Full Interview Transcript
The following is the complete edited transcript of my conversation with Matt Lescault, Founder & CEO of TydeCo, on The Business Philosopher Within You podcast. Minor edits have been made for readability while preserving the meaning and flow of the discussion.
Topics covered in this conversation
Founder glass ceiling
Scaling a business
Leadership evolution
Founder mindset
Self-awareness
Business growth
Organizational systems
Building leadership teams
Entrepreneurial risk
Business partnerships
Self-sustaining organizations
What Is a Founder Glass Ceiling?
[00:00:00.01] - Matt
The reason I call it a great glass ceiling is if you want to get past, you got to break that glass ceiling. In a way, you have to break yourself, be honest with yourself and figure out where you need to change and break those pieces of comfort. What makes people avoid change is their fear of messing up what is comfortable to them. That’s the most hard part of change management because you know what can be comfortable to somebody doesn’t have to be positive to them. But it’s what they know. Why, why is my comfort live there? What is my fear that’s holding me back? That was the moment. And, and getting through that and being able to take that from, I think at that point being about $600,000 in revenue, back down to $300,000, reshuffling, and then grow that back up, that I realized I can do this in any moment as long as I’m honest with myself about where I I am the factor that is causing the lack of success. I, I think that’s the fallacy. I think that’s what people see from the outside. I remember signing the paperwork for the bank to get the, the money to buy the South Africa companies, and I was driving home, the same house that I have today, and I think I had a full-on anxiety attack.
“Every business owner has glass ceilings. The question is whether you’re willing to break through them.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:01:15.23]
You know, I’m challenged every day as a CEO. What I can tell you is that my imposter syndrome will start to creep back in as we grow and the team grows more. And I’m continued to ask to make decisions that I’m not educated in making. And so I have to spend a lot of time making. And so those will be some of those moments in which we have to ask, you know, there’ll be questions about, am I the right person? And that’ll be its own glass ceiling. At some point, there’s a chance that I don’t end up at the answer that yes, I’m the right person. There is that chance. Now I have a— I’m a pretty confident individual, so I haven’t gotten there yet, but, uh, I always think about that. It’s like, is there going to be this moment in which I decide that I’m not the right person to lead the charge? My confidence has grown tremendously, and I’m not talking about the façade of confidence. I had to have a façade of confidence for a time period, and I think the 22-year-old me had more of a façade of confidence than today me that I’m very comfortable in who I am.
[00:02:24.10]
It is a, a comfort in yourself, a comfort in who you are. I think that’s really important. It’s not just a success of an entrepreneur, but just as we get older, as we are asked to be parents, as we’re asked to be leaders, as we’re asked to evolve and be the next generation.
[00:02:44.04] - Bhavesh
This is the Business Philosopher Within You Podcast. I’m your host, Bhavesh Naik. A question we often explore on this podcast is whether leaders can evolve as fast as the organizations they build. Because at some point, every founder hits a ceiling. The strategies that got you here stop working. The business is ready for its next level and something has to change. Today’s guest calls these moments glass ceilings. Matt Lasco is the founder and CEO of TideCo, a global consulting and cloud technology firm that began in a college attic with $1,500. Today it has grown into a multinational advisory group with more than 120 employees across the US, Canada, and South Africa. He’s a systems-driven leader who has navigated mergers, rapid growth, and his own evolution along the way. I’m so happy to have you on this podcast, Matt.
[00:03:36.22] - Matt
Thank you. It’s great to be here.
[00:03:38.06] - Bhavesh
And a special shout out to you, our listener. Hey, listen, we’re not just a podcast. We are a movement and you are the business philosopher. We learn from each other and grow with each other. Please remember to like, subscribe, follow, share, and comment, but most important, ask and answer questions. Thank you for tuning in.
Building a Business from a $1,500 Startup
[00:03:56.14]
So Matt, take us back to that dorm room, $1,500 startup, right? And you starting a company. And we’re gonna talk about the glass ceilings a little bit, but I wanna get you kind of warmed up here a little bit with your story and how you started this company that became what it is today.
“The $1,500 wasn’t the risk. Betting on myself was.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:04:15.22] - Matt
So I think the story starts a little bit before that $1,500. It wasn’t a dorm room. I had a house that I had rented. It was in an attic of that house. So I can’t, I can’t take the dorm room credit, but You know, I was very lucky to have gotten into a professional setting while in high school. And so I worked for a government agency in their accounting office and got to do budgets and things of that nature. And I ended up, you know, fast forward a little bit, I ended up becoming a controller of a local construction firm., here in Maryland. And it was an organization that had been around since the 1930s. It was an organization that had, uh, had some different troubles and so forth. And so I kind of came into what would be a mess. And, uh, and there was, you know, multiple years of taxes not filed, different things, the IRS. And I, uh, I had an opportunity to sort of like, in my opinion, there wasn’t— there’s only one direction to go, and that was up. So, right, they had a 40,000-square-foot, uh, warehouse, but they weren’t getting— they weren’t seeing the value, or they weren’t attaining the value that it could be.
[00:05:40.14]
And so as this 21-year-old guy, I was able to, to go into this organization and make a lot of impacts. Um, so I went— we went from half a million to about $3.6 million in revenue in 2 years. I was doing project management, I was doing accounting,. And I was negotiating with IRS and the labor department and so forth. And I remember, and one of my favorite parts of the story is I remember getting a fax, yes, a fax from the local government. And it said, to Matthew Lesko, Esquire. And I’m a 21-year-old guy. And so I go to the owners, I’m like, I get a raise because I just became a lawyer. But, um, all, all jokes aside, what it did was it gave me this confidence and this understanding that if I could, if I could do that, I could propel my career into offering my expertise. And maybe it wasn’t even expertise at the time, but my drive to multiple organizations. And through that, know that as a person, as who I am, that I got bored pretty easily. And if I started my own company, it was always my destiny that I got to drive towards.
[00:07:03.05]
And so that’s when I, uh, I actually put my resume on Craigslist, for those that remember Craigslist and the days that was actually used for, for, for things. And, uh, I got offered a job, uh, and I think I’m at 22 years old now for $120,000 a year. But I had this like want of entrepreneurship. I wanted to start my own thing. And so I went to my parents, I’m still 22, you know, I need to get, I gotta get the parental blessing on what I’m gonna do. So I go to my parents and I say like, I have this, I have this job offer at $120,000 and I don’t want to take it. I want to start the business, but, right. You know what? I don’t have any money, so I might need some money from you. So my mom goes, that’s more money than your dad is making right now. You can’t turn that down. You can’t do that. And my dad looks at me, goes, you go do you. Wow. And, uh, yeah, that’s a blessing. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was, it, it was this moment and Uh, so I, I, I took that $1,500 ‘cause I said to my dad, I said, look, I, I, I need some money.
[00:08:18.18]
I gotta get a lawyer. I gotta put some things into place. Yeah. I gotta incorporate. I gotta do basic things. And so he gave me that $1,500, but I had no clients yet. This was all the dream and the thought. Right. And, uh, and that’s how the, that’s how the business started. And, uh, I went, well, I got a job by posting on Craigslist, so why don’t I just post services on Craigslist? So the way that the company started was me posting free ads for bookkeeping services on Craigslist. And we went from zero to half a million in revenue in 18 months by doing that.
