ADHD as a Superpower in Leadership | CEO, Full Scale Matt Watson

Natasha Nuytten: Hello, everyone. I am Natasha Nuytten, CEO at Clara and host of Human Side Up. Thank you for joining me today. I'm really looking forward to sharing this episode with you. We're going to talk with Matt Watson, who is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of FullScale, about the job of a leader, not being about doing all of the things or being the hero and the center of the story, but really about how to amplify the brilliance around you. And I love that. Matt has experienced two major exits, VIN Solutions, which he sold to Cox Automotive for $150 million, his first company. And then just this past December, he completed a strategic buyout of his co-founder at FullScale. He sees his job there as simply to find more cool companies for our 300 developers to work with. I love that. It's really a fundamental reimagining of what leadership could look like and maybe should look like. Anyway, but there's more to Matt. He is Kansas City-born and is building a bridge between tech companies in the U.S. and top-tier talent in the Philippines. His heart is in the Philippines, and he'll share with you why, and you'll see that he's really passionate about creating opportunities for the people in that nation. Right now, FullScale is growing. They moved from 100 to 300 developers, and they have plans in the next year to hit 500 developers. It's amazing. They're doing big things. But because it isn't just about offshore development, it's about rewriting the rules about how we think about talent, geography, and opportunity. FullScale is really successful because they have rethought and been very intentional about creating psychological safety and the environment for ownership and healthy friction. I'm really excited for you to learn from Matt and for him to share a little bit about his story and his superpowers. So let's dive in. ♪ All right. Well, Matt, thank you so much for joining me today on Human Side Up. I appreciate your time. And we both happen to be in the Midwest. I'm in Omaha. You may not be in the Midwest now, but I know you are a Midwest kid, so I'm not sure what time of the day it is for you where you are. 

Matt Watson: I'm in Kansas City, a couple hours away. 

Natasha Nuytten: Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, Kansas City, great barbecue. Drive through it when I go visit my in-laws in Missouri. So gay for the Midwest. Silicon Prairie, right? 

Matt Watson: That's right. 

Natasha Nuytten: All right. Quick question for you. We start with our podcast This way with everybody, so we can get to know a little bit about you. And that question is, what are two or three words about you that you would use to describe yourself that we may or may not see on your CV or your resume that have been sort of core to who you are and how you've ended up as this version of Matt? And then when did you start to own them about yourself as true? 

Matt Watson: You know, I think if I had to describe myself in just a couple words, I would probably say like problem solver, obsessed, ADHD. I think those are the words I would use. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love that. And, you know, in fact, I would ask you a little bit about that. I would almost say that the obsession about problem solving that ADHD folks often have, like that's the superpower, right? The other side of that. I love it. 

Matt Watson: Yeah, I love it. It's also a giant weakness. Yeah. And then you have kids with ADHD. So it's a lot of everybody all over the place.

Natasha Nuytten: So when did you start to know those things are true about yourself and leverage them for good instead of evil? 

Matt Watson: You know, I've always had this tendency of working with a really high sense of urgency, like a really high motor. I grew up working really hard, even as a kid, helping with my dad at flea markets and stuff. So at a very early age, I was really a hard worker. And, you know, working was never a problem for me. Very motivated, very self-driven. And I work with a super high sense of urgency, like all day long. I just work with a super high sense of urgency, which I've come to learn is not normal for other people, especially my wife. I love her. She hears this, but she's on the other end of the spectrum. And yeah, I just deal with her. I'm going to just have a very high motor. And I didn't realize, though, that I had ADHD really till I was closer to 40 years old. I'm finally self-diagnosing myself with this because I watch too many TikTok videos like a lot of other people. But if I tell other people, I'm like, oh, I think I have ADHD. They all look at me like I'm stupid. They're like, you didn't know this. I'm like, no, but it took me to 40 to fully embrace the fact of this. And then, you know, now when I look back, you know, different things they do, different behaviors, different things, I'm just much more self-aware, you know. And so now I make this different decisions in life on a daily basis, knowing just how I am and being more realistic about things. 

Natasha Nuytten: But I think that's really smart. There's also language for it now. Right. Like I remember I'm a little older than you. I'm almost 50. And when kids in my class who I look back now and I'm like, oh, for sure that kiddo had ADHD, like no question about it. They didn't have language or rules for it. It was just like a kid who couldn't sit still or was daydreaming out the window or whatever. So it's nice to have the ability to sort of talk about it in a different way now than we used to. So I can appreciate that. That's good. What do you do differently? 

Matt Watson: You know, a good example of this is my wife asked me the other day, she's like, hey, when the kids bring home their backpacks, you're supposed to go through their folders and their homework. It's like, are you going to do that every day? And well, before I would have said yes. I'm like, oh, yeah, of course I'll do that. Now I'm like, nope, I know I'm not going to do it. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I don't care about doing that. It's not of interest to me. I'm just not going to do it. I'm just going to tell you, I'm not going to do it. And like now when I get an email or something, I'm like, I know if I don't respond to this email right now, I never will. Like, I just know this about myself where I just think just the way I operate, you know, it's just learning how you operate. So being and being self-aware and realistic about it, I think is the challenge. Yeah, most people are never self-aware. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. I think that's very true. And, you know, there's awareness. And then we talk about something in our company. I'd love to see how this lands with you where there's OK, there's the awareness of the thing. And then there's also owning how that plays out, how that impacts other people. What can I do differently? What can't I do differently? You know, what do I need sort of in a relationship with the people in my world, you know, to check the homework in the backpack? Like, how are we going to get that done collectively? So I think that's a good insight. Self-awareness is good. So thank you for sharing. 

