁓ I think that that's important to to to most people. And helping people to see and realize that they're heard, they're they're they're cared about, that you're acting in their best interest, even if it doesn't feel like it. I think all that And then ⁓ I was always careful to not call it my company. It was it's our company. And one of the things I'm proudest of, Patrick, in ⁓ in the last five years, this truly is our company. Yeah. There's ⁓ with our second private equity partner, I asked if they would be willing to open up ownership opportunity to every single person in GPRS. The first ⁓ the first result was tremendous. We were only with our first private equity partner for two and a half years. And there was a four point three times return on equity in that two and a half year window. And yeah, that was great. But I thought, man, how awesome would it be if we could open up that kind of opportunity to every single person in our company. They don't have to invest in it, but if they want to, if they if they believe in what we're doing and they have some tolerance for for risk, to give them that opportunity to Have an ownership stake in the company they choose to work at would be pretty incredible. So ⁓ in 2020, we opened up that opportunity. And today about 30% of the people that work in in GPRS have an equity stake. Amazing. That's amazing. I mean, it's it's a it's a fascinating story because you know, I think there's a lot of people out there that look at, you know, capitalism, that look at society, that look at wealth. And where it's going in this country and are somewhat downcast about it. You know, I think, not to get, you know, political because of course that's that's not the objective of the show. But it you know, I moved back to the US a couple of years ago after six years, you know, running a startup in Latin America. So it's kinda like reconnecting with with with the culture and with the way things are done in the US. And as much as I love this country, you know, and s I choose to live here, you know, the reality is that, you know, that that the gro the the wealth inequality has grown significantly over the last ten or twenty years. Right. And the opportunities are not what they used to be for a lot of people. And when you marry that with, you know, cost of gas at the pump and cost of groceries, cost of education, cost of healthcare, it's it's a challenge for a lot of people. That's ⁓ it's a really interesting point that you make, Matt, because I think ⁓ it sounds like you guys were able to do something which so few companies have done. Patagonia is an example of another company that's done this. You know, which is to create a a a high performance culture where the average employee can also benefit in in the rewards that come when the company does really, really and I think ⁓ probably more companies should do this. And there's many, many different reasons why they why they don't. I guess, you know, if you're if you're looking on this from the outside, you know, obviously there's clear benefits, but I'm just curious, what were the benefits when you guys started to make this available to people? ⁓ was it just reinforcing the existing culture that you had? Or did you did you did you want to do something else? Or and and and more importantly, I think also, you know, what what what was tangible? What could you really see once you made the average employee able to participate in the games of the company? Was there a change in people's motivation or commitment or innovation or enthusiasm? Whatever. I'm just curious what you saw from that. Yeah, I think just in general, you tend to care more about ⁓ you know, what is yours, right? What what what what you own. And when you have an ownership stake in the company that you work at, you don't need to hear the accountability. Right. You don't need to hear, you know, what's gonna happen if if if we had we achieve these these growth targets. I mean you're you're you're you're part of it. I mean and it it's also this this belief it reinforces this this this belief that you already had. You feel strongly about the company you work for. You feel strongly about the good that that you're doing with the services that we're providing. But yeah, it gives you that extra incentive to help create a little bit more awareness, to to make that extra push, to communicate a little better than than you may have. So I'm talking about mostly people in the field, but also let's say turn it on the on the operational side, it the internal operational side. If you see an inefficiency or if you see something that doesn't make sense to you, it also gives you maybe it enhances that cur that courage a little bit to speak up and say something. Like, hey, ⁓ this doesn't make sense to me. Why do we do it this way? I think we could do it better if. And I think it also enhances the humility on the receiving side. If someone comes to you and say, This doesn't make sense to me, is there a better way we could do this? To have the humility to say, ⁓ you know what? I actually agree with you. I I I think I I would like to help solve this problem. And I might be the I might be the something that I implemented that that needs to be changed. So I think all that is just enhanced through this this culture of ownership. And not even direct ownership, but even that that possibility of ownership is maybe I don't have that equity right now, but maybe that's something I'm working towards where we so for example within GPRS we open it up twice per year. in March and September that that's the opportunity for the buy-in. And I know it's a goal for for many, ⁓ new new hires as we talk to them. What? This is this is that possibility exists here. I could I could actually have some ownership in this company that I believe is going to grow that I hear the leadership team talk about going from two hundred and fifty million in revenue to a billion in revenue. Any investment in a company like that has gotta gotta grow with that. All that I think it just just enhances all those fundamentals of culture that are so important to us. So for the last segment of the show before we we wind down, obviously I cannot wind down the show without talking about the obvious elephant in the room, which is, you know, your transition. Yeah. And it's it's fascinating because, you know, I've talked to so many CEOs