That doesn’t open doors. People go.
John Corcoran: 10:56
Yeah. Well, so I mean, I my career is similar. You know, I work for Dreamworks, which was kind of like the Tesla of its day, was an exciting company to work for. And then I worked in the white House. And that open door is like crazy.
You literally can call anyone and leave a message and be like, yeah, call me back at the white House and you get calls back from anyone in seconds. Yeah. You know, and it’s an amazing door opener. And then to go from that to, you know, I went to going back to grad school, you know, as a grad student, you know, and it’s it’s a weird shift I want to ask you about, you know, we teased that this conversation was going to be about reinvention. So we’re going to talk about some of your other chapters.
But an interesting observation is, you know, I have your professional bio here, and it doesn’t say anything about you being a former pro athlete. Eight. How do you feel about it now? I know it’s many years later, but I mean, for me, like, I’m thinking like, that’s amazing that you were a former pro athlete. You’ve done a lot.
You’ve accomplished a lot in your career. But how do you feel about it now? Like, you know that it’s something that you don’t even really highlight?
Matt Sharrers: 11:57
Yeah. Because I mean, you know, honestly, it’s a good question. I guess I was just like, that was part of who I was, you know, almost 30 years ago. I’m 52, right? So 25 years ago, it was a great part of my life.
But where I am now and the work I’m doing now, while my athletic background and the discipline and and the experience I learned playing hockey is transferable, I consider my business career and what I’m doing now and pouring back into ultra high achievers, to be probably more recent to my business evolution than who I was in the mid 90s.
John Corcoran: 12:37
Yeah. And we’ll get to you’ve got a business now that actually is helping amateur athletes to go pro. So we’ll talk about that in a second. But so you you do a stint in the corporate world. You go into sales.
We talked about you know a bit of a, you know, kind of a a setback or a couple of steps back to take a couple of steps forward and then eventually SBI. So I mentioned him earlier. Greg Alexander, talk a little bit about where that came about. How did you end up teaming up with him?
Matt Sharrers: 13:08
Yeah, I was I was working at Cintas. I’d been there about a decade, which is a business services company, sold uniforms and floor mats and sanitation services and some massive business. And I got there. It was about $1 billion. And when I left it was about four.
And they they loved ex-military, ex-athlete, high, disciplined, coachable. And I was coming out of hockey. So that was.
John Corcoran: 13:37
Comfortable. Yeah.
Matt Sharrers: 13:39
So I went into that, moved up the ranks, became a vice president of sales. And while the work was good and I was making great money and probably more money than, than I imagined I would be making in my early 30s, I felt like there was more to do, and I was more intrigued by the system of selling and building a sales organization and how that worked. And I was interviewing with a couple of thought leaders, guys who had written books, and one of them happened to say to me, hey, you’re not a right fit for us. The guy, Geoff Smart and Randy Street from ghSmart, and they introduced me to Greg and Greg had just started SBI with Aaron Bartels, the co-founder. So I met them and I met Greg.
We spent about, I don’t know, nine months a year getting to know each other. And then, yeah, I guess 2008 end of 2008, they said, hey, let’s go. So I was the first employee that joined the original partners.
John Corcoran: 14:39
Now, was it that a good time to start a company that was advising other companies on sales? Of course, it was a historically bad time economically. Sometimes that’s a great time to start a company helping other companies. Other times it’s a horrible time.
Matt Sharrers: 14:54
Yeah, we you know, John, I would tell you, and if Greg was on right now, he would say like, it’s better to be lucky than good. And you make the most of your lucky breaks, which is something his dad always told him. I don’t think there was a lot of science like, oh, hey, we’re in like this crazy financial reset in 2008. It was we were a small services firm. There was four of us.
Five of us, six of us, seven of us.
John Corcoran: 15:20
You hadn’t built a big team at that point. You didn’t have a large overhead. Yeah. That helps.
Matt Sharrers: 15:24
Cash generative business had no debt, right? So. And then 2011-12, we were like, oh, man, I think we’ve got something here. right? Went from a million a year to 2 million in revenue.
We went from 2 to 4, and we just. We were climbing. And then this sort of cottage industry of sales effectiveness really started to take shape in that decade between 2010 and 2020. And firms started popping up and we stumbled into private equity on by accident and then.
John Corcoran: 16:01
Stumbled into serving private equity companies.
Matt Sharrers: 16:04
Yeah. And that was something that I dove into Aaron and myself, while Greg and Mike sort of stayed focused on the core business and developing IP. Aaron and I went off to really figure out, like, this concept of doing due diligence, helping a private equity firm underwrite a new software company they were going to buy. What was the growth thesis? Could we improve sales productivity?