Matt Watson: So some of it's some of its delegation, your point, right? It's like, OK, I know I'm not going to go through the backpack. So I'm like, I have to ask my wife, like, you're going to have to do this. Like, I know I'm not going to do this. Like, I just know. And so in work, it's the same thing. It's knowing what to delegate, what to give to somebody else. Like, I know I'm not going to do this thing. I'm not the best person to do this thing. Who can I trust to, you know, own this thing instead? And so, yeah, over time, learning, learning, learning more and more about that. I think there's another side to ADHD, though, that I think was the superpowers. If you want to talk more about it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I do. 

Matt Watson: So I think. When you have ADHD, at least an ADHD is a spectrum, right? And there's people that are on the non-attentive side and the people on the hyper-attentive side and people all over the spectrum of this. My wife actually has ADHD and she's on the non-attentive side. So she like literally sit and do nothing all day and be totally happy when I'm on the more hyper side, whereas I always have to be doing something. I can't sit still. I gotta be doing something. But she and I both share the same trait where we hyper-focus. It's like we find something that we want to do and then we really hyper-focus on whatever the thing is. And it's super difficult to get us away from whatever that thing is, because that's the only thing my brain can think about. Yeah. So like when I was I wrote a book called Product Driven and when I was writing the book, that's like all I did for like four months. If it wasn't that, it was like death to me. I just didn't do it because I was so hyper-focused on it. The good news is from a leadership and a business perspective. If you give me a hard problem to solve, I'm like a dog on a bone. Like I'm not giving it up. I'm going to solve this problem. Nothing will prevent me from stopping this problem and I will relentlessly work on it until I figure it out, which is kind of a superpower, right? Like nothing is going to distract me away from that goal. If it really captures my interest, right, which is a really unique skill, has all the weird downsides and negatives to it as well. Because I can get lost somewhere. It's like, man, I need your help with this thing. Too busy. Gone on the bone, right? Like there's negatives to it as well. So I think that's a superpower. Have you heard that before? 

Natasha Nuytten: Totally. Yeah, totally. That is exactly along the lines of what I was thinking when I was talking about there being, you know, being some superpowers and having ADHD. It is absolutely an opportunity to connect dots that other people don't see. Yeah. You know, you can get super vigilant about something, as you said, hyper-focused on a thing. And plus and minus, right, on both of those things. But the reality is, like, there are ways, when you know that about yourself, there are ways to sort of leverage that into doing amazing work, leading teams in a particular way, building products, doing those types of things. So yeah, I love it. I think that's absolutely true. 

Matt Watson: I have one more for you that I think goes along with this. And I don't know if this one gets as much attention. So I have a couple. I have five kids, but at least two or three of them have ADHD. Both sides, both types. And my oldest, I've always struggled with. He's 16. It doesn't matter what I do, how you, however you try to punish him, or he doesn't do something the right way or whatever, you know, from a parenting perspective. He doesn't care about any consequences. No consequences at all will face him. He just does not care. And what I figured out about myself as I went through this self-awareness journey, I don't either. Consequences do not bother me or scare me in any way. And that might be part of what makes me a crazy slash good entrepreneur. At risk doesn't affect me. I have not scared of any consequences. I'm not scared to make decisions quickly and try things and learn things. I'm just not scared of any of the consequences. I'm willing to try whatever needs to be tried and do whatever needs to be done. And just figure it out as I go. Like, I'm not scared of anything. And then there are other people. My wife is on the side where she tends to be scared of everything. Like she doesn't want to take risks. She's scared of the unknown. She's and I am just like a thousand percent opposite on the other end. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Matt Watson: So her and I balance each other out. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's great. It's the yin and the yang, right? Like the two sides are young. If you're, I don't know, sometimes you get corrected. And then I'm told it's like saying Valencia versus Valencia. I don't know. Do you know what I'm talking about? No? As long as we understand each other, that's all that matters. Anyway, I think what's interesting about what you just shared is that I do think that there's balance, right? And I think every leader needs to have a little bit of both of those sides of the thing, right? Being able to harness the thing and having the awareness of that. So talk to me a little bit about how you've had quite a journey as an entrepreneur. And give us a little bit of history for people who don't know you and how you've landed in this place where you are now. Give us a little bit of the history of Matt Watson. 

Matt Watson: Well, today I'm 44, but my entrepreneur journey started when I was 22. So I started my first company when I was 22 and it was honestly not my business idea. Somebody else had an idea, actually had a really a need. They were going around taking pictures of cars for car dealerships and needed to upload those pictures to autotrader.com, cars.com, eBay, stuff like that. I needed some software to help do that and make it easier to do. And I just sat down with that other guy at Applebee's. He explained what he wanted to do. And I'm just like, yeah, sure, I can help you do that. Again, no consequences. I'm just the opportunity guy, the problem solving guy. And we built that software. And then over time, we never raised any capital. We just bootstrapped it the whole way. Eventually, it turned into a CRM type product like Salesforce and HubSpot, stuff like that, but designed for car dealers. And today it is still the number one CRM product on the market for car dealers. And we sold that in 2011. But here we are, like 15 years later, it's still still rolling. Yeah, they haven't changed the software in 15 years, so it's probably ready to be disrupted. But yeah, that was my first foray into entrepreneurship. And again, I was 22. I had no idea what I was doing. I was just, I'm going to refer to myself as the kid who liked to write code and solve problems and talk to people and understand their needs and be the dog on the bone, you know, solving problems, building cool stuff. Like I just built a business, didn't know what I was doing, didn't know what a startup was. Right. 

Natasha Nuytten: But you know what? I think to your point about not having fear of consequences or them really like weighing in your decision making process, like I think more people, what would you do if you didn't? What could you get done if you weren't worried about failing, right? 

