Matthew Powell: Episode 1075

Transcript

[0:00:38] HA: My next guest is here to talk about four essential ingredients to cultivate the success of your family business, working with your family on the business, in the business and on yourself. Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest, Mathew Powell, is here to talk with us about his new book Build to Flourish. Let’s dive in. Hey everyone. So I’m here with Matthew Powell today and I’m really excited because we have some very interesting and fun stories to share around his new book. The book is called, Build to Flourish. Matthew, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time.

[0:01:20] Matthew Powell: Thank you so much for having me.

[0:01:22] HA: Yeah, this is great man. Way to put together your wisdom, your heritage, your family’s sort of rich history and really teach something to people out there who are, you know, are the next generation. You know, the ones that got to carry that legacy for our great grandfathers and great grandmothers and family. So I’m really excited to have you on the show today. In our audience, there are a lot of people who, whether they own their business or whether they’re passing it down or perhaps like you, received the business, right? Or maybe purchased it, there are a lot of things to think about, of course, and how to keep those things alive and you know, refreshed. So I’m really excited today because I kind of want to let you tell people, sort of, about you, your background, your history, perhaps where you grew up and what was interesting, what was happening around you that kind of led you on this path but yeah, take it away. Share your background a little bit.

[0:02:15] Matthew Powell: Absolutely. So I am fourth generation, now president at Century Fence Company and I never planned on joining the family business. It was never in my future growing up. My grandfather had six daughters and none of his daughters joined the family business and so when my mom and dad got married, they moved out to Virginia and that’s where I grew up, in Virginia and the business is in Wisconsin. So I was never really exposed to the business growing up besides coming up for Thanksgiving and in Christmas and Easter as a family. So it was never on my radar and my grandfather was patiently waiting for me to express interest. After college, I started doing investment banking down in Atlanta and after helping sell family businesses, for over a year, I started to appreciate the people inside these numbers that I was crunching and that’s what piqued my interest in coming to join the family business. So I asked my grandfather if I could come join the family business and he said, “Absolutely, we would love to have you.”

[0:03:29] HA: That’s so cool man.

[0:03:30] Matthew Powell: Thank you, and when we struck a deal and my wife and I, fiancé at the time, we got married and then we moved up to Wisconsin, I didn’t know anyone besides my family and my first day at work I vividly remember, Is at my desk and didn’t have anything to do. I didn’t have anyone to kind of tell me where to go, what to do and then, I tried searching for books on family business that resonated for my situation on what do you do when you’re joining the family business and you’re trying to prepare yourself to become the future president or the future leader? And there was nothing out there so I started quickly realizing, “I should document this journey.” So I spent the past seven and a half years documenting the journey to becoming president. Now, put it together and sharing everything I went through and what I’ve learned emotionally, spiritually, relationally with all the stakeholders that are involved in family business, from family vendors, customers, a lot of different dynamics that I’m really excited to share and have a mental model in how to work through that transition that so many family businesses go through.

[0:04:39] HA: Wow man, what a journey. I’m glad you shared so many bits and pieces that kind of add up to where you’re at but I love the fact that you decided to sort of archive your journey. Document it so that perhaps one day, it’s useful to you or maybe your kids or so on and so forth, right? However, this gets passed down. But what a cool way to think about what you’re about to do is document it, archive it, that’s really powerful man but let’s go back in time a little bit. You know, you talk about, you kind of opened up the book a little bit around your great, great grandfather, who from what I remember was born like 1818 or something like that. And he just sounds like I got to say it man, he just sound like a badass human being that went through some stuff and came out on top. Can you share a little bit about him and sort of how he laid this foundation down?

[0:05:29] Matthew Powell: Absolutely. So when he got out of school, he decided to get involved in the steel industry and he, at the time decided to work for Bethlehem Steel, which was the Amazon of steel at that time and after working in the industry for a year or two, he decided, he wanted to try and go out on his own. So he started a business in scrap metal business in the Chicago area and he failed. So he got back up on his feet and he decided, “You know what? I’m going to try a vacuum sales agency” and he failed at that and then he tried a third business, a patented mail opening machine business and that failed too. He failed three times and then he had to move home to his parent’s house because he was broke and so, he decided, after failing three times to get back up the fourth time. And on that fourth time, he started another scrap metal business and that fourth business, he saw storm clouds brewing in Europe in 1913 and so he decided with what he’d learned and kind of he understood some of his blind spots, so he decided to make a bet in the market and pay 10% above market pricing for steel knowing or seeing that there were storm clouds brewing. So he struck this deal and then the Lusitania sunk in May of 1913 and then he made $400,000 in 1913, which is millions of dollars in today’s dollars and that was the start of the company. At the time, it was called, Henry Brianton Company and he created momentum from the scrap metal business and then ultimately, he evolved it into the fence business.