And we started to carve this niche out in private equity. And about that time, probably 2014, 2015, there was a lot of attention around software companies that were private that were being taken or, sorry, public that were being taken private.And we started to work with the Premiras and the TPGs and the Bain Capitals of the world. And it just became a flywheel where people realized, if we’re going to get great returns, we’ve got to figure out how to grow the top line of these companies. And we were right in the center of it
John Corcoran: 17:03
And it sounds like the way you’re describing it sounds like it was largely project based work, but did you find that it had a consistency to it, or did you build offerings that had more of a stickiness to it, so that it wasn’t like a boom and bust type of cycle that a lot of companies struggle with when they do project work?
Matt Sharrers: 17:21
Yeah, no, it was project based and it had boom and bust characteristics and we would have repeat revenue, but we really hadn’t figured out contracted. Did you know what you and I would now, and many of your listeners know as you know, are or. We experimented with a little bit of that. We did a lot to productize the offering. Hey, this is how you do market segmentation.
This is how you do a compensation plan to build efficiencies in the delivery organization and to create great data and great benchmarks for the clients. But it had a nature of boom and bust. But we got very fortunate. And even to this day, SBI continued to thrive because they continue to deliver good work.
John Corcoran: 18:10
You move from a partner to eventually becoming CEO, a stint that you stayed in for looks like about five years. What were the challenges involved in that, moving into that role?
Matt Sharrers: 18:22
Following a founder? So I was the second CEO, and it’s one thing to become a CEO in a company. It’s another thing when you take over for a founder with a big personality like Greg, and most founders have big personalities because they’re visionaries. And Greg had left the firm, which actually made it easier for.
John Corcoran: 18:42
Me a little harder if they’re sticking around, I would imagine.
Matt Sharrers: 18:45
Yeah. So but there were many challenges. We had just taken outside investment because we had to find a partner to help us buy Greg’s equity, because he owned 51% of the firm. So we did that, and all of a sudden it was like, ooh, time to grow up fast. Things like debt covenants and, you know, LTM, EBITDA, right?
John Corcoran: 19:06
So you had to worry about things that Greg didn’t have to worry about.
Matt Sharrers: 19:08
Yeah, right. When we were privately held, we’d be like, hey, we got three months of cash. Do we have three months of backlog? You want to take a dividend and let’s go to Cabo and run it through the business?
John Corcoran: 19:18
Yeah, right. Right.
Matt Sharrers: 19:20
Those those days came to a screeching halt. And we had to get we had to professionalize. The good news was we’d been serving private equity. I’d been in private equity boardrooms and sort of a little bit by osmosis knew that rhythm. But I made a lot of mistakes, you know, especially in my first 12 to 18 months and then kind of found my footing.
And it’s, you know, it’s something John, I’ve talked to others about. That was part of the impetus of writing the book, The Second CEO, because having taken SBI to market a couple of times and selling it twice, you listen to really disciplined, skilled investors who ask questions and don’t get emotionally tied into your story. They’re like, can I return capital to my investors through this asset? So when you listen to the questions and you think about good investing, you learn a lot by going through that process. When you are selling a company.
And I tell that to all the CEOs, there is no education. Zero better than running, starting a company, running a company and selling a company. Three different lessons, but they’re all good.
John Corcoran: 20:31
And of course, you were. You were the second CEO and you eventually transitioned it to a third CEO. So what was that first? What inspired that? Why did you decide that you wanted to make a change, and how did you approach that transition?
Matt Sharrers: 20:44
Yeah, when we transacted the second time in 2020, and I had been in the seat for about three years, we had we were fortunate to have multiple offers. And the business was was, you know, well positioned and sought after. I was 47 at the time and I had always had this vision, John, this dream of quote, retiring in quotation marks at 50. The definition of retirement. I rewrote it at that time, which was I wanted freedom of time.
I was blessed that freedom of money had now been solved for, and I wasn’t worried about paying bills. What I was worried about is where my time went. because my time was not my own. And the building of SBI. Well, it was a great run and a lot of guys did really well.
You know, I logged a lot of domestic miles. I missed a lot of things as a dad. I’ve got four children and I felt like, man, if I could make my 50s my best decade, what would I do? I actually went out between age 49 and 50, and I interviewed two dozen people, and I asked them one question, what would you? And they were all people 60 and over.
Please tell me the one thing you would do if you were me to make your 50s the best decade ever. And to a man or woman time number one. Take care of your health for sure. Number two. Number three, you don’t need as much as you think you do.