Matt Watson: You didn't talk yourself out of it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 100% agree with that. I think I was an entrepreneur for a long time and wasn't any kind of pruner for the first part of my career and then sort of transitioned and ended up building a few things because I'm very comfortable being uncomfortable. Like, OK, you know, like that's life. That's where your growth edge is, right? When you're constantly doing a new thing. So I really appreciate that. So now that you've landed after you left, after you left there and sold the company and exited, congratulations, by the way, exiting a company is not common. So good for you landing in this new place and doing this new thing. How did you end up working with Matt, your former, well, I guess technically still your co-founder and former former business partner in full scale? 

Matt Watson: Yeah, so over this time period, I've started four different companies and sold three of them. So after Venn Solutions, which was the automotive company, we were talking about Serum Company. I started a company called Stackify and I went from being the CTO of Venn Solutions and having, you know, other business partners. And I mean, at that point we had like 300 employees and it was a big business to start Stackify and decide, like, I'm going to do this all on my own. I want no business partners. I'm going to be the CEO. I'm going to figure all this out. And boy, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I sure I sure learned a lot. And it's the only way you're going to learn. That's the best education. And so, yeah, I became the CEO of Stackify and figured all that out. And that was a lot of hard lessons. But along the way, during the Stackify journey, I needed to hire about 10 software developers here in Kansas City. And this was like 2017 or so. And at that time, they were very difficult to find, and very expensive. I had lost three of my key employees at Stackify. They got recruited away to literally go work at Amazon, Microsoft, and Garmin. Stole three of my top employees. And I'm like, you know what? For the same cost of those three people, I can hire 10 people in the Philippines. And my friend at that time, Matt DeCoursey, which I think you kind of alluded to, had already had a handful of employees in the Philippines. And so he convinced me to give it a try. I'd had experience working with software developers in Russia and Latin America and different places. And generally had good success. And so, yeah, we ended up creating that little partnership. It's like, hey, you know, I'll hire 10 people. You already have five people or whatever. We'll just create a little partnership and maybe somebody else could use this service. Maybe we could hire some other people. And then we hired 100 people in the next 12 months. It was the fastest growing, craziest business I ever worked on. It was an accidental business. And so that's full scale. That's what full scale has turned into today.

Natasha Nuytten: Nice. Nice. Well, we'll talk a little bit about the transition from CTO to CEO, from, you know, co-founder to solopreneur to back co-founder. That's a journey I'm very interested in. But I'm really curious about, you know, the tech industry sort of has a complicated relationship with offshore development sometimes, right? And there's questions around sort of is it exploitation? Is it, you know, the salvation of the industry? Like there's a lot happening there, right? And I am also from the Midwest. We're sort of outsiders in and of ourselves in that world. I'm curious, though, like as a sort of, I guess, technically, can I call you middle-aged at this point when you're 44? You're a little younger than me. You're sort of this middle-aged white guy with, you know, from Kansas. And I'm curious, like, how you navigate that tension with the responsibility to sort of lead in that space where we're talking about offshore versus near shore versus, you know, domestic development. What is that world and that conversation like for you these days? 

Matt Watson: Well, our goal is just to find the best talent we can find in the Philippines. And I have over 300 employees that work for me there now. And, you know, we create super amazing high-paying jobs for them. The senior level software engineers in the Philippines make more than a doctor or a lawyer does in the Philippines. So when people say it's exploitation, I just almost kind of laugh at them. I'm like, these are super, super high-paying jobs. And you don't realize, like, every one of these people we hire, they really then create like two or three more jobs, right, because of all the money they spend in the local economy. So it's like we have over 300 employees there, but we probably create over 1,000 jobs in this country. And they're super high-paying jobs. And these people are super happy to have these opportunities. I mean, we, I think, I mean, I think you understand, like, everybody in life just wants an opportunity. They need an opportunity to start their career, to grow, to succeed and do all these things. And, you know, I look at it like we're creating opportunities for them and, you know, creating great opportunities for them. And, you know, we've worked with over 200 clients in the United States that have used our talent in the Philippines. And we have over 70 or so today, including some publicly traded companies, companies and brands that you would know, all the way down to a lot of startups and companies that we're in between. But, you know, our goal is just trying to help those local companies that need affordable talent be able to access that talent. And honestly, a lot of those companies would never be able to hire the talent locally. Like, it's totally out of their budget. Like, they wouldn't hire anybody. So it's like for some of them, it's like the businesses wouldn't exist or the jobs wouldn't even exist here anyways, because they just can't afford it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Matt Watson: Just like if you're like, I need to hire somebody to produce my podcast. I'm like, you're not going to spend $7,000 a month or something to hire that person to produce a podcast. But you're like, oh, I found somebody on Upwork that'll do it for 500 bucks or whatever. Okay. Yeah, now I'll do it. Yeah. So a lot of times it's just an affordability thing that comes into it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. You've used the language or I've heard you use the language. You haven't done it yet today, but thoughtful offshoring, right, versus cost cutting. And I'm curious because there is, you know, there is a very, there's a business impact, but there's also a very human impact when we get it wrong, right, on both sides of the equation. And so I'm really curious what your, how you would talk about the difference and why leaders should really care about getting that right, if they're doing that kind of development offshore. And what happens when we stop seeing it as just a business strategy and we really start thinking about it as an opportunity to build bridges? What does that open up? 

