Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise,
but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success. Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business
and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick, your host. And today, my special guest is Matthew Sensari.
Matthew is a business coach and owner of Prime Consulting, helping leaders get unstuck,
reclaim their time, and scale into success. Welcome to the show, Matthew.
Sheila, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
So what was a pivotal moment that led you to a significant shift in your approach or philosophy
towards achieving your fullest potential?
Oh, that's a great question. It's interesting because for me, especially starting out when I
was younger, I felt like the word potential was something that was exciting, but kind of always
hung over my head. There was always things to accomplish. There was things that I could do.
Really, the world was my oyster. And so I hustled, did the grind, tried entrepreneurship the whole
bit, and I had never really found success or measurable success. I had always felt like little
pieces and bits, but then in about 2012, I got into a traumatic car accident that changed my life.
And I was driving home late one night. I think it was 10 minutes to midnight, middle of the summer,
and two horses jumped on the road in the last second. And I was driving an SUV to give people
context, and the horses were bigger than my SUV. So slammed on the brakes, couldn't do anything.
Car absolutely totaled. I ended up being three inches from taking my life is what the accident
ended up being. And as every young, dumb man in his 20s does in the aftermath, I just kind of assumed
that everything would go away. I had never experienced anything like that. I had a great
job at this time, I was traveling North America doing public speaking. And all of a sudden,
I started to get these headaches. And these headaches would incapacitate me minutes, hours,
days, weeks at a time. And before you know it, physical, chronic pain, depression, all of that
set in. And I found myself unemployed. I actually had to leave my job because I couldn't work anymore.
So I sat here, and I was like, man, I can't work. I don't know what's happening. The challenges
in my life are mounting. Finances are out of control. What am I going to do? And I had always had a
passion for business and entrepreneurship. And so a friend of mine said, hey, you know what,
I know you're good with computers, which wasn't on my radar. I'm working at a business. Can you come
help out for a few hours and just help us with some problems? So I said, yes, I went in and started
chatting with the business owner. And we kind of hit it off. He asked me to go for lunch. And that
lunch turned into hiring me as his marketing consultant. Didn't go to school for marketing.
And I used that first client and that trust to basically educate myself, teach myself,
and launch my marketing business, which I ran for 10 years. And so for me, it was that moment
that was really, really pivotal in my life to me reaching my potential and going down this
business journey now, now on to my third business. Because honestly, my back was against the wall.
And I actually had to figure something out. I couldn't live the nine to five. I couldn't do
what I thought I was going to do. And so I had to find a way to provide. I had to find a way to
build my potential. And so went down that journey, even though it was difficult.
Thank you for sharing that. There are so many different lessons and things that you overcame
in that story alone, right? How to take a negative and see the light at the end of the tunnel,
turn it into a positive, turn it into entrepreneurship, said yes to opportunities.
So as a business coach, based on your experience, what are some of the most significant
obstacles individuals or organizations typically face on the path to achieving their goals?
Yeah. So it's so interesting because I think for me, now stepping into a business coach,
I functioned as a marketing consultant. I worked as a pastor. I've done real estate. So I worked
in a variety of industries, but being a business coach for me now and a consultant helps me
capitalize on all the things I learned and all of what I went through. And so now so many of the
things that I find that my clients and even just in conversations with business owners,
entrepreneurs of what they're struggling with are things that I battle fairly on. And so,
to tie it back to my story, in full transparency, my business for the first few years that I started
it was abject failure. We were barely surviving. I didn't know what I was doing. And so I started
to realize because of my chronic pain that everything was so out of control that I didn't
really have a handle on the business. So as quickly as I was getting clients, I was losing clients.
There was no way to build a business. And I remember coming to this point where I was like,
I have to build differently. I can't keep building this way. And now I always ask clients this
question. And to be honest, it's probably one of the most overarching questions for any of my clients.
I say, if anything were to happen to you, God forbid, and you were to stop working for a month,
what would happen to your business? And I can, I instantly see the fear kind of come over people's
faces when I ask that question. It doesn't matter what industry they're in, whether they're lawyers,
real estate, yoga, health, all of them, they all look at me and they say,
probably after a month, most of my business would be gone. And I tell them and I say,
then you don't have a business, you have a job. Because when you stop showing up to your job,
you don't get paid. Let's build you a business. And so that lesson that I had to learn was,
I need to build different. I need to build something that runs in spite of me, in spite of
me showing up, regardless if my health is good or not. And as a result of that, I get to do the
things that I'm actually really great at. And the very reason why I started this business,
giving strategy, managing people, developing people, actually giving vision to the business.
And so, so many of my clients, everybody's got different issues, different things that are going
on, one of the predominant things is when I ask that question of reflection, and just like a little
checkup, more often than not, they say, oh, crap, we do not have the systems or the structures in
place for this business to thrive if something were to happen. And so I always find that that's
such a pivotal way to ease in to starting the coaching journey for them.
You went through a lot of change. How do you help your clients adapt their strategies or their
operations in response to a change? Yeah, really good question. I think for me,
it's funny because as a business coach, not everything is strategy and not everything is systems
and structures. Because my work is so relational, there's an emotional component. And so I challenge
my clients, I'm always honest with them, I challenge them and say, you need to live in reality.