who struggle with the transition, right? It's like when I work with CEOs, it there's like three kind of transitions. One is first time CEO trying to figure out how to be a good CEO. Second is CO in the middle of, you know, chaos and a firefight trying to just transition and survive that. And then the third is your situation, which is much more unusual, right? Which is, you know, you've been running a company for a number of years and then and then you proactively decide that it's time to move on to something else. After twenty-five years of running and building this company, which was, you know, this was your baby, right? This still is your baby, seeing it, you know, grow like this. 1100 employees, 60 cities, 250 million plus revenue, the culture that you've built. What what were the signs for you that it was time to start thinking about that transition? Right. I think every every CEO gets there. Some of them fight tooth and nail for that never to happen because they just, you know, are don't know what to do afterwards and are so wedded with that identity that it's inconceivable to them. But when did you start to think that maybe it was time to you know, move on and figure out the next chapter of your life. I had a few goals. ⁓ one of them my my youngest is twenty years old right now and he goes away to to college. He goes to Liberty University in Virginia. But one of the things that was really important to me was I wanted to see him. I wanted him to see his dad going to work. I did not want him to be a junior or senior in high school and see his dad lounging around in shorts and a t shirt. ⁓ eight o'clock in the morning as he's walking out the door for high school. I wanted him to see his dad gone, his dad off to do something of importance. Yeah, that that was that was important to me. But I read a book a few years ago called Halftime and just summarize it real quick. ⁓ was a yeah ultra successful businessman through a tragedy, he reflected on his life. He was fifty years old and realized that if fifty's the halfway point, He had spent the first half of his life kind of building things of earthly significance and wanted to focus the second half focused on things of eternal significance. Well, I'm gonna be I just turned forty nine ten days ago and so I'm gonna be fifty next year and if I can get a little early start on that on that second half and focus on things of eternal significance. So ⁓ my priorities in the second half are faith, family, friends, and fitness, golf. So in that order. So yeah, I'm gonna yeah, I'm working with an organization called Lifewise Academy where they ⁓ they're a rapidly growing organization now. ⁓ they started in Ohio in two thousand nineteen and their mission is to teach the Bible to public school students. And I'm gonna I'm gonna volunteer role with them as ⁓ advancement ad ambassador and they get tremendous reception in rural communities. They've done very well in the suburbs, they really struggle in the inner city. So that's what they've asked me to help solve is how can we create a formula, a repeatable process, a program that we can take this from one city to another and f make this happen in in our city schools as well. So I wanna be devoting time to that. And then obviously time family. I've got two kids married now all in the last ten weeks. Two kids married and then ⁓ yeah. ⁓ Yeah, friends. You get to spend some more time with some friends. I that's that's one thing I've not done great in the last twenty five years is there just hasn't been a ton of time to do that. But ⁓ then I've got some fitness goals that I'm working towards. And then by my fiftieth birthday I wanna be a nine point nine index in golf as well. So I've got to shave two point seven strokes off to make it happen. Yeah. And twelve percent body ⁓ body mass. Twelve twelve percent lean fat body mass, right? ⁓ so move. I I'll tell the goal. The goal for my fiftieth birthday next year is on the same day to run a five fifty nine mile and bench press three and bench press three hundred and fifteen pounds on this. There you go. And you're you realize that this is you know, you're gonna be on this podcast talking about this. So me and the viewers are gonna hold you accountable. We will we will tool tune back in a year from now on YouTube and put in some comments and you'll be required to put in what the what what metrics you have. You can shelter with me ⁓ in next next July. I just like I did with GPRS, I've built a team around me to help me achieve these goals. So there's a there's a couple of guys that I'm working with that w we are aligned and we're pursuing these goals together five days a week in the gym, making it happen. Very, very cool. Very, very cool. I you know, when when when you also when you think about, you know, the identity that you carried, you know, for twenty five years, right, as founder, as CEO. What was the hardest part of letting go of that identity? And what what would you recommend other founders who are maybe, you know, or CEOs who are in a similar situation? You know, they're starting to get to that window where maybe it's time for them to move on and do something, you know, impactful like what you're doing with Lifewise Academy. How would you advise them or what can you tell these kind of people about your process of letting go of that identity that you carried for so long to move on to the next chapter? How do you actually go about doing that? Yeah, I I would say this is just what worked for me. It was not hard. And the reason it was not hard is because I had a supreme level of confidence in my successor. ⁓ I had a s I have a supreme level of confidence in the team around me. And I think, yeah, when you're in a position of leadership, your job is to make you know those coming up behind you better than you. I think the same thing applies to parenthood. Your job for raising your children is to make them a better person than you, to help them avoid some of the mistakes that you've made and basically raise their ceiling higher than yours. Same thing applies in business. I want Jim my successor. I want him to be a better CEO than me. So I want him to understand where I fell short. If I could do it over again, what a few things I would have done differently. ⁓ I wrote him a memo detailing all this and just so he could refer to it. And one of the things I I I