[0:07:19] HA: Man, what a powerful story. Like I couldn’t stop reading it like when I was going through it. I was like, “This is just so cool” and then, I love that you kind of, you take us through this rich history of how things get moving but he gets into the fencing business of course but this was like, I guess, you know, from what I read, you know, he literally goes to war, goes to France and then ends up coming back from that to something really different and it’s a very fascinating story too. All of you out there, you know, this is one book that I really just dove in and was like, “Woah” I’m already like, knee deep in this book like let’s go. So it was really cool man. So tell me a little bit more about, you know, why did you decide now would be a great time to kind of launch this book, you know, and position it to help other people? Like, who are you specifically trying to help with this book?

[0:08:08] Matthew Powell: I’m seeking to help individuals that are in the second chair position and that are trying to find their way to serve their family and serve their business. It’s so hard in the second chair because you need to follow but you also need to lead and you need to live in the present but you also need to lead for the future and you need go wide and you also need to go narrow. So there’s a lot of polarity and a lot of tension when you’re in that second chair. I’ve been so blessed to have so many great mentors that have shared so much advice with me along my journey and I wanted to put it into a package that might find its way into hands of people who are in that same pinch point that I found myself in.

[0:08:55] HA: I love that. I don’t think there is, you know, I feel like when we sit down and write a book but the book is actually for our younger, like, the younger version of ourselves, it’s weird, right? It’s like trying to send a book back in time but you also realize that time is irrelevant. The reality is though, there are people right now struggling with the same thing that you struggled with and that I feel like the bridge between that space instead of time is a phenomenal way to do it through a book or some sort of media, right? Some sort of medium especially in today’s world where we have more access now to those things and opportunities. So I love that. You said it yourself like, you sat down and you’re like, “Well, I need to read up, I need to expand my mind” right? Just like you’re thinking about, you know, the business in of itself, going narrow and wide and thinking future. Well, you were already practicing those things. I felt like from just hearing you speak at a young age and being like, you know, I got to position myself to just read a little bit more, figure something out or ask people or be open to advice and that also obviously helps cultivate your mindset, which is powerful but now, you understand how powerful that is and you want to create a tool, a resource that can really help those people as well. Very cool, very admirable of you, man. I love that but not many people speak on this concept of you know, which I found was really profound, right? As you open up the book, we’re right there in the contents man, it talks about on self-leadership, which I thought was really cool man, because let’s be honest, we all want to lead, right? In some way, shape or form and whether we know it or not, we are kind of leading our lives, right? And then maybe perhaps our families or kids life, you know, whatever it is, you know, however big that leadership role is, we tend to, in a weird way, neglect self-leadership, which I thought was really cool that you know, put that at the helm of your book. Can you talk a little bit about that and share some thoughts?

[0:10:53] Matthew Powell: Yeah, thank you. Leadership, I’ve come to appreciate as an inside job. If we’re not inspired, how the heck are we supposed to inspire our organization? And self-care and self-love is instrumental to leadership and personal mastery is essential to be the best leader possible. In that part of the book, for personal mastery, at the heart of it, it’s about fortifying our health, calibrating our mindset and healing our heart and elevating our soul. If we’re able to just increase our capacity as a leader, the capacity of our organization, inherently grows as well.

[0:11:34] HA: Wow man, that’s really beautifully said dude. Like, I just appreciate that and you’re like, 100 trillion percent spot on, in the sense of like, when there’s more of you available to live a full life, there’s more of everything else that happens around you also tends to want to expand, right? And that’s such a beautiful way to think about it. So I’m glad you started off the book with such a powerful sentiment to our own self and reality. Yeah man, and then you talk about sort of this idea of being on business. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[0:12:12] Matthew Powell: Yeah, absolutely. So on business is working on the business. It’s really systems thinking, we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we follow the level of our systems but we could set all these great goals for our business but if we don’t have the processes and the rituals in place, we will fall lower. There’s just, there’s been a lot of great books and advice that I’ve given around that concept of building systems that it’s really, really helpful.

[0:12:40] HA: And so I ran a print shop for about 10 years. I owned and operated a print shop, like those first couple of years, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew how to print t-shirts. I knew how to do these things but I was doing everything, right? Until I picked up, somebody told me is that, “Dude, you have to read The E-Myth” and man, yeah, I think we went from like, you know, maybe a 100 grand a year to like, you know, we tripled that the next year because of systems. I was like, “Oh my god, what am I doing?” Duh.

