Episode Description:
Mat Stillone started his first business Protein Supplies in his garage! So successful was it, that it eventually took over the whole house. This bold startup initiative, in the ‘better for you food’ sector, followed a period of deep reflection by Mat, who had suffered from anxiety in his late teens and early 20s. Mat felt he needed to express himself and do more of what mattered to him. Since then, he has started three more companies, all of which have become successful. Listen to this inspiring story of how Mat overcame adversity, built strong resilience, and found what really matters in life.
About Mat:
Mat is the Managing Director of Integrity Food Co, Protein Supplies Australia, Botanika Blends & Flexible Foods.
He was the Business News Australia’s Young Entrepreneur Awards Winner – Manufacturing, Wholesale & Distribution in 2021!
Contact Mat: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathew-stillone-b4797a41/
Points of Interest:
The “AHA” moment for Mat. (0:30)
Food industry, entrepreneurship, and product quality. (3:35)
Starting and growing a supplement business, quality control issues, and manufacturing products. (7:38)
Starting a contract manufacturing business and creating a brand. (12:09)
Entrepreneurship, innovation, and plant-based nutrition. (16:36)
Managing stress and purpose in business ownership. (23:29)
Entrepreneurship, resilience, and relationships. (31:52)
Transcript
Mike: Welcome to the Troubleshooter’s podcast with me your host Mike McGrath. Today’s guest Mathew Stillone started his first business protein supplies in his garage. So successful was it that it eventually took over the whole house. This bold startup initiative, in the better for you food sector, followed a period of deep reflection by Mat, who had suffered from anxiety in his late teens and early 20s. Mat felt he needed to express himself and do more of what mattered to him. Since then, he has started three more companies, all of which have become successful. So, sit back and listen to this inspiring story of how Mat overcame adversity, built strong resilience, and found what really matters in life. Mat Stillone Welcome to the Troubleshooter’s podcast.
Mat Stillone: Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.
Mike: I’m very grateful that you’ve been able to attend. You got into business? Was it your late 20s or early 30s? You started Mat?
Mat Stillone: Yeah, my mid 20s. Yeah. 26. I started my first business. Yep.
Mike: Okay. And up until then, Mat. So I didn’t know from your story. Just going back, a little bit that you? You sort of had a bit of an aha moment. One time when you were crossing the story bridge there in Brisbane about just not wanting to continue on with your job as an employee.
Mat Stillone: Yeah, that’s right. I was in. Yeah, I was on, you know, honestly, I was in a pretty dark place. I struggled with anxiety, depression, a lot of my teenage and, you know, early 20s. And yeah, a lot of things. I’ve moved to Brisbane to start a whole new life and a new journey. And I thought that would just change things for me. But it, I guess it did, obviously. But at that time, I just couldn’t. I felt like I had a higher purpose, something that, you know, something that was great for me out there. But I just was like, as was just a fingertips away, and I couldn’t quite get there. So yeah, I had this. I had this moment. And you know, at the same time I was working in, you know, the pharmacy industry. And yeah, I got, I got jacked up in thought, I think I could do something a little bit better. But yeah, on the story of bridge, I tried to U turn, which if anyone that knows the story of bridges, it’s wild to do that had a bit of a meltdown. But also, at that point, built out a bit of a page brief of what you call a business plan. I guess.
Mike: That’s nice. And so that was like an aha moment. And then that set you on a different journey where you thought you were going to do something by yourself on your own mat. Yeah,
Mat Stillone: I guess I spent a lot of my, you know, after high school, a lot of my time in, like I said, health food and pharmacy and, you know, selling products to people for all sorts of different health issues that they had had. At that same time, I was really on my own fitness and health journey as well. And I was experimenting a lot with amino acids and protein powders and nutritional supplements and for my own sort of benefits, but at the same time, studying nutrition and kind of understanding what was in these products that I was selling that they believe in. And that’s what was the kind of the driving force because for me personally, I got to the point where I was really felt uncomfortable selling the products to these people, I just didn’t believe in them anymore. And I thought I could do something better.
