In today’s episode, we travel to Akron Ohio, where we talk to Mattew Shields. 

Matt wears many hats including that of a Founder & CEO of Virtus Technology &  Co-Founder at Significan LC, a digital transformation process expert, the host of Pass the Secret Sauce Podcast, and an author of Sprocketize: An Uncommon Approach To Rapid Digital Transformation, Incredible Innovation & Building A Business You Love.

In his podcast Pass the Secret Sauce, Matt has interviewed over 160 business leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs.  The main purpose of this podcast is to tell the story is of entrepreneurs. Because a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs or people that are thinking about business, think that they need some kind of some type of a connection or some type of a leg up, or, maybe they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth. So, they shy away from it. But his podcast aims to not only give good tips and good advice but also, encourage people to be able to move forward with whatever it is that they're looking to get involved in.

In addition, these successful individuals also focus on personal development and how they look at their own lives and what they're doing in their own lives, and how they want to improve. 

While successfully running Virtus Technology, Matt also runs Significan LC a multifamily real estate company, where they are both owner-operators of the buildings. Significan LC’s approach is different in that they consider those that are leasing agents, to be membership coordinators, they break down the landlord-tenant dynamic and instead refer to them as members because at Significan LC they believe in building communities.  

After interviewing these successful individuals a few things are common to what makes them and their businesses a success

• Frameworks - The way they break down their process and create frameworks to be able to make things more simple. and, creating that repeatable way that you can plug your business into this exterior tool that, you can use to track and, measure things and, make sure that you're moving in the right direction.
• Personal Development - these successful individuals also focus on personal development and how they look at their own lives and what they're doing in their own lives and, how they want to improve. 
• Failure-if you're not failing then you are not trying. You must get out there and give it a shot and learn what sticks. 

Matt’s future involves working on a training program that will teach people the beginning levels of investing in multifamily real estate, having a deal room so that if you are looking to move into a new area as an investor, or you want to start investing in a new city and you don't have any connections there, he will be the connector. 

In addition, Matt is working on creating the synopsis of the frameworks and the learnings from Pass the Secret Sauce. 

You can connect with Matt at 

Podcast: Pass the secret sauce

LinkedIn: Matt Shields

Instagram: @Matthewshields

Copyright 2024 Mark Stinson

auto generated transcript:

Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And what can we learn from the life stories and experiences of wicked smart leaders? Well, moreover, what can we learn from the wicked smart guy who interviews those wicked smart people and that's our guest today? Matt shields.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me.

Well, I stole the wording from Matt's opening of his podcast pass the secret sauce. And gosh, nearly two years ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Matt and now we're turning the tables and I'm gonna run him through the coals. But Matt, you have really, over the last couple of years, built this podcast into something really fun. What are some of the highlights of the lessons learned from these leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs?

That's, a great thing to think about. This is on the horizon. We want to create a synopsis that sort of encapsulates all of the different teachings, different learnings, the secret sauce from a lot of the different guests. But God, there's been so many people on there. I think we're probably on about 160 now guests that we've interviewed. And these are people everywhere from, just getting started to like the founders of barefoot wine. some big, big people, but to answer your question, some of the secrets, really get into frameworks. I think a common thing that we've seen from the successful people or the people that have, built big things is the way that they sort of break down their process and create frameworks to be able to make these things more simple.

It's not looking at a huge problem. They're going to break that up into, smaller chunks and, there are all kinds of different focuses that, people have had obviously on their own business, but then personal development and how they look at, their own lives and what they're doing in their own lives and how they wanna improve. So to just pick out a few of them, I don't even know if I could. But I think that it all revolves around creating frameworks and, creating that repeatable way that you can plug your business into this exterior tool that, you can use to track and, measure things and, make sure that you're moving in the right direction.

And one thing I've been impressed with, in listening to various episodes is that even though we use this term seek sauce all the time, it's like, what's your secret sauce as if I won't tell you what this recipe is, , your guests are very forthcoming. To tell you what those frameworks, those steps, and methodologies are, here's my technique. Here's what worked for me.

Yeah. No, and that, and that's the whole premise behind the program. we, we wanted to tell the story is of entrepreneurs, because I think a lot of want to be entrepreneurs or people that are thinking about business, think that they need some kind of some type of a connection or some type of a leg up, or, maybe they weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth. So, they shy away from it. Like they think, oh, I can't do that. That's, that's not for me. And, we've interviewed all kinds of people and, no one's been born, no one had a leg up, they all just got in there and they made it happen. So that's really, what we're trying to do is, make sure that the people that are thinking about starting a business, not only get good tips and good advice, but also, get the courage to be able to move forward with whatever it is that they're looking to get involved in.