[0:13:06] Matthew Powell: It is very freeing to know that it’s been changed to get off the assembly line. It’s okay to empower others and it is our job as family business operators to create more jobs and to create more opportunities [inaudible 0:13:20.6]

[0:13:22] HA: See when you elevate, like you said earlier, elevate yourself to see it like a little bit above that horizon, you can see so many more opportunities again, not just for yourself but for other people and so you know, I love this idea again on business and then in business. So when you are in business, what do you like to share with people about sort of the inside job?

[0:13:43] Matthew Powell: The in business part is I think just the secret sauce that I don’t think a lot of people over the next year a lot of businesses and a lot of leaders they don’t really cherish. It’s when you’re in the business, you are with the people. You are with the people that make it happen and when we’re working 40, 50, 60 hours a week with our team that’s our opportunity to touch their lives and steward their lives and allow them to ultimately go home and be better parents and better leaders in their communities. It’s just when you are able to create an environment that they trust you and they are excited to be on the team because that is where the magic happens.

[0:14:23] HA: Yeah man and I think you know, that’s so powerful that you, you know, you keep kind of referring back to the people that you work with and that you surround yourself with. You know, obviously some of them perhaps are in families and come to work with your family, right? So I love this like really family oriented ideology behind everything you do and you keep tying it back whether it’s in business or working on the business and you lead from within yourself but really again, it’s about thinking about others and so all of these things are just like woven together and I feel like you know, whoever has been mentoring you man, like you know, give them a high five for me because it’s like it’s working. It’s working, no man, you know seriously, in all honestly like just always appreciate people who go the hard route to teach themselves things that are uncomfortable, right? Being able to be, you know, in a way selfless is kind of uncomfortable, right? So learning that and cultivating that over the years, you know, what it sounds like to me that’s what you’ve been able to do as you kind of take on this second role and then eventually hopefully maybe even run the whole thing one day but it’s that gradual learning phase. So I’ll be honest with you man, you know, I come from a big family and you know I’ll be honest, I’ve tried my hands at a few businesses myself and when I tried to bring family in and I am sure I can attest to a lot of people out there when I say this, you know, there is a lot of business advice too that’s talks about don’t be in business with family, right? Dude, so like you know, I haven’t had the best of luck but I’ll be honest. You know, we were refugees, we’ve gone through war, we were very traumatized young men and women and sometimes you know, we just bump heads or whatever it was and we just couldn’t quite get along when it came to money and business and how things should be but you know, that is besides the point. So the idea is how, you know, if there is advice out there for us, for those who may want to work with a family member or may want to start that business with family or like in your case, you are passing on this knowledge to people who are taking on their family business like how do you channel and work through the dynamics of the family structures? How do you work through things that come up, maybe issues, problems that are interpersonal?

[0:16:47] Matthew Powell: Yeah, great question. So within the build to flourish framework, the outer layer with family and the word that gives the most power for me and that resonates the most is stewardship, it is not mine. I think ownership is a trap if you get possessive and think of things in terms of I and then suddenly it is a scarcity mentality and now, we’re getting into a game that can get really nasty. By taking the role of stewardship, it’s just understanding that this is so much more than just business. It’s relationships and I have been really focused in this journey of making sure that conversations are being had with all stakeholders and that I am getting my thinking out in front of the shareholders of the business, so that they understand how I am thinking about things and that my interest are aligned with the family and trying to make it an opportunity for all of us to learn and just coming to the table with humility and that everyone can add to the conversation.

[0:17:56] HA: That’s so powerful and I love that the main thread you use is this idea of not only patience but it sounds like this thread is the thing that kind of loosely keeps everything together but for its own cause and you said it, you know, stewardship is so powerful but it is like you said, it is so much more than you. It’s for all of us, right? As we thrive, we all thrive. It’s you know, I don’t make a decision just based on what I want and need but like you said earlier, this is where it gets really hard, right? It’s making decisions for what we all need as a family unit, as a people working together, that’s really powerful man. So where is your business located? It’s on the East Coast, is that right?

[0:18:42] Matthew Powell: It’s in the Midwest. I grew up on the East Coast, yeah and it’s in Wisconsin.

[0:18:46] HA: Wisconsin. Are you in different – I feel like I was doing some research on here. You’re in a couple of different states too as well, aren’t you?

[0:18:52] Matthew Powell: Yes, we are. Yes, we’re in Wisconsin and Minnesota at this time.

[0:18:55] HA: That’s amazing, man. So tell me a little bit more about, you know, sort of your story. So you started archiving, you know, this process of transformation it sounds like.