Matt Watson: Yeah, I think another way I would think about this is it's a problem with software engineering in general. So even locally here, a lot of big companies, software engineers are kind of treated like cogs in the machine. It's like an assembly line. It's like the product team, the leadership team, you know, writes the requirements, what software needs to be built. It gets handed over to the software engineering team and they hide in the basement somewhere in their cubicles and they write all the code and then hand it off and then we ship the code. And software engineers kind of get treated, somebody described them as mushrooms in the...in the basement, and that's the problem. Like, you know, the innovation and problem solving and product, you know, instincts and stuff that a lot of highly creative software engineers have gets totally stifled and lost. And so to answer your question, these big companies that treat software engineers like it's an assembly line, and like they're cogs in the machine, only care about what seems to be the least expensive. They're like, okay, where can I find the least expensive cog in the machine? And then those companies also don't innovate. Innovation dies because they have set up their entire companies the wrong way and built this assembly line. Just like my old company from 15 years ago, the product does less than it did today. They removed functionality and the user experience, everything looks the same. Like they have not innovated in 15 years, but they've spent over $100 million on R&D. Just maintaining the status quo, right? And so that's what happens in these big companies. And yeah, for them, they're like, oh, if we're just gonna maintain the status quo, I guess let's hire the cheapest possible person we can find to maintain this status quo. Versus if you're looking at it from an investment and innovation perspective, the quality of the talent matters a lot, right? Like I need highly creative people that are focused on outcomes and building a product, a product that people are gonna use, a product that people are gonna care about, right? And that's important. Doesn't matter where you hire people, look at it from the perspective of, we're trying to build cool stuff and I need to find highly innovative people that have good collaboration skills, good communication skills, that can work with me to go build this cool thing. Instead of like, I just need to find the cheapest person in the world to do this task and I don't care. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, no, that's great. So I wanna dive into that just a little bit. So you mentioned earlier, you're writing a book and I'm happy to, I would love to talk about that because part of the notion of your book is really about that sort of, how do we help get out of the way, right? And let people have ownership of their work and be more creative in problem solving. So talk to us a little bit about how you are implementing that. And very frankly, A, I'm interested in the concept as a whole in and of itself. And then you're doing this cross-culturally, right? Where you're trying to bring two teams together. So I'd love to kind of weave those things together and get your take on that. 

Matt Watson: So I, a year ago, I had the idea of writing a book and the really the key concept of it was what we kind of just talked about. It's like the best software engineers that worked for us were the one to ask the most questions. They collaborate, they communicate, they speak up, they think outside the code, right? The ones that struggle are the ones that just say yes and they don't collaborate as much. They just do what they're told, they never push back. And honestly, a lot of them just don't care. They just don't care. They're just doing their job and they don't care. But what we need is to figure out, okay, how do we get more of the team to understand the big picture? Why are we doing this? Understanding how it impacts the problem, the customer, the business, this kind of higher level thinking, right? And that's what inspired me to write the book, Product Driven, which came out in July of this year, and was a bestseller when it launched. And what was interesting to me is I ended up writing a book about leadership and culture, which if you would have asked me how important culture was, like a year ago, I would probably have said not. Like, I'm the opposite of a culture guy. That just seems weird to me to think about. But I ended up writing a book about culture and about if you wanna scale an engineering team or really any kind of team, right? It comes down to creating ownership in the team. The team has to take ownership of the work. And so my book is about how to do that in the context of software engineering. But a lot of the principles are the same across any kind of discipline. My director of marketing kept telling me all the time, she's like, man, I'm learning so much from your book that just applies even to our marketing team. So it was really cool. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. What are a few of the things that maybe you knew coming in that you're like, and again, you can tell me if I'm wrong about this, but in my experience, there are some things that people do that are sort of innate to them that seem very obvious, right? And it's just how they think. And then there are other things that we learn along the way that we've incorporated. And I'm kind of curious, as you've developed this philosophy and this sort of way of working in your organization, which were the things that were innate to who you are and how you already work? And which were the things that you had to learn the hard way? Cause you didn't get them right out of the gate. 

Matt Watson: Yeah, I think for me, you mentioned that the key that I think a lot of people like me have, it's like, we wake up every day, we just are the way we are. We're wired the way we are. And we're successful, I guess, because of the way we are. But that doesn't mean we can explain it. That doesn't mean we could tell somebody else how to do it. Just like somebody who can hit home run after home run, doesn't mean they can explain to somebody else how to hit a home run, right? It's like, I don't know, I just do this. This is what I do. I'm wired this way. And what was interesting for me about writing the book is it made me really step back and think deeply and self reflect on how I worked and some of the things that I did. And what I ended up doing in the book is creating what I called the product driven model. And so when I was writing the book, I kept talking about things like ownership and trusting the team and focusing on the right things and different concepts like this. And I kept repeating those same themes. I'm like, you know what? I could kind of create a model out of this and say, okay, these are the five keys to this kind of leadership style. And so that's what I ended up doing is creating this model. And then when I built it on the model, it just really forced me to think really deeply about each of those components and then how to explain that to other people and how to teach other people about each of those components. So to me, one of the best things about writing the book was that really deep self reflection and self learning about like, this is kind of how I've done things for a long time and now I can vocalize them in a different way to explain to somebody else that before I probably couldn't have done. 

Natasha Nuytten: I think that's great. There's this concept, I'm not sure if you are familiar with it. I don't know, maybe 10 years ago or something I came across it. And it was like sort of an operator's manual for leaders, like being able to understand how you function, sort of like a help me help you kind of thing. And it sounds to me as if writing this book was a little bit of that. Like here's how I'm thinking, here's how this is working. And it's not so much about them helping you, but helping you be able to articulate the expectations in the company for like, this is how we're gonna build. This is how I expect our relationship to work and how I'm going to create the environment for you to be what I need you to be for us to be successful together. Is that a fair sort of interpretation of that? 