Yeah. It's so interesting. So many, creative types like us, Matt, think "boy if I only had this, sort of silver spoon in my mouth or this investor, or, some other lightbulb creative idea, then I would be successful" but rather, no, you need the frameworks.

Yeah. And that not only that you need the action too, but you also need to get out there and failure is not what it's cracked up to be. Right. A lot of people shy away from it. I can't fail. I don't wanna fail. We've been taught, growing up the failure is bad, but failures, learning, if you're not failing then you are not trying. That's a quote that has been said many, many, many times before. I fully, fully agree with that. I think you gotta get out there and give it a shot and see what sticks.

So, yeah. Well, and you've said an example for that. So not only are you talking to these entrepreneurs and executives, but you're applying this to your own companies, you founded a company Virtus Technology. You're doing a lot of these sustainable business solutions, but also more recently signed a community-building activity. I'd love to think about what processes and frameworks you've been building lately.

With Virtus that basically is what we do in that company. So we'll go into other companies and we'll digitize their current process. And then we create the software that, is going to run that specific company. So when you talk about frameworks, you know getting in and basically distilling a company down into this thing. And you need all of this information in order to be able to pass it to this person and this person does something else with it. And so, we kind of break the company down in pretty good detail to be able to, create that type of a system. And one of the things that people always ask is where do we start?

Right. we've got this big company we've been around for 30, 40 years, whatever it is, where do we start? How do we, create this, this digital transformation, in our company. And one of the things that we like to do is, one of the frameworks that we've developed is and I don't know if we actually developed this, or this was something that, we learned along the way, but you, you basically create sentences. So everyone in the company you give this framework, this, fill in the blank sentence and everyone goes through, and normally that is, written down first or, or documented first, those are probably the things that are top of mind and the things that always are coming up, they're always dealing with that's, so annoying, right. Or that's always a problem. And as you get down further in that list, then, it gets, a little bit more diluted and maybe not quite as, but the sentence is as the X, I should be able to Y so that I can Z right. So, as the CEO, I should be able to look at reports so that I can understand what the, what, how the business is running. Right. And obviously, that's a very, very you know obviously...

A very real world.

Yeah. But if you have, if you go through your company and again, some people want to go through the whole company, some people just wanna do, the executive suites. Some people start in shipping, Whoever is going to be involved in this or whatever that module is that, you're building. If you give everyone that sentence and you have them a document, that's sort of step one, right., that's the first step in, creating your digital transformation strategy. So, that's one of the frameworks that we've learned in the technology side of things. And we're applying that to like you said, to the real estate investing side of things too. So,

Yeah. And how's that working in terms of, it sounds like it's both the real estate, the sort of hard, house multifamily apartment, but also the service and the community care of those properties.

Yeah. So we, take a very unique approach in multifamily or in property management. So we, have our arm that, that we invest with. And then we also have our own property management company. So we are owner-operators of our buildings. So we take a, almost like a concierge-type service toward running our communities. We, really try to increase the service. And there's, a long, long story behind all of this, but really, this boils down to treating people with dignity and respect, which you think, that's pretty obvious, right. But a lot of property managers, property management companies, don't really approach it that way. They think, you're just a number, if you can't pay the rent, we'll find somebody else, get out and we'll have somebody else rent that home.

So we, take it a little bit different where we try to break down the landlord-tenant dynamic, and we use different names when referring to all of these, these different stakeholders. So in our communities, we don't have tenants. We have members, we're obviously building communities. We, don't have leasing agents. We have membership coordinators, basically, people are applying to be members of our community. So this can go on and on, there are all kinds of different services and ways that we promote ourselves and promote that service differently, what ends up happening is people feel it's a different connection. People feel like that again, we're breaking down that, typical landlord-tenant dynamic, and, people feel like we're, there for them.

We help them, with whatever it is that they're, needing help with, obviously, we're fixing things. But, obviously, we just went through COVID and a lot of people had issues with paying their rent. So we got in and, helped them, fill out paperwork and go down that, path again, just really trying to serve them and solve anything that we possibly can to make their lives better. That's really what we're trying to accomplish in all of our communities.

So interesting when you started out, I thought, well, that's kind of semantics. We're not property, man managers were member service, coordinators, but as you went along and you were describing the examples, especially during COVID, when people were struggling, maybe to pay the rent or to take care of their families, it did maybe give a guidepost to a different dynamic. It sounds like we manage the property and we were there to serve our, our members,

Exactly. And we look for that and, so, again, big ongoing through and establishing our core values. When we started those companies, we went through and established our core values, and that's actually where the name came from significantly. The first core value is find significance. So we want everyone to feel significant in every interaction that we, have with them. So we're trying to, find and provide that significance to everyone with every interaction. So we thought, again, that was number one, that was our most important thing. And we thought that's a great name for our company, right. We'll name ourselves significant. So we started laying out the logo and I was using a scripted font to lay this all out.