Mike: So coming back to the sort of that period around the aha moment. And why hell food that better for you space that you that you’ve moved into. Yeah,
Mat Stillone: I’ve asked myself this a fair bit. And what I’ve always said to people is like, I feel like were the sort of person I was and am, you know, I was very entrepreneurial as a kid, I my mum would used to say I could sell ice to an Eskimo but, but what I realized was that if you’re not passionate about something, and don’t believe in it, eventually that that hustle or whatever you’re doing to you know, make an income from you’ll end up just being used as hate yourself for eventually you just lose your passion, you know, use your drive your driving force. So I think I naturally gravitated towards food, but mainly like, the better for you sort of seeing that because, like my personal belief systems, and you know, partly how I was raised, but, you know, wanting to give, give consumers something better than is out there has always been something that I’ve been really passionate about. And, you know, the integrity of a product is like, really essential, you know, not only like the brand itself, but the ingredients through to the, you know, the supply chain of that product as well as like, utterly important to me.
Mike: It’s interesting, because that’s a reasonably modern current theme that right but if you go back I mean, I mentioned to you before we started and I go back into the food industry probably in the mid 80s. And, you know, the, it’s surprisingly unregulated, isn’t it the food industry still to this day,
Mat Stillone: if you delve more like Sega separate that a little bit more into more where I am in that space, I guess like, the natural sports supplement industry, the health food and health supplement industry is, in my opinion, very poorly regulated. It’s, it’s quite easy to kind of get skin in the game. And there are a lot of players in the game that, you know, what I would say is, you know, compromise the quality of a product for the sake of $1. Because it’s quite easy to fill a product full of things that make things cheaper, and not declare them on your labels, and no one really pulls you off about it. So the TGA obviously played their part, and they’ve really stepped up in that, which I’m very happy about personally, you know, a lot of my probably competitors aren’t very happy about that. But I think it’s really important to stick to the rules and make great products.
Mike: I mean, I do think there’s a growing army, or growing body of not just research and data, but there’s a growing army of leaders, right, particularly in the medical sector, who are beginning to really flesh out that whole you are what you eat stuff and, and starting to think about prevention. And, you know, I think we’re going to learn a lot over the next 50 years about the way the food chain has been compromised, frankly, Matt, but let’s not get into that today. I do know, right. So your first business was protein supplies, right? Yeah, that’s right. And that’s been going for, what? 1213 years now? Yeah. 13 years. Yeah. Okay. So how did you get started?
Mat Stillone: Yeah, like I said, I had that moment on the Story Bridge, got home, wrote this business plan out. And I kind of went in, I remember speaking to a lot of people about, look, this is what I’m doing. I think I can make this work. And I kind of leveraged off a few people that I knew in the health food industry, and I knew of a contact who was bringing in a few, I guess, nutritional sort of power hours into the into the country. And I decided to start doing a bit of r&d of my own, and experimenting and then trialing these products from my home kitchen to some of my friends and family and then the local markets as well. And it just kind of evolved from there. And yeah, grew from
Mike: So Matt, you developed a range, right? A protein range of an alternative protein range effectively. And was that a b2b business? Was it b2c was in both what were you? Who were your customers?
Mat Stillone: Yeah, so finally, funnily enough, it was originally a b2c business. So I was purely focused on direct selling from market stall. And then I then I kind of realized that this could this had some legs, people actually interested in these products are working. So I decided I had a bit of a strategy around getting into retail. And I tried my very hardest to distribute my own products into Southeast Queensland. And basically I drove around in a nice suit. Because I thought presentations really important. Although it was really odd for me when I was driving around this beat up, Toyota Hilux van in a suit, there’s going to any retailer that would take me serious and to the point where I would so convincing, like, I would go in there until I put this on consignment, I know, it’s going to work in this store. And I’ve built a really great community around locally around the brand. And then from there, the internet, e commerce was kind of only just happening, it wasn’t really such a huge thing. But then we developed it, I developed the website with a friend of mine as well and sold through that. And then that eventuated into finding a national distributor who helped us tremendously scale the brand into not only southeast Queensland but nationally as well. Who was the
Mike: product going to the sort of independent health food sector, were you going to the grocers, or who was stocking it?