closed that memo with. I'm not gonna go into detail on the entire memo, but I think it's important. ⁓ I said when you call me and you ask me for advice, don't be surprised if my first question to you is, you know, what does your instinct tell you? Because you have been put into this role for a reason. And you've got to learn to trust that your own instinct. And you will ⁓ when you're when you have a problem, I'm probably going to push you towards your instinct as opposed to my advice. It's a really good point. And I think, you know If you haven't considered it, Matt, and I'm sure you've probably considered it, but I'll ha I would I would not be doing my job if I didn't tell you this. You know, maybe ⁓ maybe at some point, you know, in the future there's a there's a role for you to, you know, to advise other CEOs, right? ⁓ and I'm sure you've probably thought about that. But I think the the the world has a a glaring lack of leadership ⁓ today. I think you see it in politics, you see it in the corporate world, you see it in a lot of different areas, and I think You know, part of the reason I do what I do is is ⁓ making the world a better place is also helping those leaders grow into becoming good leaders. And one of the things I hear you say, which I don't think a lot enough people talk about, is that rather than telling leaders what they need to do, it's asking the right questions so that they can then figure it out, right? And and and own the decision. ⁓ but this has been fascinating, man. I think ⁓ you know, your your reference on the the book ⁓ half time by Bob ⁓ Bob Buford, right? If I'm not mistaken. I'll I'll I'll put a link in the description of this podcast so people can can refer back to that. ⁓ that's probably the most impactful book I've ever read in my life. Yeah, now now you're gonna you're you're gonna force me to add it to my re to my reading list, which is hor horrifically long already as it is because I have this bad habit of like reading two or three books at it at the same time with one of my friends told me, he's actually the the C O O of G P R S. Chris Moore said, Great way to read. First chapter, last chapter. Because in the first chapter they tell you what you're gonna read. In the last chapter, they tell you what you read. And then just look at anything in the middle that really looks interesting. Exactly. Yeah, I remember I took a class once at college and they teach you how to skim read. And it's very similar to that. It's like you read the first paragraph, you know, and then ⁓ and then you take some notes. My son actually got really, really good at doing this. He he he takes a lot of notes and he writes the notes. And he claims that, you know, that helps him really remember. I I tended to be more pragmatic and do audio books. And then I would wonder why I could remember ninety percent of the books that I was reading. Right. So ⁓ so we look, we have it we w tradition as as as we wind down the podcast, we have our lightning round of questions. Three quick questions, three quick answers. ⁓ they're just kind of quirky and fun. And then we will ⁓ and then we will wrap up because I know we're over time and you've been incredibly gracious with your time. So the the first question for you is ⁓ if you could have Any superpower you could imagine, what would you pick? To be able to see a day into the future. Very cool. All right, cool. Yeah, that would be handy. Second question. If you could have dinner with anybody in history, alive or dead, who would you pick? Jesus. I knew you'd say that. ⁓ Yeah, there's ⁓ there's a bunch of people who have been on the show who have said that. And I think that would that is definitely a fascinating choice. And last but not least, and you can even think of your kids, ⁓ when you answer this one, I I always think about mine. If you were to give advice to a young person today, maybe graduating college or going through college and giving them advice on how to find a career of meaning and purpose, what would you tell them? Do something you really care about. It's easy to be great at something and really apply yourself if you really care about what it is you're doing. Yeah. It's if you look around, it's so unbelievably easy to be average these days. Yeah. If you just show up on time, answer your phone when it rings, respond to texts and emails, do what you say you can do, you've already put yourself in the far above average category. Yeah. But if you just are willing to push yourself a little bit, you can be Elite and it's much easier to do that if you find something that you really care about as opposed to just another J O B. Yeah, I think it was Denzel Washington who once said, Don't just aspire to make a living, aspire and make a difference. Mm-hmm. And that really stuck with me. Well, Matt, this is ⁓ it's been a fascinating conversation, man. I I really appreciate, you know, your your time, ⁓ your honesty, your openness on on a variety of topics here. I think, you know, you've had a a fascinating journey ⁓ of exciting for where you go next, you know, ⁓ with what you're doing now. And ⁓ you know, thank you for for sharing a lot of insight and a lot of learnings. I think there's a lot to learn from the this episode about leadership, about culture, about the role of faith, ⁓ about constantly learning and challenging yourself. And and and I think also, you know, the the point that you made about making organizations more inclusive ⁓ from the perspective of, you know, having more people benefit in in in the gains of successful. Enterprises, I think, ⁓ is is a really important one as well. So so folks, if you know, if any of this resonated today, if this was helpful, if this was useful, you know, give us a little like, hit smash that like button, subscribe to the channel for more great episodes like the one we just had with Matt. ⁓ drop some questions in the you know in the comments. You know, if you have questions, ⁓ this is a great time to ask them. And and you know, ⁓ I'm sure Matt Matt and I could find some ⁓ some time to answer whatever questions you have. And ⁓ make sure to tune in every week. We're dropping new episodes ⁓ you know, every Thursday morning. ⁓ and this has been another amazing episode ⁓ with Matt Aston on Morecamp Filtered. And ⁓ we will see you next time. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you, Patrick.