Matt Watson: I think one of the things we don't do enough as a leader is have some of those frank conversations about how we work together and kind of expectations. Most people that work around me, especially when they work around me at first, I'm kind of probably over, I'm probably a little intense and over intimidating to people. Because I move fast, I'm very opinionated, I'm very bold. And you mentioned earlier culture, like some people from different cultures are very indirect. There are some cultures around this world where they will not tell you what they think at all. They never will. And they're not direct people. And even some Americans can be this way. We have different language, communication styles. But I'm very direct, very to the point. But a lot of times, I'm just trying to get things accomplished. And so, yeah, now it's like, I feel like I have to tell people about, okay, this is how I am. Don't get offended by this. This is the way I am. Doesn't mean I'm mad at you. It just means I'm trying to get stuff done. And I'm very to the point and I wanna win. And this is how we're gonna do it. And I think sometimes, yeah, it's taking that a little bit of time to understand this is how we work together and don't get offended when I do this. And a good example of this, we hire an executive assistant. And I was telling her, I'm like, your job is gonna be to chase me around every day and tell me what to do and remind me to do stuff that I'm gonna keep ignoring to do. And if you don't feel comfortable doing that, this is not going to work. That's literally your job. I expect you to be annoying to me. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love that. It's just very frank, right?

Matt Watson: It's like, it's what I expect. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love that. I have the same conversation. I've been very fortunate to work with my EA in two companies now. And she was the first phone call that I made when I was like, okay, I need to bring someone in to work with me. And I was like, it has to be her because she speaks my language. I don't have to say the things seven times because I operate a little bit like you and that I'm a Clydesdale. I am half Belgian and I come by it naturally. I will work until the thing is done and I will keep going and I will keep going. I don't have the sort of hyper-focus in the same exact way that you do, I don't think, but like I can, 16 hour days, that's like, that's just how I function, right? Because that's what needs to be done right now. And so I can appreciate that. And I also have a sort of tendency of like, I've said a thing and for me, if I've said it out loud, I'm saying it out loud because it needs to be heard and I need you to hear it. But that's not the case with everybody else. And so she's excellent at reminding me like, just because you said it one time doesn't mean that everybody is taking the same value around the thing or putting the same importance on it that you've put on it. And so it's really awesome to have, to know that about yourself and to have those people around you who can remind you that like, listen, you're really focused on yourself right now. You need to like to walk through the world with a little more awareness of how the other people around you are responding to what you're doing or make the adjustment of expectation on what is happening. 

Matt Watson: Well, and I would say one of the hardest challenges of being a leader and probably even more so a startup founder or like a very product-driven person is you may have in your head the vision for how this product is supposed to work or how you wanna accomplish anything, right? And it seems so obvious to you and so intuitive to you but it's so difficult to get that out of your head and explain it to somebody else and get very frustrated with them. You're like, why don't you just understand the same thing that I do? You don't see this the same way that I do. It's like, what is wrong with you? That was my 20s. I wasn't very nice to people, probably in my 20s as I would be now. But it's coming to that reality. It's like the hard part is getting it out of my head and vocalizing it and explaining these things to other people and continuing to remind them like this is what's important, this is why we're doing this and like keep beating that drum. That's one of the things I talk about in my book is like everything starts with the vision of like why are we doing this thing? And it's not some HR BS thing you write on the wall. It's like why are we doing this thing today, this thing? Why this thing? Why does this thing matter? So that people understand like, well, why are we doing this? Instead of, I don't know, she just told me to do this thing and I'm just doing it, I don't know. 

Natasha Nuytten: Completely agree. And I think it is incumbent upon, and I think most leaders would agree, but we don't always do it well. It's incumbent upon us as the leader in the room to be the person who is making sure that you're communicating clearly, right? I often say clear as kind. And that's for me as much as it is for everybody else. If I have not been clear, and not only if I've not been clear that I think I've been clear, but if you are not clear about what I have said, and we're not in agreement about the thing that's in front of us, then that's just hard for everybody, right? So clear as kind is something that we talk a lot about. And it's my responsibility, right? It's your responsibility to be the person who has communicated that out to the team. So I'm curious to think about, because you do work across cultures and you are bringing different teams together. Kansas City has its own special sauce, and it's intentional that I'm using that word given Jones Barbecue and all the other barbecue in Kansas City. It's got its own unique flavor, and so do the Philippines, and in particular the city in which you're working. So how do you help bridge those things? And I know you're not a culture guy, but clearly you've had to become a culture guy to be so successful. I've had to become one. How have you made that transition? And what are maybe two or three of the things that you think about every day as a team or as a leader that you bring into your team to make sure that those groups of people can work together well? 