[00:08:54.00] - Bhavesh
That’s crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:55.23] - Matt
So that’s, that’s the, that’s the beginning. That’s the origin of where we are today.
[00:09:02.03] - Bhavesh
Absolutely. And, and I’m getting flashbacks here as you’re talking about all these things, not just Craigslist, but fax, right? Someone sent you a fax and, uh, I, I can’t even remember what faxes look like, right?
[00:09:12.09] - Matt
So they weren’t pretty.
[00:09:14.15] - Bhavesh
They weren’t pretty, right?
[00:09:16.17] - Matt
Right.
[00:09:18.07] - Bhavesh
Yeah, we used to— there’s all kinds of movie scenarios where, you know, someone sends you— someone sends someone a fax and, you know, it doesn’t get picked up and, you know, the stuff breaks loose. And so, yeah, so, and again, I think you’re blessed to have some parental figure, a parent, an actual parent who basically says, and go ahead and do it with you at the age of 22. Because a lot of us don’t have that.
[00:09:44.21] - Matt
So I think, I think that, and as a, as a father, so I have an 8-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son, right? I think that parents impact, uh, the, the direction and, uh, the confidence of their kids in such special ways. And I learned that firsthand through my parents. You know, my father was a union guy, my mother is an artist and really went towards her direction. She’s a very— yeah, in the circles, well-known artist here in the Washington, D.C. area. Um, and so I, I grew up with people that, that chased their dreams and what mattered to them, and that’s, uh, that’s huge.
[00:10:28.23] - Bhavesh
Yeah, absolutely. And here you are chasing— not just chasing your dreams, but, you know, having You realized.
[00:10:35.09] - Matt
Oh, I’m chasing them. I continue every day to chase those dreams.
[00:10:39.02] - Bhavesh
Yes, and then it’s a never-ending chase and that’s the best part about it, right? Absolutely. Yeah, so here you are, you’re 120-employee companies, you are in 3 countries and you have multiple offices and so you’re not a $1,500 startup yet at this point.
[00:10:55.04] - Matt
No, not at this point.
[00:10:56.00] - Bhavesh
Not anymore, all right. So, you know, how you got there is something that we wanna talk about and we talked about this idea of glass ceilings.
[00:11:03.16] - Matt
Absolutely.
[00:11:05.16] - Bhavesh
So you grew to half a million dollars in 18 months. And when do you think you hit your first glass ceiling? Right then. Oh, really?
[00:11:15.09]
Yeah.
[00:11:15.19] - Matt
So, yeah, yeah. Ever say that? At 22 years old, I knew nothing. I mean, right, like maybe less than nothing.
[00:11:23.05] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:11:23.11] - Matt
And so, but I’ve always been really blessed, I guess is the best way to put it. But I’ve been really lucky to have great mentors throughout my life.
[00:11:32.20] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:11:33.02] - Matt
People that I could look to and cared about my success and told me how it is, um, but also help guide through that. But, you know, if you’ve met any entrepreneur, we’re all stubborn.
[00:11:47.01] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:11:47.13] - Matt
And we want to do it our way, you know. So you have the mentors that try to tell you, and then you do it your own way and you fail, and you go and you knock back on that door and you say, you know what, you’re right, you’re right, I that, that was the wrong path. But, um, yeah, that first glass ceiling was there right after that 18 months. So I had, I’d grown to half a million, and I went directly into this thought process that I’m going to emulate, um, how accounting firms, CPA firms are built. So I went and got office space, and I went and hired people, and I thought about this third, third, third model. That’s, you know, back in the day and how we did it, like a third of the billable rate is what you pay. And, but I wasn’t confident enough to go and charge enough. So I was like charging like $45 an hour. So the third, third, third, I, I had to pay people $15 an hour, and quality wasn’t there. I couldn’t attract the right people. And so I was— I’ve always been good at generating revenue, but what I saw was this, like, for every client I would get, I’d lose a client because we weren’t really operating within a good quality of service infrastructure.
[00:12:56.16]
And so that first—
[00:12:57.09] - Bhavesh
sure—
[00:12:57.16] - Matt
glass ceiling was, was this idea of like, okay, I’m here, I have revenue, I figured out part of this, but I’m not succeeding. I’m not making much myself. I’m paying other people, and I don’t really feel like I’m succeeding. And it was the first moment in which I realized there was a degree of failure of what I was, uh, what I was experiencing. And, uh, if we think about this, I just want to give time frames, uh, just, just so we’re on the same page. So I incorporated my business in October of 2006. I left that construction firm, uh, in early 2007, call it July 2007. Um, by late 2018 into early— I mean, 2008 into 2000, early 2009, um, I had gotten Class A office space. I had 7 to 10 people working for me, and I hit this glass ceiling, and I was making like $20,000 a year myself. Now luckily I was young, I’m still like 23 going, maybe I’m 24. I didn’t have any bills, I didn’t have kids, I didn’t have anything I had to worry about, um, so I could make ends meet. But, uh, it was this moment in which I realized that I wasn’t truly succeeding.
[00:14:16.00]
And I almost gave up, right? Yeah, I almost gave up on it. I, uh, I was in communications and, and conversations with a firm who was— who had offered to take on the clients, hire me.
[00:14:28.23] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:14:29.13] - Matt
And, right, uh, and take that burden off of me, right? They weren’t going to pay me anything besides a guaranteed salary. I think they had offered me like $60,000 a year. Mhm. And I had this like moment in time and I said, do I, do I think I can do better than $60,000 a year right now? And do I think that I have the ability to figure this out? And what I realized is that I had to change my own mentality. So when I think about glass ceilings, you know, going back to what we’re talking about is glass ceilings are typically self-imposed. So the reason I call them glass ceilings is because you can see through them. Okay.
[00:15:12.07] - Bhavesh
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:15:13.14] - Matt
You, you hit them, right? See the next phase afterwards. But do you have the pain? But do you have the ability to break and to kind of break yourself?
[00:15:25.01] - Bhavesh
Sure. Sure.
[00:15:25.20] - Matt
Break who you are, break how you think about it and change. Because that’s what it’s all about. Like as an entrepreneur, as somebody that guides through it, This is not a perfect world, and there is moments in life in which we have to completely self-reflect and say, am I doing this in a way that’s going to get me to the next level? Um, and so that was that first moment which I said, no, I’m gonna break myself. And so what I did was I got rid of most of my staff and at least half of my clients. I retained a couple key staff members, and I changed my business model. I went to completely virtual. I increased my rates. I kept the clients that made sense, and I— yeah, and I dug in in a special kind of way.
[00:16:15.11] - Bhavesh
Yes.
[00:16:15.21] - Matt
Like, just doing like all the work. I remember, I remember being up until 3 AM doing work and, and, you know, accounting work, like bookkeeping and everything.
[00:16:25.08] - Bhavesh
I was getting to clients, the work, right?