Don’t lie to yourself. And what the, the the underpinning to that council was many people, and I see this in my community now, and the CEOs I’ve worked with for the last couple of decades, many people tell themselves they got to do one more run, and they get so addicted to the private equity flywheel and to more money and a second house and a third house, and then you need a bigger boat. And then you say, I got to fly private. And then it’s like, well, maybe I need my own plane. That’d be really like, you just end up like finding reasons to tell yourself this narrative, where if you told yourself 20 years earlier that you’d be in that situation, you probably wouldn’t believe it.
And I didn’t want to be in that spot.
John Corcoran: 23:02
Yeah. So talk about finding your replacement then.
Matt Sharrers: 23:06
Yeah, we went internal and external. So I was very fortunate. Number one, the private equity firm we partnered with, I was open with them during the sale process that I was 47 or actually 46, 47 at the time, just turning 47, that I did not want to run the firm beyond 50. I would love to be affiliated, be in the chairman’s seat, stay an investor. But I wanted freedom of time in my 50s and they were comfortable with a transition.
So that was number one right out of the gate. Even though I ran the business for a few years after they bought it. Number two, we partnered with JH smart to do a scorecard assessment of what the business needed. Really laid out objectively, what would the third CEO of SBI need to have? Then we looked externally and we looked internally.
We weighed our options and we had somebody internally, Mike Hoffman, who right now still is the CEO of SBI and has turned out to be the right choice. Who we felt with some coaching and development could, you know, get ready internally to assume the seat. And that’s how I and that’s how we did it.
John Corcoran: 24:14
And any lessons learned from that transition.
Matt Sharrers: 24:18
Oh wow. Yeah. Number one when you become a chairman, define a scorecard and stay out of your CEO’s way.
John Corcoran: 24:26
Define scorecard for the CEO. The replacement CEO. Not for yourself.
Matt Sharrers: 24:29
Define a scorecard for yourself.
John Corcoran: 24:31
Okay.
Matt Sharrers: 24:32
You’re not part of the L, the executive leadership team anymore. Like be a chairman. Right. Run the comp committee. Run the board meeting.
Be an extension where the team needs you. But ask the CEO, how can I serve you as chairman? And what Mike and I did early on was. And part of this came from the smart team. And so grateful to have had Randy and his team in our corner is, hey, Matt, there’s like 3 or 4 things as chairman that would be helpful to the business that you can do.
And other than that, Mike runs the company.
John Corcoran: 25:07
And were those things that you had to uplevel your own skills to get better at were those things that were unusual?
Matt Sharrers: 25:16
One of them was around mergers and acquisitions. Positions. So Mike wanted to and we as a board felt it was time to start buying companies. So I think I was helpful initially of sort of defining the market, talking to potential selling founders, a very small professional services businesses who would look at an SBI and be like, ooh, that could be a nice home for our company. So I did that and I still had a lot of relationships in the field.
John, I was a very commercial CEO and when I was our senior partner, I had a lot of private equity relationships. So I maintained a lot of those. I ran like CEO forums, things that I really enjoyed. So, you know, opening doors, being a bit of a thought leader for the firm because I’d built some some pretty good gravitas.
John Corcoran: 26:05
And that leads you to eventually Etj life. Now this is a new company, Etj advisory. You, after stepping into the executive chairman role, you take a little bit of a pause and do some coaching. And Etj stands for Enjoy the Journey. Tell me a little bit about what the inspiration was behind.
You know, you just said a second ago about, you know, my 50s don’t want to start any new companies, but you did start another company. So how do you put like guardrails in place to ensure that this would not consume you?
Matt Sharrers: 26:39
Yeah. So I did a couple things. The first thing is when I moved to the chairman role and, you know, quote, retired out of the CEO job and had time. I spent time like not doing much. I was sitting on a couple of private equity boards, coaching a couple of private equity backed CEOs, and that was good.
And I was in the chairman role, but I had quite a bit of time. So I read a bunch. I enrolled in a couple of different programs, and I enrolled in a program called Half Time in 2022, which was based on the best selling book that was written in the mid 90s around finding purpose and moving from success to significance in the second chapter of your life. And that had a absolutely transformative effect because it helped me sort of understand my purpose, like higher purpose, like, why am I here? But also allowed me to kind of reimagine how I spent my time.
And when you’re 49 or 50 years old and you’ve got, you know, two calls on your calendar, all your buddies are working full time, there’s nobody to play golf with. You’re kind of like, okay, maybe I didn’t want to work 72 hours a week and be the CEO of SBI somewhere between that.
John Corcoran: 27:52
And two hours a week.
Matt Sharrers: 27:54
Yeah, and eight hours a week.
John Corcoran: 27:55
Yeah.