Mat Stillone: Back in 2011, independent health food was massive still, it was very strong. And because I had grown up in a health food store, I built I built such great rapport with all these retailers. I understood both sides of it and which helped me navigate business and negotiating, getting my products stocked. I guess at the end of the day. That was my only focus for the first few years of my business was health food. This product sits in a health food store. I wasn’t so interested in going into like the traditional sports supplement stores because they were only just kind of discovering themselves and what that was stalking. But this whole natural sports nutrition stuff 13 years ago, there wasn’t really many people. There was only one player I could say that was actually had a bit of a footprint in Australia with it. So we will One of the first to really do it.
Mike: So you you develop the products, you find a market for them, you own the IP and the design like that. And you are getting that contract manufactured to begin with Matt. Right. And then I understood somewhere that you kind of started to get frustrated with the quality and consistency of that manufacturing you he made the leap of starting to manufacture yourself.
Mat Stillone: Yeah, well, just to go back, they actually didn’t own my pay to begin with, then yeah, okay, no. So this is where I learnt a valuable lesson in my business as a brand owner. So some of the products, I did own the IP, but a majority of them, I didn’t and, you know, took at the time, took the concept to a contract manufacturer, I thought it was my idea, I thought I owned everything, but through that process of dealing with them, and then having some quality, it’s pretty substantial quality issues. And then some kind of confidentiality breach sort of situations where I would say not a breach, but I didn’t only put over anyway, but basically the manufacturer for how we were doing and decided to launch your own brand and reach my customers as well. So I thought, okay, you know, I was in a situation where I go, Okay, do I take my business elsewhere, realizing that I don’t own any of this IP, I’m gonna have to do this all over again. And I realized that most, most manufacturers won’t sell the IP, some, some do and some offer, but I don’t think anyone in this day and age would think about doing that. So I thought, you know, what, I continually putting money back into my business, I was very frugal, and I had substantial amount of cash saved and decided, I’m gonna go and make my own products. Sec, the real turning point of the business as well.
Mike: So I mean, that’s a very bold step. But as you said, when it worked, didn’t it, so you’d created the demand, and now you were going to control it end to end.
Mat Stillone: Yeah, and like I said, before, Mike, like, for me, there’s, there’s many businesses out there that don’t know what they’re selling, they think they know what’s in their products. But they all use contract manufacturers. And that’s not to knock contract manufacturers at all, like I am one as well. But when I am so, you know, passionate the messaging with our brands, about the quality and the integrity of the product, I could not stand behind my product, knowing that I’m at the kind of, you know, groups of someone who may get a contract for out of spec whey protein and decide that this is a good idea to put this in this product, because we can make more margin here, those sorts of things were happening in the industry, and I knew about them. So it was really important to me to control the whole process from development through to finished product,
Mike: that manufacturing facility was that the integrity foods company, the contract manufacturing business? So is that your second business effectively? Or was it? Will you manufacturing under protein supplies still
Mat Stillone: under protein spider Australia? And yeah, so, you know, took out at least sort of small building and putting a food safe kind of processing room and put, hired a food technologist. And did we basically re rediscovered our whole range again, we had to so those those incredible process. But what then, you know, go forward a couple of years, the business continued to grow over, you know, year on year and people we started making a real name for ourselves in carving out, you know, the natural nutrition sort of space, you know, we had a lot of people come in, and then like, we really like your products, but we kind of want to make our own. And originally, a white label was sort of thrown around, like we just rebag the sun to everyone, you know, and anyone’s brands, but again, to me, you know, that’s not really a great opportunity, you know, I could see opportunity with creating IP and owning someone else’s IP as a business model. So it kind of naturally evolved into PSA protein, spider, Australia, you know, contract manufacturing. And then from that process, I was sort of it opened my eyes up to the opportunity in Australia with not only sports nutrition, but health through products through gluten free baked Mixes through to herbs and spice mixes, and you name it sort of thing. And that’s where that idea of integrity kind of came from, because I saw a lot of businesses coming to me getting pushed away from really large contract manufacturers because they don’t meet the MOQ. So they don’t understand the product. And it was basically I would take these people under my wing, so to speak, help them scale up their business and kind of invest in them as well at the same time and that was happening. I need to go all in on this with integrity, buy some more infrastructure, some buy the capacity that we need, get the floor space happy and get the staff this investment is going to work mean, integrity came from? Yeah, so then printing supplies basically became a brand under the integrity banner.