Matt Watson: Well, so my wife is Filipino. So I married, from going to the Philippines and the whole full-scale adventure over the last seven years or so, I fell in love with the people over there, honestly, some of the nicest people in the world, and fell in love with the people, and was like, I wanna marry one of these ladies. I met my wife over there, and she moved back to the U.S., and she's a U.S. citizen now, and we have a couple of kids and all that stuff. So I'm deep ingrained in the culture. I live it every day. And now she's a sample of one, right, out of 150 million people or whatever. But what's interesting after having hundreds of employees there and my wife and even kids, you know, some of the deep ingrained culture things are interesting to pick up and understand. Like you mentioned earlier, like, oh, I'm half-Belgium or whatever, and it could be things that you pick up, too. You're like, okay, I see how this is a common trait or whatever, common in the culture. What's interesting is some of it is like, it's in the DNA, too. It's not even just a culture-nurture thing. Some of it is in the DNA, which is fascinating to me, or at least that's the way it seems, because I have kids now, too. But some of the biggest things that I see is it's the communication style stuff. You know, they're raised in a culture, I think, that is not as risk-tolerant. They don't want to make mistakes. They don't really want to take a lot of risk. And the communication style is different. They're less likely to tell, they're not very direct about how they feel about things, especially if it's negative or bad. They don't want to embarrass other people. They don't want to disrespect other people, so they're less likely to say something disrespectful of their boss. Like, everybody will call me sir and stuff like that, or is less likely to be completely transparent or truthful to me because I'm like, oh, I'm the big, scary boss, and you don't do that to the big, scary boss. It's like, to some degree, I feel like they're too nice to each other. I don't know how else to describe it, which can hold them back, right? It's like, the only way you make progress at times is to challenge each other, criticize each other, learn, grow, right? And to some degree, I think, sometimes they can be too nice to each other, which can, I think, stifle that a little bit. Now, again, that's a very broad spectrum of, you know, to say to paint a whole country, but some of those kind of culture things, you know, you definitely see in, like, the vast majority of people. So it's just interesting, you know, when you're dealing with a whole country and the whole culture, and you just see a lot of similarities, a lot of stereotypes. It's just interesting. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, so how do you address that resistance to friction in your company? 

Matt Watson: Yeah. It's training. You know, we try and train them of, like, you know, it's part of your job as a professional, right, to speak up, to have ideas, to push back, to bring ideas. It's like, maybe you wouldn't do that to your mom or your grandma in a personal setting. It's like, I get it, but in a professional setting, you know, if you know something's a bad idea or it's gonna fail, like, you need to speak up. Say, like, hey, I don't think, you know, thanks for the suggestion, whatever, blah, blah, blah, but I don't think it's gonna work for these ideas. Maybe we should consider this, right? Like, they've, you know, at a professional level, they've got to do this kind of stuff, and so maybe they wouldn't in their personal lives. They don't want to rock the boat with family or friends or whatever, but yeah, in a professional setting, it's more important. So we, you know, we train on these sorts of things, and, you know, we understand that about our employees and how we manage them. You know, maybe we at least have certain expectations of maybe how they're gonna receive things or how they'll interact with us. And so just understanding the culture of who you're dealing with, you know? 

Natasha Nuytten: I think that's really important, and I'm curious, as you relate that to ownership, right? How, so you've given us a little bit, like, and I don't know, like, if you understand that, the fact that you all train that, recognizing that that is a real hurdle, potentially, right? And training it, like, that's really important. And again, I think this might be one of those things where you're like, yeah, I mean, that's just what we do. Like, you've thought about it already, and, but there are a lot of companies that don't spend the time to do that, and so I think it's important for people to hear, so thank you for sharing that. And I appreciate that you're making it so important of a point, being intentional about it. How do you then, you talk a lot about ownership, and you want your team to feel like they get why, they understand what the point of the thing is. How do you help ingrain that in a culture where there tends to be deference, right, to the other person, and maybe I wouldn't necessarily say, hey, I have an opinion about this thing, and I understand what my contribution is to making it really important? 

Matt Watson: So we, you know, we always knew this was important. We always knew when it comes to software development, collaboration is key, communication is key, all this stuff is really important. But we struggled for a long time for how to describe it, and how to train around it and name the problem. Like, how do you name the problem and solve the problem? And then a couple, a year ago, one of my colleagues, or one of our employees in the Philippines actually met with me one day. He's like, yeah, we have this same problem at NCR, which is a National Cash Register, like you go to Walmart or something and check out, like that's NCR. But he's like, yeah, what we called this after years of managing all of our staff in the Philippines, whatever, this was the thing that we learned was the most important of all, and this is what we called it, and it was courage. And so what they ended up doing is kind of rethinking around some of this training and the problem and the thing to improve was this idea of courage. Like, how do I go and inspire courage in the team to speak up? How do I give them the courage? Do they have the courage to speak up, to push back, to ask questions, to bring ideas? Do they have the courage to do that? And when he told me that, I'm like, ah, I really like that. I like the name of that. That's the thing. And honestly, that even relates to us as leaders. Like, as a leader, do we have the courage to speak up and stop just doing the status quo, to do more, to push back against our bosses? Do we allow our teams to have courage, right? Do we reward our teams when they speak up and bring these ideas, or do we just shut them down? Are we creating psychological safety for our teams to speak up and bring these ideas? That idea of courage was really critical. And so that's the thing that we teach the most at my company, is we're focused on, we refer to it as courage and training around courage. 

Natasha Nuytten: And that makes a lot of sense given, especially because you're dealing with a very particular culture, right? And so there is a, while people are different and those types of things, there's certainly a little more generality, right, to be able to say, okay, we're probably more broadly dealing with this type of thing. So I think that's fantastic. And I really like that. I think it's very insightful, right? Because that is how that might play out in that culture. Thinking about the folks that you have, how much of your team is based here in the States and how much of your team is based in the Philippines? Is it mostly operations here and development there or how, what does that split look like? 

Matt Watson: Yeah, we have five or six employees in Kansas City, which is mostly business development, sales and marketing related, and then everything else is there. But I think this concept of courage is a universal concept. It doesn't really matter where you are. And in most big companies, the problem is, as I alluded to earlier with software engineering, a lot of software development is based in the Philippines. And so it's really hard to say, okay, well, what is it that we're doing here? What is it that we're trying to do here?