Matt Sharrers: 27:56
Is probably my happy spot. And I defined what work would be in my life. And my wife and I spent a lot of time just thinking through that. And we had started the Etj platform in 2020, initially as a platform to give back to elite athletes and keep my dad’s legacy, because my dad used to always tell me to enjoy the journey. And when he passed away in 1995, Etj was always in my head.
So this was a way to honor my father in a very purposeful way. And hopefully when I pass, my kids will keep the Etj brand and legacy going.
John Corcoran: 28:34
And now there’s kind of three different sides to it. That correct? There is advisory. There is this community that you built specifically for PE back CEOs. And then also you are helping amateur athletes that want to go pro.
Matt Sharrers: 28:50
Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. On the philanthropic side, we actually opened a gym here in Scottsdale. We have a man who who runs that business for us.
I mean my wife and I are like board members. You know, we helped outfit it and get it ready and get it going. And he trains football and volleyball, basketball. He’s done a lot of professional athletes. and then we help sponsor a few of his children who are mixed martial artists.
Two of them just went pro. So we have a lot of joy in that. And that family has become an extension of our family, and that’s been one of the greatest blessings we’ve had. And then Etj advisory is the board work that I do for private equity boards. And I sit on, on the on the board seat, and I’m a lead director on a couple of those.
And then Etj life is the business that we started recently.
John Corcoran: 29:40
And then the book. So talk a little bit about the book.
Matt Sharrers: 29:43
Yeah, the book is a a very pragmatic, simple book called The Second CEO: Accelerating Scale When Following the Founder. And it’s written for people like me who take over for a founder and a private equity-backed environment and go, okay, I’m a first-time CEO. Typically, I’m in a private equity backed environment. There’s a clear playbook over a 4 to 6 year time horizon. And John, it was the book that in 2016, when Greg came to Aaron and Mike and I and Scott and John and said, he’s going to leave.
It’s the book that I went looking for that couldn’t find. There was no playbook. Like culturally, what do you do? What is a value creation plan? Like everybody talks about that.
But like as a pragmatic CEO, not a 29-year-old kid from Harvard who does math, like how do you take one and drive it as a CEO? How do you build a team, your team, not the founder’s team. How do you have operating rhythms? What’s the right org design? How do you build a board?
Do you need three board members or one? What role do they play? How do you manage them? Like it’s there was nothing out there. So I wrote a guide.
I wrote a book, it did well, and I didn’t really write it. Cards face up. I wasn’t writing it. Thinking about starting ETJ Life. I wrote it because I knew I would be coaching and I codified my coaching methodology.
ETJ life was a byproduct of the book, did well. I had some more demand on the board side that I didn’t really want to take on, and I was talking to a couple guys in my network and I was like, you know what? I think I’ve got one more run in me. Not 72 hours a week, but more than eight. And I want to start something from scratch.
And being a founder is, as you know, my buddy Greg would say, like, there’s nothing better. But it also teaches you a lot about yourself. And I joined Greg, Aaron and Mike when the business had already been started. So while I was in early and I helped build it, I had never had the kitchen table experience and I wanted to have that. I like hard things.
I work out very, very hard physically, and I think hard things force you to evolve at a rapid rate. So I kind of like the deep end of the pool. And maybe that’s why I went from hockey to fortune five to entrepreneurship and now this.
John Corcoran: 32:17
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. New challenges. You know, if the goal was to make your 50s your best decade ever, then why not take on something that’s going to be inspiring and new and different and a new challenge?
Matt Sharrers: 32:29
Well, and I’m getting to do it with a lot of scars on my back having built SBI. Now, having worked with other private equity backed businesses as a board member, seeing some outcomes happen. Done enough stuff. It’s also the ability to apply those learnings. And I’m working with a couple of founding partners and my wife at the helm, and that’s been an amazing experience because my wife is the yin and yang to me.
I’m vision and commercial and ideas, and she is an accountant by trade, was, you know, in corporate accounting, led a massive finance team. Super detailed. So that’s great. And my two founding partners, Randall and Bob, bring complementary skill sets. And truly, Randall’s the guy that runs the company day to day.
So what I’m doing is teaching Randall how to run a services firm and build a community. And I am yeah, I work in the business, but I’m also like lead investor founder.
John Corcoran: 33:30
Yeah, yeah, Matt, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and connect with you and ask any questions if they have questions about these various businesses?
Matt Sharrers: 33:38
Yeah. ETJLife.com. So exactly as it sounds, or you can find me on LinkedIn. And, John, I appreciate you having me. Great questions.
And I love what you guys what you guys do.
John Corcoran: 33:49
Absolutely. Matt, thanks so much for your time.
Outro: 33:54
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.