And all I could see was I can't at the end, significant. So I said, well, that doesn't sound right. let's get rid of that. So, so got rid of the T so now we're, I can, so it's significan. Again, that is our, first top core value. That's our priority. We're trying to make sure that everyone feels like they belong, feels like they have significance. And again, it's not this, landlord-tenant dynamic where, whatever I tell you is what you do and that's, the end of it. So,

Well, maybe we can connect the dots and circle back to the digital transformation piece. Because oftentimes, I think we think the digital tr transformation of a company is streamlining the operations part. How has digital sort of supplemented or enabled this more service-oriented side of the business? Not just the operations side.

I think you're spot on with, optimizing the business because a lot of it is about trying to eliminate as much of the wasted time, wasted energy maybe you're doing these activities that aren't necessarily needed to be able to accomplish whatever your outcome is supposed to be. So when, we started Significan and, I should also say too, we also hired a mentor who had these, values and these processes in place over the course of 20 years. And we've kind of taken those, ideals and, brought them into our way of doing things. But with the digital transformation company, we're able to basically evaluate how people are flowing through that, process and wherever there's friction, that's where we say, Hey, how, else can we do this?

As the membership coordinator, I should be able to do this so that I can have this outcome. Right. We instill that in all of our people so that they're always asking that they're always innovating. They're always, on the lookout for things that may not be running correctly or may be causing that friction at some point, whether it be for them, or if maybe it's for a member, we're always trying to, sort of stomp out or, change that process if it's, creating, issues with, for anyone anywhere in that process.

Sounds good. Well, I was thinking about the way you have combined and overlapped, these businesses along with the podcast. if we even just start there, because you had this technique, you were describing fill in the blank of this statement, or this purpose has to be a podcaster, made you a better questioner, a better listener. And, and have you learned from those wicked smart other people better ways to listen and ask questions?

Without a doubt.If you look at the people that we're interviewing, obviously you're going to pick up information from them. Right. But just the repetitive process of, always going in and asking questions and, and listening to what people are saying and how to direct that to other focuses it's practice for everyday communication basically. So I would absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, there are all kinds of benefits to having a podcast, but at its very core, you are learning to become a better communicator, every episode is more practice who knows what's going to come up. And obviously, there's, there's different structures and all of that. I have a podcast very similar to this where, it's very conversational, so wherever it goes, that's where it goes.

And, you're just trying to, extract as much information as you possibly can. So, I think that having the podcast definitely filters into everything, that anyone does in life, again, communication is key. Obviously, you're communicating with everyone, every day. So I think that the podcast definitely excels. But then more on a specific level having the podcast has allowed me to reach and connect to people that I would've never been able to connect with. It's just a wonderful, wonderful tool to be able to get in front of, someone, whether that be to learn from them or, even if you have, some type of a business or something like that, that you think that that person could benefit from, a podcast is a great icebreaker, if you will, to be able to get in front of that particular person.

And what about the other side of the microphone then? The guests? I think a lot of people listening to my program here would say, Hey, I'd love to have a podcast sometime, but it's, maybe more commitment that I can take on, but I would love to guest I'm an author, I'm a songwriter, I'm a restaurant tour, somebody who could benefit from being on shows, what makes a good guest from your standpoint?

Oh, that's a really good question. obviously for, us, it's always focused on business, right? So the more, success that you've had in business, the better the more chances that you've taken, and again, failures that you've had I feel like that's a better more well-rounded person.

somebody listening would say, wait, you want me to go on a show and tell about my, failures, my shortcomings, and my losses.

Yeah, absolutely. Again, that's where all the learnings happen, right. That's where the magic really is. We tried this and it failed miserably. As long as no one dies, it's not that big of a deal, just learn from that and then, move on, make your tweaks and, continue on your way. And, even if the company fails completely you still learn along the way of things, what not to do. So yeah, I completely love when people come on and talk about, some of the things that didn't work for them. And then, of course, those people are going to also have the successes, and then we get into that as well.

Well, cause it's always, here are the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned from them. That may be turned it around.

Yeah. Exactly.

My guess is Matt shields. Here's the host of a great podcast called past the sauce, but he's also the founder and CEO of two great companies, Virtus Technology and Significan LC. So Matt you're living and working in Akron, Ohio, and, we have a global podcast here and we always claim to go around the world to find the best ideas. And here we are in Akron, Ohio. So burst a bubble for us, correct, a misconception that some of us might have about building a business and building life in Akron, Ohio.

Wow. Another good question. So Akron is, just south of Cleveland, Ohio, and Cleveland, Ohio gets a bad rap. It has, for years. Cleveland is a fantastic area. The cost of living is, very, very affordable here. Then, people are amazing, great work ethic. Just really, really good hearts here. I guess you can say. And Akron is just sort of a smaller version of that. It's about a half-hour or so south of Cleveland at the home of LeBron James, everybody's heard of him obviously. But I think one of the things that people don't necessarily recognize about Akron is that it's, it's a city where there's, a very, very diverse number of different types of people, right?

So you've got a lot of ethnicities and different pockets of, different ethnic groups here. And they all sort of, melt together, right in the middle, which is kind of where, I'm at right now, in the office which is kind of right in the center of that melting pot. So it's, a great way to be able to get a lot of different perspectives and a lot of just different life views from, different people. Everybody has their own, their own path that they've walked to get to this point. And it's been really, really good. Like if you go to someplace like San Francisco, right. Everybody's in the tech scene and it's, the same thing everybody's trying to do, basically the same thing. Here, it's sort of all over the board. There are all kinds of different people, different things, focusing on different things. So, it's cool.

Love that. And what about what's in the future for you, Matt, in terms of, looking over the horizon building and, capitalizing on new ideas and maybe pulling ideas forward that you've had from some of your guests, but what are you working on now and where do you see it going?

So in the immediate future, we just won another pretty large complex down in Atlanta about a week ago or so. So working on closing that and then we have a training program that we're going to be working on, which basically teaches people the beginning levels of investing in multifamily real estate. A lot of that revolves around vocabulary. Again, being a better communicator, if you understand what people are talking about in any given situation about a specific topic, if you can understand the vocabulary and you can, recite that at vocabulary back it creates a situation where again, you're, going to be much much more able to be successful in whatever that, the focus is. So our focus is obviously multifamily real estate.

So, there's a training section to this, and then we also have a deal room so that if you are looking to move into a new area, you're an investor and you want to start investing in a new city. Maybe you don't have any connections there or anything like that. We're going to be the connector. That's going to help bring those types of people together. And, this is sort of all across the board. if you need contractors, if you're looking for boots on the ground, if you're looking for anything or maybe you're even interested in investing in specific areas we can help make that connection to, people that are actively looking for deals or doing deals in different areas as well. So there's are a few things. And then we mentioned earlier, we also gonna create the synopsis of, a lot of these frameworks and the learnings from the secret sauce as well.

It's gonna be terrific to see them all together. And, Matt on our show, we're often, certainly about the confidence to get your work in the world, but also the connections are, are you looking and thinking about any new connections you wanna make, especially as we move into the new year.

I'm, always looking for, to connect to, other interesting people. I always like to say, if you are trying to change the world in your own way, no matter what that is, I'd love to be able to connect with you and talk with you. I just love being around people that are, again, they have that drive and they have that ambition to be able to make an impact again, whatever their focus is. So, , I'd love to be able to connect with, with anyone, who's, who's filling those shoes.

Perfect. And what's the best place to find you and follow your work and connect with you.

So I'm terrible at social, but I do try to be active on Instagram. So, and it's just Matthew Shields @Matthew Shields on Instagram, that's probably the best one. Linkedin, I'm very, very active on there. Again, that's, that's Matt shields as well. But those, those are probably the two best places to be able to connect

Wonderful. We'll put all those in the show notes and I couldn't help, but notice as we were talking about connections, we didn't even know each other what, 18 months ago, maybe. I look on LinkedIn, we have 25 mutual friends. We follow each other's work. We know each other's friends and contacts and neighbors. And I think listeners this the idea that it could start with one conversation. It could start with one coffee and then who knows where it goes from there, right?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Again, it's all about connecting and, talking to as many people as possible. So yeah, love it. ,

Listeners take advantage of Matt's insight and experience, and also listen to the podcast. Pass the secret sauce. You can also listen online at his website passthesecretsauce.com. Well, thanks so much for being on the program, Matt, great catching up with you.

Mark. Great, great being here. Thanks for having me.

You bet. And listeners come back for our next show. We're gonna continue our round, the world journeys. We've stamped our passports from Akron to Johannesburg, to Paris, to San Francisco and Buenos in Vietnam. So we've gone all over the world, looking for these creative practitioners who can give us insight into these frameworks. And that's what we're all about. So come back and we'll continue unlocking your world of creativity. We'll see you next time.