Matt Watson: Developers are treated like cogs in the machine. And it really doesn't matter what country they live in, they're just treated that way. And it takes courage to stop the assembly line, right? And that's the thing, but that's the only way things are gonna change is for people to raise their hand and speak up and push back. Like, this is not a good idea, there's gotta be a better way. And that takes courage at any company anywhere. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think where I was trying to go with it is I think there are, any sort of concept like courage has aspects and elements to it, right? Things that are built into it, like sort of little sub ideas or sub characteristics of it. And I think calling it courage in one environment might be more appropriate and might touch on a few of those aspects that might be more ingrained. Whereas in another place, it might be something like, it might be one of those other aspects. Does that make sense? I don't know if I'm communicating that very well. So I think that's where I was going with that. 100% agree. And we might call it, say, empowerment, right? In another environment. And it has elements of courage, but it might be called something else. So yeah, but I agree with you. I think that giving people the opportunity to feel like they have the space to step into a thing, right, is really important. That is how we get the best ideas out of people. 

Matt Watson: And it comes back to creating ownership. We've been talking through in this conversation that we haven't talked a lot about directly, but we've talked about indirectly, was creating ownership in your team. And the only way you're gonna create ownership in your team is trusting them, delegating to them, and them having the courage to step up and do this stuff, and lead within the team and collaborate. And that really takes creating a lot of trust in your team, and the team members also having the courage to step up and do it. And not everybody's gonna do it. Not everybody's gonna do it, but you need a couple people on the team that will. 

Natasha Nuytten: How do you think differently about that, or have you thought differently about that between the roles as a CTO or CIO versus CEO? How has your thinking evolved around your responsibility in generating the safe space and the energy to make that sort of ownership happen? Has that evolved for you as you've been in different roles in the company? 

Matt Watson: Well, I think earlier in my career, I was always the bottleneck. I was always the person that was making all the decisions and doing a lot of the work, and I didn't trust and delegate near as well, right? And then at some point in time, probably 10 years ago or so, 15 years ago, it just comes to this realization that the most productive thing I can do is make everybody else more productive. And the only way I'm gonna keep my sanity and take a vacation and grow this business is to hire other people I can trust and delegate stuff to. And if they can do 80% of the stuff as good as I can, then it's a huge win and I need to delegate this stuff to them. And earlier in my career, that was hard. I was very much a control freak. I'm the dog on the bone trying to solve the hard problems and I don't wanna give up the bone. And that was my company and the product. It was everything, right? But when I became a CEO, it's like, okay, I've gotta delegate all these things. I have a little different role. See, I think it was just a long career journey of learning. The only way to scale is I've gotta trust other people. I've gotta delegate. I can't do all the things. I can't do it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, no, that's entirely true and very hard to own sometimes when you are a person who maybe has some of the traits that we share, which is like, oh, I can just do the thing. It's easier for me to just do it, right? Like just go fast. 

Matt Watson: It's still hard. It is still really hard. It's still hard for me. It is. I sold my house and I'm moving. And even now it's like, okay, I could ask somebody else to pack this stuff or clean up this thing or sweep this thing or do this, but I still find myself doing it. Like I just, it's hard for me at some level to delegate some of these things. And maybe some of it is also the ADHD side of me that is looking for that dopamine and the win. It's like I get the win because I can see I cleaned off that shelf and it makes me feel super good, even though there are other things that have been way more useful in my time than cleaning off that shelf. But the ADHD part of me wants me to clean that shelf because it will make me feel good. And I know that about myself and I still cannot overcome it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Sometimes you just have to embrace the thing. That's for sure. I love that. I love that. That self-awareness is really, really good. One of the things that I kind of wanna talk about last year is not only are you doing this in your own organization, your own business, but you're also involved with Redbud. And so I'd love to talk about that a little bit. One of the things that I particularly am interested in, but feel free to drive me in another direction if that's where your brain wants to go. I think we've talked about the fact that we're both in the Midwest. Neither of us is a sort of typical entrepreneur, that we don't live in those places. We don't necessarily, I don't look like the people who typically get big dollars and those types of things. But what's interesting is that we know that the research bears out. And I think we both have, interestingly in our careers from different perspectives, are trying to find those people who have had experiences that give them a little more grit and a little more hustle. I'm coming at it from how do I help organizations hire for that in their process? And you're coming at it from how do I create an entire group of human, give the power to a group of humans to think and do their work differently and so that their communities and their families thrive. I think we're kind of coming at those things a little bit differently, but from the same purpose. And so I'm curious because Rosebud, BC, I know really believes in the notion that people, they really base their selection of founders around folks who have been strengthened by the struggle, right, I think is how they talk about that. And I'd love to understand, A, if that was a part of what drew you to them, to work with them, but B, how does that play out? And how do you take some of these concepts around ownership and that friction is good and apply that in the work that you're doing there? 

Matt Watson: Well, I mean, first of all, I want to say, I agree with that sense of grit. And I think a lot of successful startup founders have that sense of grit. And like, I was the same way. I was a product of a one night stand, born in a trailer park in Oklahoma, worked with my dad every single weekend at a flea market, hard work and stuff was my DNA. If I wanted new clothes for school when I was in high school, my uncle bought them for me. I mean, I shared a bunk bed with my dad and lived at my grandma's house when I was younger. I came from nothing. But I was very hardworking and I was smart. I was lucky to have the genetics to be a pretty smart guy, a good problem solver, but had the work ethic, had the grit. And I think that's really important. I've got a 16 year old that doesn't seem to have it. And it's hard to look at him today and be like, man, I don't know, could he do the same kind of things I did? Like, things are hard for him, he just gives up. 

Natasha Nuytten: It's interesting, right? Like, and you hear folks who are on the sort of other side of, well, for them, it's probably not the other side, it's just how life works. But from the outside, it's maybe, oh, you've been through this thing, you're kind of on the other side of it. But the reality is like, you always have that, like, I have to hustle. I need to, you know, I'm gonna keep driving. And there is that sort of innate in you. If I'm gonna make, if it's gonna happen, I'm gonna have to make it happen, right? I had my first paper route job that I got paid for when I was eight and never stopped working and have been working ever since. So I understand it and appreciate that. And so how does that play out in the work when you're thinking about Rosebud and the organizations that, how do you help translate? Those things are coming along with the, perhaps the founder that you're working with. How do you help hone that or shape it or sort of focus that for them? What advice do you give to them to be able to harness that in such a way that it's not just part of who they are, but it's one of the things that helps drive them and that they turn into a superpower rather than just a part of the DNA? 

Matt Watson: I think the way I would describe it might be a little differently. What I like to see in founders is people that are just willing to take ownership and figure out what needs to be done versus they think there's always somebody to hire or this person, I can pay this person, I can hire this consultant, I can spend more money, I can do this, because as a founder, you have the vision for something and you have the grit and the drive to go do it. And even if you throw big money at somebody else to come in, like a product manager, you can't, if you don't have a very good product vision and intuition about how to build a product, you're not gonna hire somebody else and they're gonna magically come in and just figure it out. They're not gonna figure it. If you can't figure it out and you're the one who started this crazy idea, they're not gonna figure it out, right? And so it's so difficult, I feel like, at any kind of startup founder, even at full scale today, it's like, okay, how do we generate leads? How do we build a better sales and marketing system and stuff like that? Nobody else seems to be able to figure that out either. At some point in time, it's like, I have to be able to get my hands really dirty and go figure it out and go solve the hard problems. And if you forever think that you're gonna delegate all of these things, a lot of times I just don't, it's the thing that's gonna work. Like, if you have the intuition, you're the one that has the most risk and reward to figure these things out. And just acknowledging that that is the case and you have to take ownership of all this and figure it out, I think it's part of the key. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I think that's great. 

Matt Watson: If that makes sense. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, yeah, it does, thank you. All right, so we're sort of at the end of the official thing so I have two last questions for you. One is, is there anything that I should have asked you that I didn't and or something that you'd like to leave us with as a parting thought or piece of advice? 

Matt Watson: You know, something people ask me a lot about is, what is it like to sell your baby or what is it like to have a big exit and sell your company? You know, I sold my first company for $150 million at 29 years old. And I didn't own all of it, but I was the largest shareholder and we didn't have any investors. And that was a life-changing event for me. But what's interesting is now 15 years later, like a lot of other people, I don't think it really changed my life very much. If anything, I think it made my life worse and more complicated. You know, I mentioned I'm selling my house. I'm selling the house I bought 15 years ago to buy a much simpler, smaller house. I've sold all the toys, all the things I bought, all, a lot of this stuff. I've gotten rid of all of it. And the reason I tell this part of the story is like, happiness is not based on the things you buy and acquire. And for me, like happiness, like the most important key to happiness for me was having the right spouse. It's like getting remarried and just finding your own happiness in your life. And it's not from the things that you bought. People always want what they don't have. They're like, you know, I wanna go buy a pool table or a hot tub or whatever, a car or whatever the thing is. But then once you have that thing, like six months go by, you don't even care about that thing anymore. You want the next thing. Like that's just the way life is. And I guess I've been through so much of that for the last 15 years where I could have did most of whatever I wanted to do that I just realized I didn't care about any of it. And the thing I cared about the most actually was the work that I do. I enjoy the work that I do. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my purpose in life. And I guess that's my final point of this. It's like, it's about finding your purpose in life. The thing that really makes you happy that you get to do every day because it's not really about the crap that you buy. Like that just adds more stress and crap in your life. You've got to enjoy your purpose, your key purpose in life. 

Natasha Nuytten: More things you have to take off the shelf when it comes time to move, right? 

Matt Watson: And then you realize you're selling all of it on Facebook Marketplace and getting almost nothing for it. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. No, thank you for that, Matt. I think there's a lot of truth in that. And I appreciate you leaving us with that as a good reminder. So thank you. Lastly is, how can people listening to this be helpful to you? Obviously we'll put a link to the book for people to be able to get into that in your podcast, but what would be helpful to you? 

Matt Watson: You can definitely check out productdriven.com. I have a newsletter and a book. And if anybody wants a free copy of the book, you can reach out to me. I may even send you a free copy of the book. It's not very expensive on Amazon. I'm not trying to make money selling the book. I genuinely want to help people. I think it's a great leadership book for companies that are struggling with leadership stuff. So you can follow me on LinkedIn. I have a huge following on LinkedIn. I post on LinkedIn every day and you find me on other socials and stuff, but yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Okay, awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it. This has been a great conversation. Okay, there you have it. Another great conversation. I'm so grateful to Matt for how he showed up with such authenticity, just owning who he is, sharing his strengths and his, like both sides of the coin of the superpowers and so evident in how he works and how he shows up. So really, really grateful for that. That's what I crave in that connection and conversation. So thank you, Matt. I love the directness and the just no, no fluff. I appreciate that so much. I love his passion for what he's doing and that it's so evident in the joy that he gets from the work that he does. So there's a lot in there. There were a lot more we could have unpacked if we'd had another couple of hours. So I encourage you to check out his book, to listen to his podcast, to see what he's putting out in the world. He's just a really thoughtful human being doing really cool stuff. So learn from him if you can. We'll put his information down in the show notes. And as always, if you have questions for me or the team or things that you want us to pass on to him and you don't wanna reach out directly, you can reach out to us. We're happy to do that. So until the next time we speak, keep the Human Side Up.