Mike: Yeah, interesting. So, I mean, you’d ostensibly you just keep moving forward, you keep, you know, you keep investing you, you call it bootstrapping, but you that sort of innovation, you know, one thing leads to another, doesn’t it? And then, particularly to try and do the right thing by people. I mean, you know, there’s the gap in the market, you’ve got large guys with, with nice facilities, but very high minimum order quantities, which are rolling out, they basically rule out all the innovators, because the innovators are guys like you, Matt, the guys, you know, the, the, you know, the the other people on the Story Bridge that have their aha moment and go, I think I’m gonna do this, and then they come and see you.
Mat Stillone: Yeah, and that’s a perfect way to say it. And that’s what I continue to say my business because these little guys that get shut when no offense to any one of my customers, and I’ve been listening to these smaller businesses have, that’s where the innovation really is. And these people, you can see the potential in what they’re doing. And you know, that they’re, you know, that was you five years ago. Yeah. And you just scale up. Yeah.
Mike: And then you ended up opening a business called flexible foods, which is a plant based food business, basically, why plant based and why flexible foods at that point? Well, so
Mat Stillone: it was actually a business before that they got launched, okay, you know, Botanica was The following business that came out of, you know, the brainstorm of what integrity was. So integrity was trading by probably three, four years at this stage and doing really well. And what we sort of noticed was, in our, for our principles Australia brand, we were kept getting knocked off the shelf by a few sort of plant based nutrition brands, sort of options of our own for those sort of demographic, that’s a demographic that consumer base, these brands were doing exceptionally well. And this is a very long story. But to cut it short, this the brand in particular that I’m talking about today. They we were trying to reverse engineer these products, because there are some really real difficulties with using plant based ingredients such as pea protein, rice, protein, things like that. texturally taste, smell odor, United sent all sensory, right? So we started testing their products, and realizing that these guys were not actually the things that they were doing, were not on the label. That gave me a real fire, to want to create something better than that. So I launched botanical blends, which is a plant based nutrition business. And the reason for that was two reasons. But one was based on the market demand, you know, plant based nutrition, veganism started really trending and it became a real prominent thing. We started seeing whey protein isolate, sales declined drastically. I think that also that was also powered by the movement of the dairy free thing, you know, free from categories quite big as well. Bringing dairy free. But yeah, not only the plant based sort of trend that was happening, but also the fact that you know, when probably the largest player in that sector wasn’t doing the right thing. So at the same time, I launched botanical blends, I also released a bunch of lab tests to the public around what this business was doing. And that was a huge earthquake in the industry at that time
Mike: Okay, so that’s pretty Ballmer. It was, yeah, yeah, fair play.
Mat Stillone: My lawyer told me that he thinks I’m crazy for doing that. And he won’t support me if something bad happens. So.