[00:16:28.07] - Matt
And, uh, and so for me, that was the moment, and, and getting through that and being able to take that from, I think at that point being about $600,000 in revenue, back down to $300,000, reshuffling, and then grow that back up, that I realized I can do this in any moment.
[00:16:45.15] - Bhavesh
Yeah, right, right.
[00:16:46.20] - Matt
As long as I’m honest with myself about where I am the factor that is causing the lack of success.
Why the First Glass Ceiling Is Internal
[00:16:54.18] - Bhavesh
Yes. And you know, Matt, I want to get into that a little bit because this is a tremendous example of self-awareness. And you are in your 20s, early 20s, and you hit upon this. It is probably because of your upbringing, background, somehow. But a lot of us don’t have that kind of self-awareness. If we do have it, it is kind of over— it’s covered up by our ego, right? And you talked about this a little bit, right? This, you know, you have a mentor who is saying, don’t do this or do this, and we don’t hear it. We don’t listen. And then you talked about the glass ceiling. Glass ceiling is something that you see through, but it is transparent. It’s clear, but you feel the pain. Because you’re hitting against it. And that’s kind of what you’re describing there.
“The first glass ceiling isn’t in your business. It’s in yourself.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:17:49.23] - Matt
Absolutely.
[00:17:50.10] - Bhavesh
And you said that you had to break yourself down. Is that a term you used, that you had to kind of break yourself?
[00:17:58.02] - Matt
I was talking about more about if the reason I call it a great glass ceiling is if you want to get past, you got to break that glass ceiling. In a way, you have to break yourself. I don’t know, I’m not saying that you have— oh, okay. Some people would hear break yourself as a very, uh, negative way about it, right? Think about it more as like in a change. Be honest with yourself and figure out where you need to change and, and, and, and, and break those comfort those pieces of comfort, because really what, what makes people avoid change is their fear of messing up what is comfortable to them. That’s, that’s the, that’s the most hard part of change management because you know what can be comfortable to somebody doesn’t have to be positive to them, but it’s what they know.
[00:18:50.13] - Bhavesh
That is a profound statement. It, you know, something that is uncomfortable doesn’t have to be positive to you, but it is something that you have to know. That this is where my comfort is.
[00:19:07.02] - Matt
And why is it there? And I have to break through.
[00:19:08.22] - Bhavesh
And why is it there?
[00:19:10.11] - Matt
Why is my comfort live there? What is my fear that’s holding me back?
[00:19:15.12] - Bhavesh
Yes. And what was it for you, Matt?
[00:19:18.11] - Matt
Oh, I mean, in this moment, in that moment, I think my fear was doing it differently than what I was, than what was the norm. And, you know, and it is actually one of the greatest lessons that I learned is like, and I’ve taken it throughout, throughout my entire career since then. It’s like, no, being different is what actually propels us as, as entrepreneurs. If we’re just the same as everybody else, What are we bringing to the table?
[00:19:44.14] - Bhavesh
Exactly.
[00:19:45.06] - Matt
But if we can show how we’re different, how we differentiate the business, the message, the person, yeah, the story, the whatever, then there’s something to hold on to. Now, being different doesn’t mean that everybody’s going to agree with it, but it means that you have something that resonates with you and makes you unique.
[00:20:06.06] - Bhavesh
Yes.
[00:20:06.14] - Matt
And I have a, I have a, a real belief Everybody in this world, every individual in this world does have a unique, something very unique about themselves. And if they can figure out that thing that’s unique, they can propel to the stars. But most people find it very hard to identify their unique thing.
[00:20:32.03] - Bhavesh
Sure, sure. Yeah.
The Leadership Advantage of Embracing Failure and Imposter Syndrome
[00:20:34.07]
And, and identifying the unique thing, there is also the other part of it. So once you identify it, you had to execute from that, meaning that you had to build systems and structure. We’re not even talking organizational structures or hiring people, just ways of doing things where you actually acting from that new level or your difference or what your gift may be. You know, I’m putting words in your mouth, but you know, your strengths, right? And you operating from that. And then that becomes another comfort zone issue where, you know, so, and because something doesn’t work or you, something falls apart and then you kind of go back into your comfort cocoon, if you will, and you begin to doubt yourself and things like that, right?
"One of my greatest strengths is that I'm willing to fail."
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:21:19.01] - Matt
Absolutely.
[00:21:19.13] - Bhavesh
Is that a part of that?
[00:21:20.13] - Matt
Absolutely. Look, imposter syndrome. I’ll say this. I assume everybody knows what imposter syndrome is, but it’s when you feel like you’re not able or capable to be in the position that you’re in. Okay. But I assume most people know this.
[00:21:38.07] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:21:38.11] - Matt
I think as an entrepreneur, and maybe not even just as an entrepreneur, but as somebody that’s trying to grow and scale themselves individually, whether a business owner or somebody that’s trying to be an executive within a big corporation or whatever that looks like, if you haven’t experienced or don’t experience imposter syndrome at some point, you’re not trying in a way. Um, yes, yes. Because I can tell you that I’ve experienced that, and that’s part of this glass ceiling conversation. I’ve experienced this. Numerous times throughout my career. I’ve experienced it recently, and I expect to experience it again.
[00:22:14.21] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah. And what was your— I think you might have said it, but I want to kind of anchor this. What was your strength that you had identified that is unique to you, your unique talent?
[00:22:26.11] - Matt
You know, you may not like this answer. I don’t know.
[00:22:31.18] - Bhavesh
That’s okay.
[00:22:32.09] - Matt
I don’t. At— I don’t completely know because I think that, yeah, sometimes it’s subconscious to the individual.
[00:22:39.14] - Bhavesh
Yes.
[00:22:40.05] - Matt
Um, my guess is that it’s a willingness to fail.
[00:22:47.11] - Bhavesh
Yes. Yeah, yeah, right.
[00:22:49.22] - Matt
So I don’t think—
[00:22:50.09] - Bhavesh
and that’s huge.
[00:22:51.02] - Matt
Yeah. I don’t think I’m the smartest person out there. I don’t think that I’m the most capable person out there, but I think I’m somebody that has always said Failure’s possible. Let’s get close and see if we can get— if we can navigate through it. Because again, if you’re not getting close to failure at times, you’re not pushing yourself. And I’ve never been— I’ve never been too afraid of that to try to push forward. Now, if you fast forward my story, I went to South Africa. Yeah, on a— maybe not a whim, but I heard a company was looking to sell I went there to negotiate a letter of intent and I had no idea how I was gonna pay for the company, quite frankly.
[00:23:34.06] - Bhavesh
Right.
[00:23:35.01] - Matt
Hmm. I signed a letter of intent, had to come back to the States and start pondering, how am I gonna get the money for this? And it wasn’t so much of like, you know, some people hear that and they think like that ego and everything else. And for me it was, right, there’s not a failure that I, I just have to figure out what, what my levers are to make this happen. But I also knew that by doing this, if that failure was a real option.
[00:24:02.03] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:24:02.23] - Matt
But I was okay with it because I said the reward is so high that the risk is worth it. And I always told my wife, my wife has always been super supportive of what I did. And I said, look, if this fails, we’re not gonna be bankrupt as a family. We’re going to be okay. It’s just going to be very, very painful.