[0:19:07] Matthew Powell: Yeah, so when my wife and I when we moved to Wisconsin, I didn’t know a soul and so I didn’t have anything to do after work so I just started picking up books to read and I didn’t like reading growing up. I didn’t like people telling me what books to read. I stumbled upon some really great books. To start off, the first book I read that I loved was, Start with Why, by Simon Sinek and then I just went to the bibliography of his book and then just started buying all the books that was in his book. Then it just rippled into me becoming a reader and I caught the bug and I started reading 40 to 50 books a year. So over seven and a half years, I just was absorbing that content on top of the experiences and the mentorship that I was receiving and it is kind of overtime compounded and I think if knowledge is power, reading is a superpower and it’s just something that I just get so excited about. I can geek out on books all day long.

[0:20:12] HA: Yeah and it is so interesting, right? Because we hope to all get that bug at some point. What’s interesting is when you realize like you’re in a position where like you said, you’re kind of like alone. You don’t know too many people and you’re just like, “What can I do with my time right now but I’m also in this weird position where I kind of got to learn some new skills” right? Or a new way to think about things, or a new way to approach things. You realized like reality is, the one thing to feed that urge I feel like is to read and once you pick up a pretty legit book like Start with Why, you are instantly hooked because it sort of starts to answer components of that urge, right? You go on this journey and you know dude, that’s where I found myself all the way in Scribe and then all the way into writing my book and all the way into speaking and I ended up leaving the printshop and selling that because I realized there was such a deeper aspect that I didn’t want to abandon, you know, as a part of who I am and my urge to learn and sort of understand things a little bit differently. So I think that’s really powerful man. So Matthew, like, I got to say man, like, congratulations to you on your book and really just taking the time to archive this work. I think that’s so valuable. When you see your company, you know, you’re obviously leading this into the future, where do you see this company going in the next, like, you know, five to 10 years?

[0:21:41] Matthew Powell: Yeah, I see over the next five to 10 years, us, building a place where we truly see people flourishing and for us, flourishing means people who feel inspired, they feel safe and they feel fulfilled and that’s something that we so desperately need more companies to aspire to do in our society and in our country. We need to seek to contribute to unity because we’re clearly all experiencing and seeing and witnessing brokenness and I think we have such an important opportunity in family business to contribute to unity regardless of where you are in the political aisle.

[0:22:22] HA: Wow, that’s so powerful man and I can’t agree with you any more, genuinely. I do recognize those things as well and I always look over to my wife and I’m just like, we just need to come together man, we got to… dude, I grew up an Arab Muslim kid, right? Like, but I had to learn to really be more accepting of who I am and be accepting of everyone else, right? Meaning like, it’s not that I wasn’t always accepting. It’s that everywhere, it’s different everywhere in the world and that’s okay actually. It’s the spice of life but we also need to have a commonality, which is human rights, human basics, you know, and that camaraderie that I think that many great nations can be built on. I tend to agree with that man. So if there’s one thing you want people to take away from this amazing book, this is again, everyone listening, this is why I was so excited to talk to Matthew today because I knew he would be dropping this kind of knowledge on me but I want to know like, if it’s one thing, you would give this piece of advice on that somebody would walk away with this, you know, from this book, what would that be?

[0:23:26] Matthew Powell: Taking care of yourself as a leader. If you truly want to inspire the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis, you need to be inspired and it’s not selfish and it’s important to prioritize your wellbeing on the journey of family business.

[0:23:43] HA: Beautiful answer. Matthew, thank you so much for sharing your stories and experiences with us today. Literally, like, congratulations to you for one, continuing this legacy. I’m sure your great grandfather, all the badassness that he is, he would be very proud of you right now looking down and you know, helping you from the other side I’m sure. The book is called, Build to Flourish: Leading Your Family Business into the Next Generation. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you, Matthew?

[0:24:14] Matthew Powell: You can find m at matthewpowell.com and I’ve got my contact information there and also if people are interested in following along, I write a weekly meditation and about business and where my team and where we’re heading on a weekly basis and what we’re struggling with and what we’re learning as we’re building an organization to flourish.

[0:24:34] HA: That’s awesome. Where can people sign up for that?

[0:24:36] Matthew Powell: On my website at matthewpowell.com.

[0:24:39] HA: Beautiful. Are you also on LinkedIn?

[0:24:40] Matthew Powell: I am, yes, Matthew Powell on LinkedIn.

[0:24:43] HA: Well, thanks again Matthew for your time, your energy and enthusiasm today. Man, I genuinely appreciate it. I learned so much in, you know, you did something for me today man, you’ve inspired me to keep going, to keep believing in my dreams as well. So on that note, I am genuinely grateful for your time today.

[0:24:59] Matthew Powell: Thank you for your time. This was fun.

[0:25:02] HA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find, Build to Flourish: Leading your Family Business into the Next Generation, right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.