Mike: Wow. Okay. Well, there’s a great lesson in which you don’t listen to your lawyer on commercial matters often listen to law and legal matters, but not on commercial matters. And normally Bloody useless. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Mat Stillone: So and from there, Botanica blends really soared. Like it was an instant success. We launched that. And funnily enough, like, the same time what was happening was health food stores were dying. Yeah, a lot of them were getting bought out by larger groups, and they were absolutely destroying them. Because my personal opinion is that corporate structure doesn’t work with independent health food, they, you know, it’s not the business sense isn’t quite there. And there was a bit of cultural change and difference in wiped out a lot of players and then we saw pharmacy really getting involved in health food and wiping them out also. And then obviously, the supermarket’s ranging more and more healthier too. So this is all happening at the same time. And retailers are coming to me and saying, Look, you know, it became more difficult to trade with these independent health food stores and I felt like there was no real loyalty anymore with these from myself having sticking purely in the health food you industry and I had to kind of expand my horizons because everyone else is going into pharmacy so I was like how can I? How can I get these products in front of the masses for launch, but not sell my soul? And I funnily enough pitch the products to Aldi as a once off promo special by Aldi do this special buys but here
Mike: no I’m very familiar with Aldi been I’ve been supplying them for years. Yeah, yeah,
Mat Stillone: they’re great like amazing partners to work with products and trying new things. And they saw the designs and the brand and the product and this is going to be amazing. And we did no zero, we spent hardly any money on marketing, put it into Aldi, just to see what the mark would do set up an econ website. So we knew people would taste it, try it, think it’s amazing, then come back and buy it online. And that literally happened. And then I was saying to everyone we’re not going to do b2b With this isn’t never going to happen. And I’ve never gotten retail, again, it’s direct to consumer. But within a few months, I had to change my time because the demand to read for retailers are so like, brand new, we just ended up going just distributing it out. Anyway.
Mike: That’s so that’s so that’s a great answer. Again, you know, innovation, keep moving forward, maybe make some calls, the fairly bold step to out your competitor, who wasn’t necessarily doing the right thing. And then so then you move into inflexible foods.
Mat Stillone: So then we Yeah, Flexi So, Flexi was a brainstorm, during just before the COVID endemic that happened, we at that stage, the demand for plant based ready to go meals, you know, started getting bigger and bigger, we started doing a lot of development work for other businesses as well. So I thought, you know, looking at some of the products like beyond burger, for example, which, you know, personally, I feel like the some of the, you know, some of the ingredients in some of these formulations, they’re not as healthy as what people think they are ready, ready to go sort of products that are plant based. So I thought, you know, how do we how can we make something a little bit better. So, you know, basically, we made a range of texturized vegetable protein products that would mimic what I guess, and I say this very lightly, because, you know, different people might have different opinions, but mimic something like what a protein of a meat style product would give you nutrition. And that that became a really big hit at the time when we launched it through that COVID period at least.
Mike: And that was online, obviously, because everything shifted online at that point. And yeah, so
Mat Stillone: we launched it online. And we also obviously leveraged off our current other successes on E commerce as well. So it was like our sister brand. And, you know, people really got behind it and supported it during COVID. We did also nationally distribute that product, and it was found in healthy stores. And IGA is around Australia as well. But what we noticed, during the end of COVID came, you’d know yourself some very complex supply chain issues really hindered our ability to produce the product, we saw a fairly large decline in sales, which would also I would also say was the fact that the plant base category has definitely shifted, and there’s been a huge downtown downturn in the demand for plant based vegan products, solid products, food products, at least.
Mike: And what are you putting that down? So I mean, I’ve I’ve got a couple of theories, but what are you putting that down to map?
Mat Stillone: I just got to be careful how I say this, because I usually
Mike: go for it. Well, I’m the editor and controller. So the I mean, this is a beautiful thing with the Internet. Right is that is we don’t have to be as polite as if we’re on the ABC. Yeah, look
Mat Stillone: I am an unfiltered version of myself says, I think people are waking up. In the sense of, there’s been a real, I guess, a trend which has been pushed by media that plant based diets are the savior of these epidemics in our health sector, you know, being one of them, and, you know, documentaries, like game changes. So if you’re aware of that, that really set off the trend, you know, and painting that whole thing, you can be really, really healthy and strong and fit and be plant based, which you know, necessarily can be true, but there’s limitations or you need to be really careful about your diet. And I think that with like anything in this industry trends, it’s just trends. You know, keto I’ve seen it all you’ve probably you’ve seen it all too low fat. sugars, call now, next minute fats good again, you can eat as much fat as you want. Get on the keto diet and then you’ve got you know, this whole carnivore movement now everyone just live on meat eat meat day left, right and center. And so I think it’s like global trends and you know, people realizing that it’s not as sustainable as once was also, you know, sort of That propaganda around it.
Mike: Yeah, yeah, no, it’s true. And I think you’re right about trends, I think the other thing that we’re seeing, particularly post COVID, as we moved into those supply chain issues, and a period of inflation with interest rates rising, again, is that is that there’s a premium to pay for, if genuinely, if you’re talking about genuinely better for you, with genuine integrity and the supply chain, there’s normally a premium map. And that premium is less attractive, when you’ve got to fit, you know, when there’s a fiscal tightening on which we’ve got at the moment because mom, you know, people, you know, that they will tray down. And if you look at all the organic food sector over the last 30 years, each time it gets momentum map, it we get hit with a recession, or some kind of issue, some kind of fiscal tightening once or twice a decade, and it goes back two or three years. And I think it’s happening again, now, I think that the research suggests that people will perhaps pay a 15% premium, but they won’t pay a 25 or 30%. Premium. And that’s kind of what we’re facing. I mean, there’s a certain genre of consumer that will map but they’re not big enough to be mainstream. Yeah, I’d agree. Definitely. Yeah. So as you said, You’ve got to be smart. Well, look, most people are heavy enough with one business, maybe two, if they’re nuts. You’ve got four here. And you’re still going right? So well. Let me ask you this. What happened to that guy in his late teens and early 20s, who were struggling with mental health issues and, and depression at work? Talk to me about about how you manage that stress now, and, and all the drama that goes with running for businesses? What what’s been the key math?
Mat Stillone: Yeah, that’s a difficult one to answer without speaking too much on it. But I think for me, I found my purpose. In life like one, there’s two things that really drive three things, actually, that really drive me to get out of bed in the morning. That sense of like, this is cliche, but sense of purpose, like feeling like I’m contributing something. And I’m important in some way. And while I’m still here, people around me are benefiting from my existence. And that’s a big driver for me of like, getting out of bed in the morning. Yes. The next one is my son. So my son is now 19. In next week, week after. So, you know, that’s obviously you’re a parent yourself. You know what,
Mike: I’ve got five kids. Yeah, so I know that I know the story. Well, yeah, yeah,
Mat Stillone: you know, and then lastly, like, I used to be very driven by money. You know, the more I got it, the more I wanted it, because I had never really had it a lot growing up like that. So. But then, in the last few years, I’ve kind of come to terms with a lot of things about myself, like I know myself so well now. And what I really realized that I actually genuinely love helping people and being a part of their journey to whatever six success means for them. Those things while I’m doing all those things, work, that doesn’t, although it is extremely stressful, don’t get me wrong. And, you know, in particular, right now, like, obviously, all these things going on with inflation and downturn with the economy and stuff. That’s, that’s very difficult stuff to kind of go to bed at night and not worry about tissue, and everything’s on the line. But those sorts of things for me. I think that while I feel that way, the stress, it feels like a game to me, is like an enjoyable game. Like with anything in life, there’s literally nothing that is worth having that isn’t challenging. And like the journey, this the whole process and all the stress and all the rollercoaster of running businesses and things. I actually really enjoy it. And the journey is the fun part about it. It’s not the the outcome, which some people measure by how many millions you have in your bank, or what car you drive. And so that’s the process the journey, but I also do a lot of things may like to manage this. So when I say that, you know, for any business owner out there, build a management team, get some actually get people in your business that actually smarter than you know what they’re talking about and teach you things and make yourself redundant. That was one thing. I tried to be an octopus for so long. And yeah, I definitely had mass, we burnout situations where I really felt like I wanted to give up multiple times. Yes, finding balance isn’t of a cliche thing, but doing things that I enjoy. Making sure that they’re important that I respect them enough that I actually do them regardless of the workload that’s on
Mike: Yeah, that’s great. And I know you’ve come a long way, Matt, haven’t you? No doubt. So just while we finish up, do you just talk to us about the three R’s that you like?
Mat Stillone: Oh, no, this has been a while since I, it is about resilience now stand out to me. And that’s still the one. Yeah, out of all of all of that will, there’s only three of them. But the three hours that I brought up, you know, a few years back resilience, it’s something that you really can’t teach. But it’s something that you can learn by exposure. So when people when you’re afraid to avoid certain situations, or cause stress or their challenges, you know, a lot of people don’t like waking up and not knowing what the day is going to bring. So that’s why some will really enjoy working for someone else, and being part of their vision. And other businesses, business owners, entrepreneurs really get off on that idea as well. But I think building habit exposing yourself to the most difficult and the most rewarding situations does give you thick skin. And you know, that determination and having that determination to keep going when a lot of people are willing to walk away and give up. And to me what resilience is resourcefulness as well, like, that’s the other one of the other asset. You know, I mentioned, you know, we talked, I’d said bootstrapping before. For me, I act like a business, I always say to people, let’s act like we have nothing like what can we do with nothing. And Harry, and you become quite resourceful. When you’re really driven to make something happen, you know, that can mean leveraging off connections that you have, that can be working on your negotiation skills to be able to, again, that wording but convince someone to maybe invest in your vision as well. Yeah, being resourceful and you know, investing yourself as well, that in some ways,
Mike: it’s that creativity, that problem solver, you, you alluded to it, it’s that, you know, there’s an old saying that says necessity is the mother of invention. And in a way, if you have to, then you will and you know, so that we I mean, I totally agree. I think that resilience, which we also think of here is persistence, resourcefulness is about solving problems by being creative and, and not getting lost in the negativity of a problem, right? We you know because we’re gonna get walloped by them regularly. So just pausing and having a listen to yourself, and then framing up often, we find that the seed of the solution is embedded in the problem somewhere. And if you if you can be objective enough about looking at the problem, maybe from a different angle, often you can find some great lessons in there. And then the last one you mentioned was relationships.
Mat Stillone: Everyone in my business they’re like family to me. And truly, because you spend more time with them than you do your own family at times in your life, which is kind of sad in itself, but it’s true. So, you know, building relationships last, lasting relationships is really, for me, such a rewarding, it’s like planting a seed, and then seeing the fruit continues later. Because those relationships that you had at the bottom, are when you’re trying to build something great, and you have a whole bunch of people trying to help you, they might move on to bigger and better things that maybe some point and even down to like suppliers and all these sorts of things at some point in your business career, that relationship might be the one that saves you. Yeah. And when I say that, you never know who you’re talking to, you really never know. And so the perfect stranger can come along and drop this one little dime of something that will just change your whole trajectory in life. So for me, relationships, and building relationships is where I am successful. Because of that skill set I have as well.
Mike: We would echo that as well. I mean, I mean, you’ve covered such a lot. You’ve been on such a great journey, mat. It’s been such a privilege to talk to you today. You know, what’s interesting is that you talked about purpose and contribution. What I’ve found having I’m a bit older than you is that I’m much more resilient and resourceful. If I think what I’m doing is important, and it matters if that makes sense. I can put up with a whole heap more. If if I think it’s important and it matters and if I’m helping others. It does often matter, Matt, and so isn’t that great? Look, Matt, I know how busy you are. Thanks for joining us today. We wish you well. We wish you more more success. Protein supplies Australia and integrity food company and botanical blends and flexible foods and cubic You must come back and talk to us one day again and give us an update.
Mat Stillone: I’d love to meet you, I think thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Mike: Take care, Matt, all the best to you. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matt as much as I did, single parent age 19, followed by severe anxiety, and look at what he’s been able to achieve. Now, if you liked this episode, be sure to tell your friends and colleagues. And if you’re feeling generous, leave us a review. Quick shout out to our sponsors, Oasis partners practical right size advice at each stage of the business lifecycle, especially when considering exit. Contact the guys at Oasis so until next time, stay safe.
Link to previous episodes: https://www.oasispartners.com.au/troubleshooters-podcast/