[00:24:23.16] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Taking the Biggest Risk of His Career
[00:24:25.10]
And you’re hitting on something while we’re talking about the South Africa angle. You’re hitting on something important that we need to know what our worst-case scenario is, even as we venture out and do something that is kind of daring, right? So, you know, there’s safety net. There’s this idea of removing the safety net. But if you have a family and if you have family to feed and, you know, you have people who depend on you, There’s always a, you know, a 22-year-old can do things that a 35-year-old cannot do, you know, when they have, when they have a couple of kids.
“Growth has always required me to become comfortable being uncomfortable.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:25:01.22] - Matt
Let’s be clear, when I acquired the companies of South Africa, when I went there and signed that LOI, I had a child. So let’s make sure that it’s clear that I’ve been on the, I don’t have any dependence to worry about. And on the other side being like, okay, I’m risking a lot more than I have in the past.
[00:25:27.09] - Bhavesh
Absolutely, yes. And the thing is that this risk-averseness, if you can call that, to the person who is in that, playing the role of being what the world sees as the risk-averse person, right? Or the risky person, or, you know, to that person, it doesn’t look like that or feel like that. Meaning that if you are a risk taker, you’re just doing the things that make sense to you. And you are, you know, right? The world may see it as a risky move, but— So is that true?
[00:26:04.00] - Matt
I think that’s the fallacy. I think that’s what people see from the outside.
[00:26:08.02] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:26:08.16] - Matt
I remember signing the paperwork for the bank. To get the money to buy the South Africa companies. And I was driving home the same house that I have today.
[00:26:19.18] - Bhavesh
Right.
[00:26:22.02] - Matt
And I think I had a full-on anxiety attack in that car being like, I just signed this. I have just committed this. I never took on debt, you know, before I did the first acquisition before South Africa. And in the acquisition in South Africa, I had spent almost 15 years of my business career, being able to build without ever taking anybody else’s money besides my parents. And I did this and I remember I was like, am I having a heart attack right now? No, I was just, I was, I was in a moment of anxiety. But then again, luckily I’ve always had a degree of ability to think things through. I like the, I like Cookie Monster. You know, stop and think it through. Uh, yeah, I think is Cookie Monster’s, uh, favorite saying, or at least when I was growing up. Um, and calm down pretty quickly. But I do remember that and just being like, holy moly, what did I just sign up for? Um, yeah. And, uh, and, and I tell people to this day, I was like, I had no idea what I signed up for. Like, I went from being this company here in the U.S., local company, 30 people, to buying a company in another country, and I’ve never dealt with anything international, never dealt with anything.
[00:27:42.18]
And it has been such a learning experience. It’s been not even 4 years, and what I learned every day shocks me. It is. And, and it’s, and it’s amazing. Like, at the same time, I have that stress, but I have this like real appreciation for the experiences that I have been able to take on because of this journey. And that’s what I think is so amazing about it. And so I know we’ve gotten a little bit away from glass ceilings in this conversation.
[00:28:15.07] - Bhavesh
I think we kind of, yeah.
The Beliefs That Limit Business Growth
[00:28:17.07]
And I think we’re still talking about that a little bit because you broke through a comfort zone here. You know, you’re just describing the inner experience of someone who has broken through a comfort zone in a way. That anxiety attack is probably, I’m assuming that maybe coming from the comfort zone, having broken through a comfort zone, something you didn’t do before. Never taken a debt before. Now I’m taking a debt to to do an acquisition not in United States but in South Africa, different culture, different everything, right? And different laws, I’m assuming, different logistics. And you made an acquisition, you got to make this work now. And then the anxiety attack, I would believe that that’s kind of outside the comfort zone for you.
“Glass ceilings are typically self-imposed.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:28:55.21] - Matt
Absolutely. So I don’t want to harp too much on that. It was a brief moment, you know, but sure, sure. I’m a pretty transparent person. If people ask me, you know, how I feel, you know, the emotional toll that things take on, you know, I, I like to be forthright because I think part of learning, and one of the things that has been really valuable for me and the mentors that I’ve had and so forth, is that honesty around how things have impacted them. And so I’ve always been somebody that’s been transparent about how things have impacted me. But there were so many moments in business before ever getting into Opportunity South Africa that made me have to rethink, change hit those glass ceilings. And it’s, uh, it’s been this amazing journey for me that’s helped me to grow, has also highlighted some moments of, of true failure for myself, whether that’s small moments of how I interacted with people or how I manage people, or larger interactions of, of decision-making that I did and, and how that, uh, impacted our bottom line, top line, and so forth. Yeah, entrepreneurship is not perfect, and we go into this, and I think everybody wants to tell a story about how great they are, and I want to tell a story about the true journey of what it is to try to be great, because I don’t— I’m not great, but I continue to strive to try to get there and to, and, and to set myself separately and set really my company, because another real And I’m going on a tangent here.
[00:30:29.13]
Another real thought process of mine is like, I’m nothing without the people that are around me. My biggest assets are the people that I have. There’s 119— if we use 120 or have— there’s 119 individuals that are with me. What happens if I don’t have them? Nothing.
[00:30:49.03] - Bhavesh
Yeah. So Matt, let’s go back to the idea of glass. And I want to come to that because that’s powerful. I think you’re starting to open up this other whole new dimension about not just me but my people, right? Or the people, right? People who work within an organization. The $600,000 class saving, right? So you broke through and you moved beyond that. Was there a change of belief system that you put in place? So I just kind of want to go into that transition a little bit. You had also talked about that in that South Africa transaction where, you know, you do something for the first time, it’s out of the comfort zone. It has emotional, sensory reactions within the body. And then you move beyond that. And then maybe, maybe that becomes a new belief system. It’s a new way of operating. And then hopefully that becomes your next floor, maybe. The ceiling and floor, right? So what was the new belief system that allowed you to get beyond that $600,000?
[00:31:53.23] - Matt
Before I go there, I want to give a shout out. So I started this company with my best friend, uh, a guy by the name of Ryan Waterman. Um, we went to high school together, uh, we were both in a band, we both played French horns, um, and, uh, we decided to start this company together. And so when, when we had that $1,500 and we went on to Craigslist, it was me and him doing this, uh, together. And when we hit the glass ceiling, it was us together deciding. Like, he was on— he would come on the same path of $60,000 and he would have, um, you know, he had to sign off on anything we did. And so, yeah, he’s a big reason why we continued and broke through these glass ceilings. So I want to be very clear about that, you know, there’s never just one individual that is, is driving this. Um, so we hit that $600,000, we decided to get rid of the offices, we bring it down to almost $300,000 of revenue. All right, and we really shift our business model at that point.
[00:32:56.17] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:32:57.06] - Matt
Okay, we go into a completely virtual— I mentioned this earlier— a completely virtual model. And really what happened is, is that Ryan had his clients and staff that work with him, I had my clients, the staff that work with me, and we kind of operate as two different businesses within the same business.
[00:33:17.05] - Bhavesh
Um, sure.
[00:33:18.12] - Matt
But it worked in that moment well because we could we could sort of drive the overall goal and, you know, our individual goals of where we wanted to take it.
[00:33:30.11] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:33:31.16] - Matt
And so we spent the next 3 years building it back up, but we were able to get to $1.2 million, we were able to get to $2 million, we were able to get to $2.4 million. That happened, uh, over about the next 6-ish years. We hit about $2.4 million, I think it was late 2015 or early 2016, and that was really our next glass ceiling.
[00:33:54.11] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:55.16] - Matt
Um, and from my, my perspective, it was— and I see this with a lot of, a lot of businesses— that 1.2 to 2.4, but really that 1.2, you go from being this disorganized business that can kind of be everything, wear every hat that you need to wear, to really having to create process and infrastructure and so forth. Um, and we really struggled with that. I’m a— yeah, I’m an idea guy. I’m a vision guy. I understand what processes need to go in. I understand systems. I can get things to like 40, 50, 60%, but then I get bored. And I knew, I’ve always known that I needed the right infrastructure, the right people around me to, uh, to really help through that process, to be sure, to be the yin to my yang, if you want to put it that way, but to complement us. So Yeah, I don’t know if, if you’ve ever, uh, dealt with or, or went down the path of the idea of behavioral profiling within the business workforce.
[00:34:59.08] - Bhavesh
And a little bit, yeah, yeah, yeah. All the analysis, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:02.17] - Matt
This can—
[00:35:03.10] - Bhavesh
Myers-Briggs and all the rest of it.
[00:35:05.10] - Matt
We used a product called Predictive Index, which was EEOC compliant, things of that nature, to really— and I got trained in it— to really understand how different people operate and the why they operate and so forth. And it really, at that time, helped me understand what my strengths and weaknesses were, but also what other people’s strengths and differences in how you marry people together to, to have a balanced, uh, team.
[00:35:27.10] - Bhavesh
Right.
[00:35:27.14] - Matt
Side note on that, but, um, we hit this glass ceiling because both myself and Ryan were more your visionary strategy people. We weren’t really a yin to a yang. Um, sure. And, uh, and so I think that, that really stifled us from a growth perspective is because the two of us were kind of similar in a lot of ways. In fact, I think we both took the behavioral assessment and we both were pretty much very similar in our behavioral profile.
[00:35:57.21] - Bhavesh
Wow.
[00:35:58.03] - Matt
Yeah. But if we—
[00:35:59.23] - Bhavesh
if I want to get to that later, but yeah, that’s great because you can do a podcast just on that.
[00:36:05.18] - Matt
Absolutely.
[00:36:06.19] - Bhavesh
1-hour conversation. But sorry, go ahead.
[00:36:08.13] - Matt
Absolutely. Um, in a rewind, uh, in mid to late 2007, my cousin, who is now my current business partner, come into the business. Um, and, uh, he, he really learned and grew up within the, in the company. Um, and through these, uh, this growth and everything else, he became my right-hand man when it came to executing on, on the clients. I had my clients, but he was like my manager, so oversaw the team, everything else. I went and handled the clients, things like that. And we were a really good match in our kind of personality, our profiles, our our focus and so forth. And, uh, and so we grew a team together. And, uh, I think unfortunately Ryan never found that person that really balanced for him, right?
[00:37:02.12] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:37:03.15] - Matt
So we get to 2017, and, uh, I would say, you know, Ryan had kids a lot earlier than I did. I’m not so sure that, uh, I would have succeeded if I had the same responsibilities at the same time. Because, yeah, because it was a lot. And it was determined that, you know, he, he decided that he wanted to, uh, to find a different path.
[00:37:31.10] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:37:32.17] - Matt
And so he exited the business, um, and I won’t get into the details of like the terms and everything else, but he exited the business. And at the same time, Joseph, my current business partner, my cousin, Yeah, came in as an owner to the business. Yes. And, uh, in that moment, immediately there’s two major decisions. And this is— that— this goes back to glass ceilings. I had a point here. Yeah, just— I’m just navigating. I know you did. Navigating through the story.
[00:38:02.11] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:38:03.00] - Matt
Um, is we, we had really two major decisions that impacted the rest of our, uh, our future to today.
[00:38:14.23] - Bhavesh
Sure. Yeah.
[00:38:16.00] - Matt
One, uh, was we’re not gonna have me have my own clients and Joseph has his own clients as me and Ryan did. I’m gonna handle strategy, vision, kind of operations from an internal perspective.
[00:38:31.00] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:38:31.08] - Matt
He’s gonna handle client services. So I’m, I’m growth.
[00:38:34.17] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:38:35.03] - Matt
Yeah. I’m sales.
[00:38:35.21] - Bhavesh
Yes.
[00:38:36.10] - Matt
He’s execution.
[00:38:37.01] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:38:37.16] - Matt
So that was the first thing, because what we did then is we looked at the client base and we said, well, we have different rates for different clients. We, we, we made uniformity around rates, uniformity around delivery, uniformity around— Joseph did that. Um, yeah, the number— the, the second decision is we said QuickBooks is today. We need to find that product of tomorrow, right? And so that’s when we decided to invest in the idea of being Sage Intact partners, right?
[00:39:14.01] - Bhavesh
So QuickBooks and Sage, for our audience, I think there are two accounting software systems basically.
[00:39:19.16] - Matt
So QuickBooks is what I would call a small business solution built for small businesses, has the number one market share in the US. Um, is a great product for those, uh, organizations. But even back then in 2018 when we made this decision, in my opinion, where technology— what the future technology was going to do was going to create what we did or turn what we did into really, um, transactional type services and not value-based services. And that the smallest clients, um, and that we, we serviced a lot, the smallest clients really looked at us as a cost center, as like a, a have-to-have to be compliant, but not a value add where they wanted to really invest money into. And it was our thought that like if we could find a next higher up product, so Sage Intact, um, I looked at Sage Intact, uh, Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite at that time, right? And made a decision for Sage Intact. Um, as a, what we call an ERP, an enterprise resource planning software. But really what you would say is a, a accounting solution for upper SMB, small, uh, small business, such as small business and midsize, upper SMs and the MBS.
[00:40:42.23] - Bhavesh
Sure, sure. Yes.
[00:40:44.07] - Matt
And, uh, and that decision, we had no idea at the time, uh, is the number one decision that has probably cascaded into everything else that’s happened. Yeah, because the companies that we bought in South Africa, just to, to wrap this all up, were Sage, Intact Partners, and Africa Middle East, right? So if we think about this now, so the glass ceiling there in 2017 was a realization that the business model and the way that we had it and the way that the partners were structured.
[00:41:21.03] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:41:21.19] - Matt
Was not scalable. Now, right, I’m, I’m going to tell you something I don’t tell a lot of people. At that time, before my, uh, before Ryan, uh, left the business, I was working like 20 hours a week. I was making good money.
[00:41:40.15] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:41:41.02] - Matt
I was streaming shows every day. I’d work my 4 hours. I’d My wife thought I was lazy.
[00:41:50.18] - Bhavesh
A guy who works 20 hours a day, a week.
[00:41:53.14] - Matt
No, a week, 20 hours a week.
[00:41:54.23] - Bhavesh
Oh, it’s 20 hours a week. Okay.
[00:41:56.09] - Matt
Yeah. No, no, I was, I was not working much. I was making good money. I was getting really bored. Yeah. I was getting really bored.
When Founders Must Become Different Leaders
[00:42:05.04] - Bhavesh
And I want to talk about that a little bit because that’s, that’s a tremendous accomplishment for a business leader. And just, I, I, when you first said it, I didn’t register it. I thought it was 20 hours a day. No, 20 hours a week.
“Vision gets you started. Systems get you to the next level.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:42:18.18] - Matt
Well, trust me, I haven’t seen that since. So like, it might have been a, a tremendous, uh, accomplishment at the time, but since then, now I’m like, if I don’t work 20 hours a week, I’m, I’m doing good. Um, I am, I am, I’m working more than, uh, is, uh, and so is Joseph, working way more than we should. But again, We’re in this growth mode. We talk about how I perceive us as really in a startup mode then, right? Even though I say I’ve been in business for 19 years, my 20th anniversary is October this year. But really, right, my current business, not the EIN or anything else like that, but the current structure of business is less than 4 years old. I’m in true startup mode. And we can talk about that because that’s also about reinventing yourself in those moments.
[00:43:05.10] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah. And I want to say something else that I kind of picked up on, which is that you’re saying that, so before and after, you know, working 20 hours a week, you got to that. And I call that accomplishment because a lot of leaders can’t get there or won’t get there, you know, for similar reason that you discovered for yourself that 20 hours a week, boring, right? I hate it. Because I talk to founders and this is, they love being in the middle of the business and driving and running it, right? And when they— so there’s this tug of war between stepping back and letting the organization go on its own and then stepping back in and running the show, right? So any insights on that, right? It seems like there is an internal growth here also. And as you broke through this glass ceiling, you kind of broke something deep inside you.
[00:44:01.21] - Matt
So take that concept and now do it in kind of microcosms. What I mean by that is, as an entrepreneur, at least one that starts in the attic of a house and only has himself and a business partner, and then has 2 employees and then 4 employees and then 6 employees, you’ve worn every hat. Uh, and we have to be good at letting things go. Now, I’ve been accused a lot of not letting things go, and my argument is, if I didn’t let them go, maybe you should self-reflect. Because for those people that show me that I can let go, I hand it. And the point that I’m always looking at is I’m looking at gaps within a company, and I’m hiring those gaps so it doesn’t fall on me. And the answer is that if I can find opportunity to eliminate myself out of the situation and put it on somebody that can do it better.
[00:45:00.10] - Bhavesh
Awesome.
[00:45:00.19] - Matt
My problem is that when I see somebody not doing it at a standard that I expect, then I insert myself back into it and that can be a challenge. Now, yes, I’ll also say this. Many business owners take take my path as an example, go and make money, and then elevate how their standard of living, and have to continue to make money and elevate their standard of living and continue to have to make money. And I made a very conscious decision, and so did Joseph, by the way. We were both, um, again, so we’re cousins. My mother, his father are siblings. I think we come from a very grounded upbringing, uh, you know, of not really needing a lot or, or needing flashy things. It’s like, we have never stopped to reinvest into the business and put our own income off to the side because we think that this is how it’s going to propel to get us to where we want to go. And, and that’s another thing of like, that, that’s a different part of glass ceilings, but a lot of entrepreneurs, they’re chasing the money so much that they don’t give themselves the ability to truly scale.
[00:46:12.20] - Bhavesh
Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that’s a great point, right? So, and so was this the last glass ceiling or is there one after this?
[00:46:25.10] - Matt
Let’s see. So 2018 happens. It takes a year to get enabled into Sage Intacct. That’s how it does. And so we don’t start selling it until 2019. Um, sure, but we’re at that $2.4, $2.8. We’re having a really hard time getting into $3 million.
[00:46:50.12] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:52.04] - Matt
And what I realized, and it wasn’t our glass ceiling, is, yeah, we were big enough that we needed real systems and real infrastructure, but we didn’t have enough money to truly invest in real systems and real infrastructure. And so that’s when I and Joseph with me shifted into the concept of an acquisition strategy. Okay. And saying, yeah, if we can take lending, if we can acquire, we can grow faster and we can reinvest that. And I have to get— and, you know, through this process I had established business dealings with some other people here locally, and they— right, that person individually Um, which I’m not going to call out in this, in this conversation. I’m not sure if they would want me to, but that individual really sparked my interest in the acquisition component and, and, and drove, I think, a, uh, and a— what’s the right word— uh, drove this, this passion for it that I never had before, never really considered before.. And so, right, even though my business dealings with that individual didn’t transpire for a long term, I think there was a pretty big impact into what my now, my now current place, but my future at that time was.
[00:48:21.15]
And so we sort of said, hey, we don’t have this infrastructure. Let’s try to make this infrastructure. Let’s go and start this acquisition. So we did our first acquisition. In 2021-ish, I think, right? Like 2018, we become Sage Intacct partners. We don’t finish enablement until, uh, until 2019. 2019, we start to go in and we go into this. We get our first client to migrate into Intacct.
[00:48:49.22] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:48:50.07] - Matt
2020 happens with COVID Yeah. So now everything changes in what we’re doing. We come out of COVID in 20 21, and we start looking at acquisitions at that point. And we make our first acquisition here in Maryland. And that was a big shift from a— from being willing to take on debt and also learning how you incorporate people into a business and how do you communicate with a new client set that is used to a different business owner, things of that nature. Sure.
[00:49:23.09] - Bhavesh
Absolutely. And Matt, you were at about 120 people, you said, right?
[00:49:29.11] - Matt
Right now. Yeah.
[00:49:31.06] - Bhavesh
And I don’t know if you, if you’re okay disclosing the revenue at this point, the ballpark.
[00:49:36.21] - Matt
Yeah, I’m happy to, but I think that, you know, a disclaimer should come, come with it. So, okay, if you look at what we do in Africa, Middle East, in our South Africa office, we— this isn’t just like a hub to support the U.S. So a lot of organizations will go and hire cheaper labor to, to produce revenue in North America.
[00:50:00.10] - Bhavesh
Sure.
[00:50:00.15] - Matt
It’s not what we did, right? We hired, uh, we acquired businesses in South Africa that were Sage partners, and that had— and we had to maintain the Sage partnership there and the revenue. And if you look at, uh, the cost of living, but the also kind of the rates and everything else, it’s anywhere between 50% to a third of what you see in the U.S. So what we charge for implementations in South Africa is 50% to a third of what we charge here in the US. So the reason I, I, I make this, uh, this clarification is because when I say that we’re doing about $10 million in revenue, you have to understand that if it was all US-based with 120 people, we’d probably be closer to $15 to $18 million, uh, in, in what we’re doing. If you look at the pure statistics of it.
[00:50:53.18] - Bhavesh
Yes. Yeah.
Choosing the Right Business Partners
[00:50:54.14]
So at this point, do you see any glass ceiling on the horizon? And if you could predict, and we’re in a prediction game now, you know how that goes, what do you think it might be?
"Who you build with determines how far you can go."
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:51:11.10] - Matt
So what I would say is one of the reasons I call it a glass ceiling is because you can’t see it until you run into it.
[00:51:18.17] - Bhavesh
Aha. Yes.
[00:51:19.07] - Matt
Okay. Yeah.
[00:51:20.12] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:51:20.16] - Matt
Um, what could it be? There’s so many possibilities. There’s so many possibilities. I don’t want to, I don’t want to be this AI guy, but what I’m going to say is that AI is going to transform the way we do business.
[00:51:38.14] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:51:39.03] - Matt
And it is going to create or is going to require a degree of investment. And that next glass ceiling could be, do us— and I’m doing more not specifically to Tide Co., to my organization, but to the wider, you know, businesses that are kind of in my size bracket— is like, do we have the ability to invest in a way that’s competitive? And yeah, if we don’t, are we creative enough to understand how we circumvent that, to break through that glass ceiling? So that’s one piece. My simple answer is I’m already thinking and preparing about that right now for our organization. We already invest in a team that does AI deployment components, but we’re doing it much, much differently than other organizations. I think a lot of other organizations are all talking about what they’re deploying to their client base. And what we’re doing is spending a lot of time deploying internally and understanding what, what is possible and also looking at what is being mainstreamed because I think It’s, it’s such a fast-paced thing that you could get— you, you could spend a lot of money investing in something that’s going to be solved by somebody else really quickly.
[00:52:49.08]
And you want to, you want to be careful there. There’s that component of it. Um, you know, I’m challenged every day as a CEO. I think that, um, what I can tell you is that my imposter syndrome will start to creep back in as we grow and the team grows more, and I’m continued to ask to make decisions that I’m not educated in making, and so I have to spend a lot of time making. So those will be some of those moments in which we have to ask, you know, there’ll be questions about, am I the right person? And that’ll be its own glass ceiling. And at some point, there’s a chance that I don’t end up at the answer that yes, I’m the right person. There is that chance. Now I have a, I’m a pretty confident individual. So I haven’t gotten there yet, but I always think about that. It’s like, is there going to be this moment in which I decide that I’m not the right person to lead the charge? And I sure hope I don’t get there, but it’s always in the back of my mind.
[00:53:58.16] - Bhavesh
Yeah. And I’m telling you, I talk to a lot of founders, a lot of leaders, and this level of transparency and being able to talk and this level of self-awareness, I don’t see it. Very often. And most of the people who come on the podcast, they have that. That’s why they’re on the podcast, right? But there’s a lot of folks that I talk to who can’t bring it, right? So I really appreciate that, the level of depth you go into describing your inner landscape and how you navigate through these ideas, right? From comfort zone, these are difficult things to talk about, especially for a leader. You’ve got 120 people who, you know, whose payrolls you’re signing, right? Figuratively, at least, right? Probably not personally. But so having said that, one thing that I want to talk about, we can make a podcast just on this one. Maybe this is our next episode that we might do sometime in future, but about the people, right? As you are hitting your glass ceiling, the entire organization is going through the breaking of that glass ceiling. So there might be, you know, a collection of people who might be facing that glass ceiling, but maybe cannot verbalize it or cannot articulate it, right?
[00:55:18.05]
But the pain is there, right? They cannot see it. Any insights on how a leader like yourself, a founder like yourself, can basically keep their eyes and ears open, and the feelers out as they work with people and talk to people, how to kind of spot the next Glass Ceiling, if that’s— if there’s even such a thing.
[00:55:37.04] - Matt
I, I don’t know you can spot it. Well, I can tell you about the team that you have.
[00:55:41.16] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:55:42.07] - Matt
Um, is there’s certain people that will be on that path with you.
[00:55:50.05] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[00:55:50.17] - Matt
And there’s certain people that will, will decide to get off of that path with you. And it’s not always evident who those people are going to be.
[00:56:01.14] - Bhavesh
Right. Right.
[00:56:03.19] - Matt
But it’s always important to me to respect their decision of when it’s right and wrong for them.
[00:56:13.19] - Bhavesh
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:56:15.00] - Matt
That it’s not personal unless you make it personal in the sense of like, right. Uh, everybody has their own values, their own culture, and those values in that internal culture evolve over time. And that’s part of human nature. And as an owner, if you can have the grace to allow those people to experience that for themselves and be happy for their decisions, uh, whether or not that’s a decision that you’d like. Um, I think that goes a long way in trust and being able to navigate through, uh, through the hard and good times, uh, of, uh, of business. Because it’s, it’s never all fun and it’s never all bad. Uh, yes. And look, I’ve had, I’ve had people leave and come back, uh, and be successful coming back. I’ve had people leave and come back and be unsuccessful coming back. I’ve had people that I thought would be around forever that are not here anymore. And I’ve had people that I thought weren’t going to last that are still here. Now, one thing that I say to everybody is, if I hire somebody— it’s not high, it’s not I— but if, if the company hires somebody, we will take the time and investment to try to make them work, because we— there’s a reason why we believed in bringing them in in the first place.
[00:57:45.10]
I’m not so sure that that completely answered your question. Um, I don’t know that it’s about identifying the glass ceilings, but sometimes the way that we approach our, our life and our thought process, uh, allows us to navigate those moments that are the glass ceilings where we, we lose that person that we feel like, oh my God, I can’t handle it. But if we take a step back and say, yes, I can, or, um, or those great moments in which we believe that we hired the great, the best person and now we’re going to achieve it. But those are, those are the highs and lows always come back to the middle, you know, as you’re going through it and be true to who you are.
[00:58:23.12] - Bhavesh
Be true to who you are, right? Yeah, you just kind of encapsulated that right there, right? And, you know, I think what you’re saying is, you know, don’t be forcing scenarios where there is no need to, you know, just let things evolve and then work with them as they do. Yep, absolutely.
How Leadership Changes Over Time
[00:58:41.15]
So Matt, the 22-year-old Matt, right?
[00:58:48.00] - Matt
I don’t remember him.
[00:58:48.17] - Bhavesh
And Matt, right? And Matt today. What do you think is the one thing that you can point out that is the biggest shift in how you are today or how you present yourself or how you see yourself inside?
"Every new version of the business demanded a new version of me."
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[00:59:12.18] - Matt
My confidence has grown tremendously, and I’m not talking about the façade of confidence.
[00:59:19.20] - Bhavesh
Yeah, you’re right.
[00:59:21.11] - Matt
Um, I was bullied pretty, pretty bad in, in school, in grade school and so forth, and I lost a lot of confidence through that process, and I had to have a façade of confidence for a time period. And I think, yeah, The 22-year-old me had more of a façade of confidence than the today me, that I’m very comfortable in who I am and very confident in who I am. And I think that’s probably the biggest change that I see now. Um, what you should do is, is beg my team to have somebody like my business partner who’s known me since a kid come on and give his perspective, cuz he probably would have a much different perspective on that than I do.
[01:00:06.07] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You speak of confidence and the kind of confidence, and you actually qualifying the word confidence, right? Not the confidence that comes from, for example, it may come off sounding like arrogance, right? But the confidence that you’re talking about, it comes across right here in this conversation, is the confidence that comes from humility. It’s a very strange thing, right? That real vulnerable, you may not call it that, but you are basically willing to be vulnerable. And that is the real strength. And that’s the real confidence. That’s what I’m seeing, right? When I hear your story. So—
[01:00:42.10] - Matt
And if I could, if I had a better word, I think I have a decent vocabulary, but not as great as I wish I would. Maybe confidence isn’t the word, but it is a comfort in yourself. A comfort in who you are.
[01:00:59.18] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[01:01:00.15] - Matt
And, uh, I think that’s really important for— it’s not just a success of an entrepreneur, but just as we get older, as we are asked to be parents, as we’re asked to be leaders, as we’re asked to, uh, to evolve and be the next generation, you know, you know.
[01:01:22.14] - Bhavesh
Sure. So Yeah, absolutely.
Staying Grounded During Rapid Growth
[01:01:26.04]
And Matt, you deal with change all the time. And we’re not just talking about the arc. The entire arc is about change. We talked about breaking through the glass ceilings, but also just day-to-day change. And what’s on the horizon? We got this AI and there’s geopolitical issues that we’re dealing with today. And the whole world seems like it’s a very different place. And there’s a lot of a lot of flux out there, right? A lot of uncertainty. And someone like you in a leadership position like you, what do you do or where do you go to root yourself or ground yourself? It could be literally or metaphorically. Is there a place you go to kind of get in touch with— you’ve talked about being comfortable in yourself, right? The, the definition of confidence. How do you regain that if you ever stray away from that?
"Comfort isn't always good. It's just familiar."
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[01:02:22.09] - Matt
I don’t have a good answer. I don’t give myself enough time. Um, I’m, I am lucky and fortunate to, I think, have an innate ability to, to keep myself at a balance at times. Um, but at the same time, I probably actually, um, I’m thinking about a specific business coach right now who would say, yeah, you need to spend a little bit more time and, you know, self-reflection, maybe meditation and things of that nature. But that being said, um, I really like to focus on unity. I really— so one of our core values is better together. Um, and what we’re seeing from a geopolitical thing that, that hurts me the most is the amount of divisity.
[01:03:14.22] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[01:03:15.04] - Matt
That is happening today. And that is one thing that when it comes to our organization, whether internal to ourself or external to those people that we collectively communicate to, is I want to drive a, uh, a culture of collaboration, togetherness, unification. And acceptance of difference of opinions. And, uh, and I think that helps us all stay grounded as individuals.
[01:03:47.15] - Bhavesh
Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the things that I watch when leaders like yourselves do that just absolutely inspires me is when you try to kind of create a microcosm of the world that you would like to see. As in, you know, you’re in these leadership shoes and you have the opportunity to mold this organization in the way that you would want the world to be. And that’s exactly what you kind of said, right?
[01:04:12.16] - Matt
Maybe I’ll tell you something, you know, it’s the hardest thing as you grow and evolve as an organization is a reality that the culture has less and less to do with me as the individual and more and more to do with the greater organization. And so it almost comes, gets, it almost gets out of your own control, but you have to remember that you do have a major influence on it. And so like, yes, it’s, it’s not my world, it is, it is ours, uh, together. And we hope that we can bring people in that, that hold the same value structure, and we hope that we can exit those people that we don’t, uh, that don’t hold that same value structure, because it does, it it is hard to build and easy to destroy.
[01:05:08.04] - Bhavesh
Yeah. Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah.
Breaking Through the Next Founder Glass Ceiling
[01:05:12.02]
And Matt, is there anything that we didn’t talk about today that you would like to give voice to? Anything that you wish I had asked about, but I didn’t get a chance to ask?
“If you want to break through the glass ceiling, you have to be willing to break yourself.”
Matt Lescault
Founder & CEO, TydeCo
[01:05:25.02] - Matt
I think we’ve covered a lot. I mean, I may be a talker. I may have a lot to say and You know, there’s opportunities for other conversations and I’ve really enjoyed being here and having this conversation with you. I thought this was a very easy conversation to have. And so I appreciate that. But I don’t know if there’s anything today that sticks out as like I feel like has been left off.
[01:05:50.14] - Bhavesh
Absolutely great. Yeah. Thank you for the compliment. I think when someone says this was an easy conversation, that’s a tremendous compliment. To a guy like me. I know you have your own podcast. I’m sure that, you know, you will appreciate when someone says, oh, this was a very easy conversation, right? We got into it and just kind of flew. So thank you so much for being here and telling your story and telling it from the heart. You know, you truly are a transparent person, and I love the vulnerability and the humility that you show, even as you are this person who is required and commanded to lead. An organization. Those are very difficult priorities to balance, and you seem to be doing a really good job at it.
[01:06:29.23] - Matt
So we’ll see, you know.
[01:06:31.16] - Bhavesh
Yeah.
[01:06:32.12] - Matt
But I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
[01:06:35.11] - Bhavesh
Sure. How do we get in touch with you? And who are the kinds of people that you would like to kind of reach out to you and connect with you?
[01:06:45.04] - Matt
So, you know, I think this type of podcast is not about drumming up business or finding people that want financial software. I’m the type of person that I’ve been very fortunate. I think I’ve said this a couple different times, but fortunate to have people in my life that help guide me and mentor and so forth. And so what I’d say is I’m always open to conversations and always open to, to being able to give back in the same, same way. Now I’m a busy individual, so I don’t know how many conversations I can take.. But I think when you find people that you’re connected to and there’s a mutual value in that relationship, it can, it can be so valuable that I hope maybe that a little bit, you know, from the business philosopher could come out.
[01:07:39.19] - Bhavesh
Absolutely right. And for our audience, reach out to Matt if you are looking for a mentor. Who you think could be useful to you.
[01:07:49.04] - Matt
Or maybe my next mentor.
[01:07:51.10] - Bhavesh
Or, yeah, yeah. Or someone who can point out the next glass ceiling that Matt hasn’t seen yet, right?
[01:07:57.16] - Matt
Please.
[01:07:58.23] - Bhavesh
There is so many. That’s the problem with it, right? There could be a thousand we can list, right?
[01:08:02.19] - Matt
Absolutely.
[01:08:04.04] - Bhavesh
Thank you so much, Matt. This was an incredible conversation. I really enjoyed it. And you were a great guest. And I’m sure that if and when our audience kind of plugs in and listens to that, and if they come this far, thank you so much for listening and watching. This was a great conversation. Thank you so much.
[01:08:27.05] - Matt
I enjoyed it. Thank you.
Get In Touch with Matt Lescault
For more insights on Founder Glass Ceiling and practical guidance on Matt’s approach to building and leading organizations, reach him via Linkedin or TydeCo website.
This article was created from the live video conversation on The Business Philosopher Within You podcast. The episode was published on YouTube under the title “Every Founder Has a Glass Ceiling. Most Never Break It.” The article was created with the help of AI after significant input from human intelligence.
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