You need to live in reality. And that reality says that change is inevitable, right? Something
could happen to your business tomorrow. Your best employees might leave tomorrow. So what we need
to do is we need to try and build an operation and build a mindset that is flexible, not so that we
can avoid change, but that we can always be ready for when it comes. A great example of this is in
a lot of my business, in a lot of my clients and even in my own businesses, what we do is we create
workflows across every job description, every component of the business. And I encourage people
to get things on paper and to get the team to refine those processes so that if something happens,
we can onboard somebody, we can transition someone. And it's not like, okay, we built this
entire thing on one person and when they're gone, we're screwed, right? Otherwise, we're in the exact
same problem that I illustrated earlier. And so, yeah, it really is about how do we run a lean,
effective operation so that we're prepared for change because change is the one constant,
as cliche as it is. Great, I love that. So what made your trends or challenges do you foresee?
And how can individuals or organizations prepare to navigate them effectively?
You know, it's interesting, I think going along with this idea of running effective,
inefficient companies, so many industries right now are seeing buy-in from venture capital,
hedge funds, you're seeing major players start to roll up a whole bunch of small and medium
businesses in different verticals. And that can be scary for a lot of small business owners,
right? You think in competition, all of these things. And to me, instead of giving into the
fear of something we can't control, I think we have an opportunity to say, okay, what's working
for them and why are they doing that? And so one of the things I'm working with my clients again,
in so many of these ways is how do we systemize our business, right? How do we get really,
really good at people development? You know, one of my models is if we build people,
we will build business. So how do we get so good at building the people in our business,
developing them, skills transfers, internal promotions, all of these things so that
we are actually building businesses that people want to stay in, they're proud of,
that actually take market share, not just from running a great marketing campaign,
because these are what the major players are doing as that trend continues. And we continue to see
that in business of a lot of these industry rollups as more and more businesses start to get acquired.
I think we want to position ourselves. How do we position ourselves to succeed,
just like everybody else does? And so I think it's always looking at, okay, who are the major
players, that big trend and saying, what are they doing? How can I replicate that? I think it's a
great place to start. So what is your next milestone? Oh, man, there's so many. Sheila,
I'll tell you right now, I'm not someone who struggles with vision and I'm a dreamer, but I
would say, you know, I was a pastor for many years and I absolutely love that. And as I get into
business coaching, so much of my favorite interactions are, you know, whether virtually
or in person, even though I prefer the in person, is to be able to communicate with you, talk with
people and hear their stories. And so for me, I think my next milestone is not hoping to get back
into the public speaking and try and, you know, use my story to serve and inspire more people,
you know, the pain of what I went through. The truth is, I still go through a lot of those things.
I still have a lot of the injuries, still the same pain 12 years later, it has not gone away.
But my perspective has changed, right? And I've found purpose in that hopefully I can serve a few
people and maybe inspire a few people on the way. So a major milestone for me would be to get back
into that arena and try and influence and impact as many people as possible to tell them that
it is possible to keep going and that you don't have to stay stuck in whatever it is that's keeping
you stuck. Well, I look forward to continue to follow your journey and see you back on the stage.
So where can my listeners find you? Yeah, I love connecting with people. So you can go to my website
consultingbyprime.com. So consultingbyprime.com. Or you can look me up on LinkedIn or Instagram.
Again, reach out. I'd love to connect with you. Matthew Sanjari Sanjari Sanjari Sanjari Sanjari.
So before we wrap this up, can you offer one key piece of advice that my listeners can implement
right away to lay that groundwork for achieving success?
I think a really, really pivotal moment for me. I was about three or four years into the business,
2016, I believe. I was very, very overweight and unhealthy. So to compound everything that I was
going through, I was really struggling with that area of my life. I remember at one point,
I was walking up the stairs and I couldn't make it. I was struggling to breathe. And I'm an extrovert.
I love being around people. So it became really, really hard. And I remember getting to a point
where I said, this wasn't breathing. I was saying, you know what, enough's enough.
I can't control my depression. I can't control my physical pain. I can't control my headaches.
But maybe I can control some of my health. And so what I started to do was I started to just
take a measurement every day, how I was feeling, my mood, where the scale was at.
You know, and, you know, a lot of people at the time thought, I don't know, this is a good idea.
Well, you know, fast forward a couple of years later and I lost 150 pounds. I got into the best
shape of my life. But the principle for me was I couldn't manage something that I wasn't even
measuring. I wasn't even looking at the metrics of what success, what was success, what did it look
like in my health? And so I couldn't actually grow something that I had no idea what the baseline was.
And so what I tell people is this, I love talking to entrepreneurs and business owners and I say,
okay, what does, what does growth look like for you? What does success look like? Everybody wants
to make a million dollars, 10 million dollars, 100 million dollars. But what does success look
like for you? And I think it starts with, what are you measuring? Right? What are you measuring?
So if success looks this way, are you measuring the indicators that are going to help you get to
success? Right? It's easy to set a number target. It's easy to set a sales goal. But what if you
get there and you're still incredibly unprofitable? Right? So let's figure out what success looks like
and let's find ways to measure it. I think just starting to measure the things that matter
is a huge way for us to just take control of our business and start to get a good grasp of reality.
And that reality may be, oh, this is incredible or oh crap, we need help.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Matthew.
Oh, Sheila, thank you for having me. Honestly, it's an honor to be on the podcast. I really
appreciate it. And thank you to all of the listeners for tuning in to another episode
of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership.