Rishi (00:41)
Today our guest is Matt Hunter. Matt, welcome.

Matt (00:45)
Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, Rishi.

Rishi (00:49)
Of course. The first section is from the foxhole to the ledger. You've had anything but a straight line out on your own at sixteen, into the army reserve before nine eleven and sitting in a classroom at military college when the second plane hit. Take us back to that moment and how it set the next twenty one years in motion.

Matt (01:10)
yeah, I like the dramatic, the foxhole to the ledger description. I had had a really good friend that was a couple of years older than me and he saw that I was kind of you know, working these dead end jobs and and he would come home frequently and come home to perform reserve duty. And he had been in ROTC at North Georgia Military College, which is now the University of North Georgia, it's in Delonica, Georgia.

he said, you know, join the reserves, you'll get your GI Bill, nothing's going on. There hadn't been a war in, you know, since the first operation Desert Storm. so he kind of talked me into it. and so I started up there in and you probably see where this story's going. I started in the fall of 2001. So

Rishi (01:59)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (02:00)
you go up there a little bit early for what they call frog week, which is kind of like a

Hell week or a mini basic training just to kind of get you indoctrinated. so really cool town, really good school. Started great fall day. It was a perfect day in the North Georgia as well. sitting in, I believe it was an English class or something, got there a few minutes early, waiting around. Someone comes in across the hall and says, Hey, you know, there's been a plane hit the

World Trade Center. the first time you're like, wow. but you don't really think of anything, but by the time we hear somebody talk about another one, you kind of knew something was a little bit different about that day. and within a couple of weeks my reserve unit had been called up and I was sitting at various places across the US and getting ready to go to Afghanistan.

my friend that was at school there, he was also a cadet, but he was contracted. We were in the same reserve unit. but he was a contracted cadet, didn't get pulled out of school. I got pulled out of school, changed my whole what I thought was my trajectory. he ended up having a very successful career, some very elite units. there was a lot of other students that later on got pulled out that were a lot of them were

Georgia National Guard. but I think that was where the beginning of I talk about my I've had pretty bad luck and bad timing throughout my career, but I think that was the start.

Rishi (03:32)
So selective service, it forces the men over certain age in the military. Was that something that happened to you?

Matt (03:41)
No, they

selective service, I think it's at sixteen, you have to register for it. and what was weird is even after I was in service when I did certain things with the government, I would be asked whether I had registered, but it was not. It was one of those things I didn't have a lot of direction, you know, my relationship with the parents weren't that great. and I was kinda trying to find any path back to school back then, college still mattered.

back then. so and like my buddy said, he said, hey, you know, you'll get a couple hundred dollars a month GI Bill, it's gonna pay for school. Come up here to this military college, you'll love it. and so I went ahead and joined. just so happened that it was probably the about the worst time you could join.

Rishi (04:25)
Yeah. It's tough to predict the future.

Matt (04:27)
yeah. Yeah. You could almost use me as a reverse like almost like a Kramer fun.

Rishi (04:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah,

yeah. Kramer from Seinfeld.

Matt (04:37)
No, the Jim the investment guy. Mm-hmm.

Rishi (04:40)
the Jim Kramer, yeah, that guy.

I mean he tries to ride the boat always.

Matt (04:46)
I see a lot of jokes online about people there's now they've, you know, put inverse Kramer funds in play to where they're, you know, they're shorting everything to talk.

Rishi (04:53)
Yeah. Whatever he's saying,

investing in don't invest in that.

Matt (04:57)
Yeah,

yeah.

Rishi (04:58)
or or go ahead and short that instead of going long. You deployed to Afghanistan the same week your dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and you followed this treatment through once a week. Emails from overseas. How did living through that shape the kind of leader and person you became?

Matt (05:17)
well I start yeah, I was we were all standing around waiting to go home at midnight 'cause midnight is technically, you know, when your leave starts on a certain day. So I left, we were waiting to sign out, my mother calls, you know, ten or eleven o'clock says, Hey, you know, what are your plans? What time do you plan on getting in? We were gonna drive overnight and I would be there in the morning.

Throughout that conversation I could tell something just wasn't right. I didn't know if it was she was worried about me or or what. but she broke down and I guess a day or two earlier they'd got the news that my dad had lung cancer. now he'd been a lifetime smoker, had previous health issues, heart issues, so had all that going on. so you go home for like a block vacation leave time before you come back and head out. And he was

It was a very somber time at home. My mom was worried, you know, her baby boy was leaving. we had just started to get our relationship kind of back. my brother was in the high school age, so it was a weird time for him. But we just you know, she took family pictures again and all this stuff. She never knew when she would have us. But what it really helped me learn was that we don't

We don't work in a vacuum. all my soldiers overseas weren't just serving in a vacuum. there were still a lot of people that were dealing with issues of, you know, aging parents passing away, children being born, pets passing away, marriages falling apart, businesses failing. and it's hard when you're trying to garner somebody's entire attention because you're in a serious place with a a serious

Rishi (06:59)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (06:59)
mission.

And things are on the line sometimes. but, you know, I was first hand going through some things and and it was probably better that I wasn't so attached because things we didn't have a whole lot of communication methods that were very reliable back then. It was, you know, you wait in line, hopefully you get an email sent off in an hour or two, or hopefully you can get a phone call that gets patched through correctly and you know, it doesn't get dropped.

So I think that was almost kind of helped me because my dad would send these long, thoughtful emails that you know, and didn't really talk about himself and you know, hey things are going good here, you take care of yourself. so I think that I don't know, up un up until that point it was mission and that was it.

Rishi (07:46)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (07:47)
after that it was, you know, until it until everybody's a robot.

you're not gonna get rid of those outside issues. People bring that to work with them and people are gonna take it wherever they go. So it just made me a little more cognizant of those issues that other people are dealing with.

Rishi (08:03)
You didn't come to accounting until your thirties, after retiring as an Army major in military intelligence. What made you choose the CPA over law school? And how does being in your words quote unquote not your typical accountant change how you show up in a finance seat?

Matt (08:23)
the the military background kind of helps me from an operational perspective. you know, we kind of see where we want to be, and then you know, we're great at backwards planning and trying to figure those things out. But I served about seven years in the reserves until I retired in twenty-one. So I'd done a couple of overlap between my accounting and military career, but I was

I was an enlisted guy for eight years and made it to staff sergeant and I was trying to get a commission in the reserves as an officer. decided that intelligence was the direction I wanted to go. and once I got commissioned, I kind of wanted to do that job and get an initial indoctrination into the Intel community. So I volunteered for a tour that was stateside here in Alabama to

get a little bit of it was usually it started as a year, but it ended up I ended up serving three years doing that.

Rishi (09:17)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (09:18)
and I'd taken a leave of absence from my civilian department of DOD, Department of War job. and those jobs are, you know, good people, but it just wasn't for me. I was a little more fast paced than some of those positions really allowed for. But

told my wife, I said, when I come off this tour, like I've got to find something to do to pay the bills that's outside of the government. and we were talking I could either do law school or I could try to take the classes to sit for the CPA exam. the law school thing was kind of out of reach because I was working full time and that was not gonna work out. So the accounting I went that route.

I still had some military tuition assistance left to help with it. and I pretty much had a useless degree from that I'd gotten initially just because it allowed me to get commissioned into the Army Reserves. so I basically went back and took about you know 60 or so hours of accounting classes to fulfill the CPA requirements for Alabama.

Rishi (10:24)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (10:25)
but

I think by the time I ended up in public accounting, which was soon after that, it I had seen and done I'd done some normal jobs. I'd worked for the government, I worked outside the government, I'd done some manual labor jobs. I think it just provided me a a lot more of the grand scheme of things. when we were working on audits, I would see young kids that came out that were working in audit and

you know, they couldn't see the forest for the trees. They were so busy looking at these journal entries and I'm like, you gotta understand the whole process of this is we're trying to provide some assurance so that the people investing in this company or investing in this bank or whatever it was was you know, could feel good about their investments or had the correct information. it wasn't just about, hey, I'm gonna go in here and nitpick every little you know, there's

Rishi (11:11)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (11:12)
a purpose,

And and it kind of because I'm a little more brash, you know, that's why I say I fit in in construction pretty well, but from the military, you know, I learned to work with all type of people. you know, I've worked with Ivy League grads all the way down to a guy that can barely read, but you figure it out because that's the way the world works.

So it it just I don't know, it was just a little head start. it didn't help me out from a pay standpoint, but

Rishi (11:41)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (11:43)
'cause you know, you just you start on the bottom in public accounting and then kind of work your way up. But but yeah, it provided me a little more perspective on what the goal was.

Rishi (11:54)
Right, right. I used to be in risk management where we predicted the PNL of a commodities trading shop and end of month accounting came and they nitpicked our predictions. It was always off and there was just so much fight. Why can you guys not predict the P and L? I'm like the future is tough to predict.

Matt (12:13)
And that's you know, you Yeah,

yeah, try it now.

Rishi (12:17)
Yeah.

Matt (12:18)
the I mean the hard thing is the s you know, that whole iron sharpens iron, right? So, you know, the whole goal of that process you're talking about should have been better. Hey, where did our you know, where our variances what caused them to go off? Was there, you know, did a tariff go in place or you know, what happened and let's get our process better, which is almost like, you know

We talk about construction the bids. A lot of times people aren't, you know, doing an you know an autopsy or whatever they call it after the fact to go, we're not gonna nitpick the variances estimators, but we do want to understand why it moved so we can understand what's wrong with our process, or do we need to revise our estimating process?

Rishi (13:03)
Yeah, yeah. And also the CEO got all very mad at us the estimators of the PNL. Like why can you guys not predict the PL?

Matt (13:11)
Say, if I could predict stuff like that, I wouldn't be sitting here.

Rishi (13:15)
The next section is walking into broken books.

At the packaging company, you inherited roughly $1.2 million in unpaid payroll tax the prior owner had let pile up. What was through digging out the cash-out refinance, getting the IRS to abate around $400,000 in penalties, and what you learned is tearing down a problem that big.

Matt (13:42)
you know, at at the time if I'd had a lot of options, I probably would have maybe went somewhere else, but leaving public you kind of run away. yeah, a lot of this I I I don't like to second guess somebody's decisions in the past, but this was all accumulated during the recession in eight, nine and ten. and they were already on a payment plan when I got there. but unfortunately it was they haven't they hadn't

I guess the IRS hadn't brought it up for reviewal in a while. So it was basically, you know, the payment wasn't even covering the interest every month. and this was all I was trying to resolve this all during COVID. So you have to keep that in mind, early in the pandemic. obviously having that debt over our heads caused a lot of issues from a financing perspective. So we were having to take out some some equipment financing that was obviously less than ideal.

the rates would they would be pretty normal rates for today's terms, but back then they were high. we initially we were banking with a regional bank, we started talking to those guys and they kind of worked kind of finalized this plan with us and then when it got to their credit folks, they saw the tax lien or whatever that they see on their end. And

Not only did they decide they didn't want to do the deal, they didn't want to bank us any longer.

Rishi (14:59)
Mm.

Matt (15:01)
so we had to go out and find somebody else to try to help us make that happen. Luckily I from public accounting worked some bank audits, had some pretty good relationships and we found a really good community bank that made it work for us. I think the main thing is patience.

The IRS rep that I was working with was working from home. she would say, Hey, I need you to fax me this. And at the time, I guess I was faxing something into her office. And then there was somebody responsible for divvying it up and sending it to her. And

there were a couple of times where we didn't know where stuff went. so trying not to lose my mind during that time was

was I guess so I guess patience.

Rishi (15:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (15:49)
but you know it you could send something in and it would take a week I couldn't imagine what it's like now with the staff reductions that have been put in place.

Rishi (15:58)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (16:00)
and that's what you know a lot of people talk about, you know, we need to get rid of the IRS and all this stuff. And I'm like, it there has to be a functioning system. you hear, you know,

I stay on tax Twitter and Tax Reddit and I see the practitioners that are still trying to reach the IRS every day and and what they're going through and it's just the the system's not working. So hopefully we can get something figured out.

Rishi (16:24)
IRS they didn't let you email the documents.

Matt (16:28)
I think

they've you know, this was in twenty twenty, so I think they've put a lot of different things in place now to where I think they're doing some things through the the my the portal that you would use. Like I've got my account where I can go on and pay estimates and stuff. and then you you could pull your transcripts right there. But and then I had some for previous businesses I've been at to where I can pull notices myself.

And I think they're expanding that portal to where you can hopefully at some point be able to transfer documents between there, but you're like, wow, it's 2026, man. Come on.

Rishi (17:04)
Right. You know, if the government were a real business in this competitive economy, they would have gone out of business so t long ago. They're so inefficient and they they're a total mino monopoly.

Matt (17:16)
Yeah.

And and you know, you could you could have your opinions on Doge, but you know, that was one end of the spectrum you're like, maybe we can meet in the middle and go, Hey, we need to make this work better for citizens, taxpayers, etc. etc.

Rishi (17:31)
Yeah.

Matt (17:32)
Like because if I'm sitting, you know, depending on if if you're still bill billing hourly, you know, I've had times when I was a young staff accountant where they said, Hey, I'm calling in, I need you to sit here until

the rep picks up. And that that time's got to get billed somewhere, right? so it's just

Rishi (17:51)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Matt (17:53)
it's an all around loser for everybody.

Rishi (17:55)
Right, right. At the copier business, you cleaned up thirty-six months of financials for due diligence and added close to a million dollars to the sale price. When you walk into a company running on inaccurate cash and air balances, what are the first two or three things you go after?

Matt (18:14)
well number one's a balance sheet. the P and L, you know, everybody if the balance sheet's not right, nothing's right. so like most of the time the first thing I do when I get somewhere that I know has had some you know, they haven't had somebody in that seat is you know, check the validity of the balance sheet. you know, make sure debt the balance is pretty close, if not right on.

Just items like that. And then we get to a point to where we can trust the income statement. that owner specifically, I was because I'd asked, How do you run, you know, what are you using to run the business? And they said, Well, I'm looking at AR and the cash balance. And I said, Well, your cash hasn't been reconciled in years, and you've got receivables from 10, 15 years on your AR. So

that kind of told me, you know, and you're like, somehow this business still did pretty good. Imagine what it could have done. but balance sheet mainly and then I just look at the processes in place and that's about it. But

Rishi (19:18)
Yeah. Across steel packaging and manufacturing, you built and led small finance teams. What does it actually take to stand up a real finance function in a company that's never had one? And where do owners most underestimate what that requires?

Matt (19:35)
to stand one up, I mean you've gotta have buy in from the person signing the checks. 'cause you need personnel. you know, maybe one day we get to the point where you don't need the personnel, you can just add some agents in there.

problem is I I don't think our you know what's gonna hold that up is just you know we haven't figured out not everybody's on the same page with that like connecting banks and there's a lot that goes into that but we all we all know most finance functions are you know usually understaffed or you've got somebody that doesn't really have an understanding of accounting, somebody's aunt or somebody's grandmother is doing this and it's basically just

putting booking checks or whatever they're doing. I try to tell everybody, I'm like, if you're gonna spend money on anybody, go out and get you the best bookkeeper you can find. Because that's gonna be where the value really is, because it'll make it so much easier for if you've got a fractional controller or CFO or or you're gonna hire somebody, that would be the best way to keep your books in order for the time being.

You know, I've never worked for an owner that's ever logged into the ERP. And that blew my mind. I know you're not in there, you shouldn't be in there doing all the things, but you should at least be able to log in and know what you know, you're looking at a dashboard or what are you you know. I was working on transitioning the ERP systems at the packaging company and I think when we pulled the inventory items out of the existing

system, there were maybe twenty thousand when there should have been less than maybe a thousand. And I

Rishi (21:11)
Mm.

Matt (21:12)
spent maybe a full day cleaning that data and preparing it for upload of the new system. You gotta reconcile character requirements, character number requirements, stuff like that. and everybody continuously asks what was taking so long. And that's hard to explain to somebody that's got no technical understanding of, you know, the sales guy told him that they would handle everything.

Rishi (21:33)
Yeah.

Matt (21:34)
and then myself and the technical guy on the ERP end are going, you know, what's up with this? but yeah, it's you know, you you probably need to at least have some kind of understanding of you know what things, you know, how long things take. And I'm

Rishi (21:49)
Yeah.

Matt (21:49)
a guy that tries to optimize, you know, I'm gonna use AI, I'm gonna use whatever to try to get to the right answer in the most efficient method. But for s for certain

Rishi (21:57)
Right, right.

Matt (21:58)
things it's just

You know, you're gonna pay for it one way or the other. You didn't have any discipline putting all these items in there for years. Now you're gonna pay for the time to get it right. It all comes back.

Rishi (22:08)
Yeah, yeah.

Right. And the owners in the physical industry, they really don't have any interest in accounting or any back office functions. They just wanna go build stuff, sell things. The compliance is not their strong suite.

Matt (22:22)
Yeah, and and

I mean obviously I'm not a fan of compliance either, but it's you know, it's one of those things that you y you've gotta do. and I had this conversation with the controller my last job was you know, half his job was compliance.

You know, and and there were a lot of things that we were learning as we go. We had, you know, there's a lot of people that are just floating in that gray area of not being compliant. They just haven't got caught yet. it's kinda like we were we were in a sales tax audit when I left. And you know, I who knows how that goes because it was a process that was, you know, you've almost got to be an expert to figure this out.

Rishi (23:01)
Yeah.

Matt (23:01)
you

know, construction you're dealing with how many jurisdictions and you know, different taxes and, you know, abatements and stuff at every one of those and and we're trying to do everything, you know, two days ago. which doesn't really help either. But now I I've had some owners. The last owner was he was big proponent of the finance function. You were a true,

Rishi (23:25)
Mm.

Matt (23:26)
you know, you were a true in the room

you know, providing information. So those people are out there. but

Rishi (23:34)
Makes sense.

Matt (23:34)
but he had also came from a background of working in a corporate environment that was a really good company to work for that and had to run branches that focused on the PL. so he was well versed in all that.

Rishi (23:50)
Right. The next section, Matt, here is the politics of the family-owned business. There's a pattern in your story. You come in, fix the finances, and then get derailed by something on the ownership side. Why do you think the hardest part of these jobs is so often the politics, not the numbers?

Matt (24:09)
business is hard. It's even harder when family's involved. and it's even harder when you're not part of said family working there. you know, you've got family in the business and I will say that in reference to children of the owner, I've seen it go both ways. The last place I was at, they were very good, top notch, young, but they worked hard and they got it.

spouses to me, in my opinion, are a different story. I've never seen that be a positive. I've always been told by owners that they want to they don't want a yes man and they need someone in the business that's not afraid to tell the truth 'cause, you know, maybe for years they've been surrounded by just family members or friends of the family or whatever. And

a lot of people say that but they're not always ready for that. but politics to me has never been like I'm more of a black black and white guy, I'm gonna tell you the answer. I have learned to be a little more you know, it's one thing they always tell me in the military to be more tactful. And I think I've learned it a little bit. I'm probably still not there yet, but I hate it.

dealing with it. I've I haven't gotten any better as I've gotten older. but you know, as like I said earlier, until it's robots, you're gonna be dealing with

Rishi (25:30)
Right. And a lot of our listeners, they are construction CFOs and controllers working for these family owned businesses. They are in some ways similar shoes as you.

Matt (25:40)
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure there's more there's tons of people out there that are in these situations. I mean, a lot of these companies are single owner, family owned. you know, until I guess private equity really decides to, you know, jump into construction wide open. But but yeah, I mean, especially living in a small town, you don't really have a lot of corporate business, so you don't have a lot of opportunities. You know, there might be one finance person at a

you know, we've got a a bus manufacturer here and you know, most of the time they're gonna bring somebody in from out of town for those jobs. So you're really just kind of stuck, you know, you've got choices between a lot of the family businesses in the area and a lot of them are great. it's just you know, you've gotta have some I guess some emotional IQ to be able to figure out how to navigate the minefield that it can be. And I I've done

Pretty good job. It's just sometimes there's it's a lose lose.

Rishi (26:40)
Without naming names, at the steel company the owner's spouse worked under you in AR and job billing and resisted every change. How do you navigate a situation where the person fighting you has a direct line to the owner every night at the dinner table?

Matt (26:58)
I'm not really sure I'm qualified to talk about how to do it successfully, given what happened, but I'll try. this particular instance, she was you know, everybody knows billing. You know, if you're dealing if you've got fifteen, twenty jobs going on and you're billing every month and you got a bill on the twentieth for the rest of the month and you're talking to PMs, that it I mean it's a it's what I saw to be one of the biggest pains

in the construction accounting realm. you got some customers using Pro Core, some using Textura, some using their own process outside of any system on paper. nitpicking everything from insurance search to, you know, whatever. but you know I listen to conversations around the office. I'm an Intel guy.

Rishi (27:42)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (27:43)
but also, you know, I listen to conversations and I make mental notes.

And I had made some mental notes about this person having some, you know, our volume was going up, so our billings were getting more taking more of her time and you know, some things were not happening when they were supposed to be. so and we had some intercompany buildings, we had a fab company and an erect company, so that also complicated some things. but after doing some research inside of Vista.

which was our ERP, they're they're built for that. They're built for some consolidated entities and stuff like that. So I knew that I could, if I could get a consultant on the line with her and she explained what her process was and and how our controls worked, that they could probably figure out how to make it work inside of the system. so we set that up, she did the consulting and when I asked about it, she was like, they said there's nothing that they could really do.

so that was early on and I kinda knew that I was gonna have and I'd heard some other things from other people. and I knew that I was gonna have my hands full, but I never we never really had any direct confrontations. Everything was really, you know, what I thought was fairly standard, but you never know. I just my only pet peeve is people that aren't willing to learn.

anybody that's willing to learn, you know, and I I haven't seen this correspond with anybody's age because I mean I had somebody in AP that was that was older than her and she was wide open to being taught anything about that could make that AP make her be able to do her job more efficiently and better as the volume was growing, more invoices,

But somebody that's just not willing to learn is probably where I can't have a hard time, you know.

Rishi (29:42)
Man, the world is changing very fast and

Matt (29:44)
And I'm not sure

you can I'm I'm not sure how. I mean if anybody's got any pointers about how to navigate something like that. my wife has a lot of suggestions but we're we're yeah. but

Rishi (29:55)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe

maybe some of our listeners can reach out to you, and they can give you support.

Matt (30:00)
Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully I don't have to deal with it again,

but maybe it helps somebody going forward, you know.

Rishi (30:06)
Yeah, yeah. and this is also about talking difficult things openly. This podcast is about that.

Matt (30:13)
Yeah. Yeah, you've I mean like I said when we initially talked, you know, I started in when I got in I had worked some construction clients in public accounting and I did some outsource or some fractional CFO work for a little a little bit. So I kinda knew my way, I knew what everything was, but I hadn't gotten jumped, you know, all the way in. And once I did that, like I just

I try to go all in. I try to learn everything about the materi the raw materials and what goes into making the materials and what in the world affects, you know, those prices. so I found your podcast pretty easily going through CFMA. really good organization, really good website platform for exchanging ideas and I really enjoyed that. Really active. and

saw your podcast and started listening, it was like every one was very relevant to what I was dealing with. It wasn't this, you know, speaking from thirty thousand feet. It was about, you know, credit cards and it was about these problems that I was trying to work on every day. but yeah, I found it very, very useful.

Rishi (31:24)
Thank you for saying that, Matt. You learned you were being replaced because you were accidentally copied on an email to a recruiter two months after a glowing review. What did that teach you about reading the real signals in an owner-led business versus what you are told to your face?

Matt (31:43)
I kinda knew that there was some that there was some undercurrent.

I had been told by some other members of the organization and there was a past there.

But I'd also noticed that we were when I was there that, you know, there was a ton of good people in that organization. And people hung around and and I think maybe one person got fired from, you know, not out on the factory floor, but in the management team, supervisors and up, like one one person while I'd been there. And I'd always been told like you've really got to do something really bad to get

you know, fired here. which obviously I was not gonna try to but

We had well, I mean, I thought that I read people better than this. I guess it's a you know, to always be prepared. Was that the Boy Scout motto, I guess, maybe?

Rishi (32:34)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (32:38)
you know, when when I was laying on the couch that Monday night and or Sunday night, I can't remember what night it was, and saw that email and I'm like, What is this? And it I mean it really caught

mean my wife was like, I think I'm gonna be sick. 'Cause it, you know, it caught caught me way off guard.

And you know, if if your name's on the side of the building you get to make those decisions, but there's people on the other end of that. but the real signals, I don't know. I mean, keep your head down.

Rishi (33:07)
Maybe there is no signal.

Matt (33:08)
I mean if you're brought in, you know, the problem is if you're kind of brought in to, you know, be a change agent and move some things forward and

in a business that's rapidly expanding and you know, where labor's tight and you know, all these things and you're trying to put in I mean it's I expected some pushback, some normal pushback from the field on, you know, we start trying to use a new credit card, you know, stuff like that. but some of the stuff I received from you know what we referenced earlier was what kind of threw me off but but yeah.

Tough one to answer.

Rishi (33:44)
definitely

a delicate position when you are the supervisor of owner's wife.

Matt (33:49)
Yeah, and and the whole thing about that was, you know, we had had multiple conversations about that, about, you know, she was to be transitioning out of the business within a year or two and looking for the replacement. because I think it was known that it was a problem, but you know, you never know what somebody's dealing with at home.

Rishi (34:10)
They're going through a

Matt (34:10)
Hm.

Rishi (34:10)
divorce or something. no, actually, this could be a good relationship that put you in trouble. The next question here, Matt, is you've said construction rooms are thick with egos and bravado.

For the quieter, more technical CFO or controller listening, how do you earn credibility and hold your ground in a room like that?

Matt (34:32)
know your numbers, be good at what you do and take care of people. You're gonna have guys from the field. We had a general superintendent that seemed like, you know, when I heard him when I first started working there, I was like, whoa.

But then by the time I left, like he and I were were pretty tight because I think he saw that, you know, he pushed back when he needed to. We pushed back. he knew that, you know, if there was a pay issue and somebody had gotten their pay screwed up, whether it was payroll's fault or whether it was supervisor's fault or whatever, like we would get it fixed and that that guy would have a paycheck the same day that everybody else was getting paid.

You take care of those little things. you know, you try to help people out and you be you know, pretty damn good at your job and know the numbers. when it comes to it, but

You know, you can't be the I don't know, it'd probably be tough for the guy that never leaves the office. 'Cause you gotta get out. I did quite a bit of getting out and walking around and talking to people because when I'm trying to evaluate a process or you're looking at unit costs or labor hours on certain things like, you know, you can't figure that out sitting in the office. And that's that's one of those things, not a typical accountant. I mean, I worked for a guy that he would prefer to sit in his office twenty four seven and he's got

12 monitors, and technically he's probably one of the best people I've ever worked with. but he couldn't have a conversation with anybody.

Rishi (36:01)
Right.

Matt (36:03)
but yeah, just be genuine. I love talking to people, and I love as I've gotten older, I love the differences and personalities of people, and you know, you're old enough to realize that.

you know, you you randomly talk to a stranger somewhere and they could end up being the most interesting person you've ever met. So I'm I'm always open to having the conversations and all these guys and all the field guys knew that I was always, you know, you could call my cell phone. HR was under my purview when I first started there and we you know, the HR guy was the same way. Like you know, we took care of the field because we knew what they were dealing with on a day to day and

That garnered a lot of respect for our accounting function.

Rishi (36:45)
Yeah.

The next section here, Matt, is bad timing, not bad work. You once went 12 to 13 months between roles in a tough market, and you are navigating a transition again now. What did that stretch teach you about resilience, identity, and not tying your self-worth to a title?

Matt (37:06)
I don't think I've ever really been the guy that, you know, tied their whole identity to their job or took, you know, take your job seriously but not yourself. I'm I'm very self deprecating. I guess when you're people that are diagnosed with depression, that's probably part of what comes along with that. But the hardest part was you do see yourself

as like I see myself as a provider and a protector of the family. I've got a wife and daughter and when you lose that ability to provide, you know, I there's no way around it. You're you know, my my ego took you know, my mental well being, everything took a hit. when you have things happen like, you know, we we lost my father-in-law in October and

We had to abandon travel plans to memorialize him this summer because, you know, I was let go in early May, May the fourth or something like that. and I'd lost my father to you know, he ended up dying from the lung cancer in six. I was twenty

Rishi (38:09)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (38:09)
five and that's a pretty important you know, you're a young man, but you're still, you know, very impressionable and my wife and I'd been together for a pretty long time and

So my father in law had pretty much filled in that role for me for nearly twenty years and we had a great relationship and shared a lot of interests. you know, it's it's hard to keep your head in a good place. I mean, is all I can say. 'Cause, you know, it's a day to day. It's you know, today I've got a lot of things going on like this and it's a good spot and then tomorrow there's no jobs to apply to and

You don't hear from any recruiters and it it's pretty easy to get into a in a into a bad place with that.

Rishi (38:53)
Honest people like you, we need you in the construction industry. I know you've been

Matt (38:57)
Well, I mean

Rishi (38:57)
through something tough but that doesn't in my view say anything about your capability or credibility.

Matt (39:04)
I hope not. yeah, I mean mental health, I mean the military, it's been a issue for years and

Rishi (39:09)
Yeah.

Matt (39:10)
construction, you know, they're trying to bring it to light and I mean sometimes it's just it's a tough gig. Like, you know, these guys that are in the field are on the road and you know, it was one of the things we were talking we started talking about from a personnel standpoint.

Is that we were having more guys in the field, like the really good guys that were that could, you know, really move up the ladder that wanted to come out of the field and be PMs or or do something else. Just, you know, they're starting families. they're getting

Rishi (39:43)
No.

Matt (39:43)
married, they're having children, and I think it it's a good thing that maybe people are more want to be around, be home and

be with their families more. I mean, when I was in public accounting, I think I traveled about ten or eleven weeks in the fall and ten or eleven weeks in the spring. and I hated it. I mean it it wasn't great locations 'cause it was rural Alabama

Rishi (40:03)
Uh-huh.

Matt (40:04)
community banks. but I'm I'm a guy that likes to be at home. I like to come in and have my people around me and sit on the porch with my cats and watch the hummingbirds and you know.

Rishi (40:15)
Yeah, yeah.

Matt (40:16)
And I think more and more people are coming to that family that realization. and what that says for construction, I'm not sure. You know, will there always be some guys that just love to be on the road? They take their wife on the road and, you know, get the predim and all that? There there likely will be, but I think there's gonna be less and we'll just have to, you know, figure that out at some point. But

Yeah, the mental side, you know, we have all these campaigns that say all these things but nothing really changes at the top. And a lot of that is we've talked about the stigma, the bravado and all the egos that come along with it. in the military it was, you know, hey, everything goes on your permanent record, but everything goes in your record. And, you know, everybody was worried that going to see somebody for a long time it was pretty much gonna stifle your career and in some places it did. I think they've started getting a lot better with that, but

You know, at least more people are talking about it.

Rishi (41:09)
Yeah. So the a few months ago there was a plane crash in India and the plane took off and was about a few thousand feet and suddenly it lost both of its engine. everyone was thinking Boeing or the airplane manufacturing company, they made a big mistake. eventually they had these people come for

investigation, federal government people and they found out that the pilot at a couple thousand feet turned off both engines in such a way that the plane was gonna crash with hundred percent probability. So he had a mental issue whereby he wanted to die and wanted to take a few hundred people with him.

Matt (41:49)
Yeah, that's you know, that's one of those things. It's like these pilots, I mean, highly trained, and take on a great amount of responsibility. But that doesn't alleviate the fact that the guy's wife may have told him she was leaving him and taking the kids. And he was probably afraid to come in and say something about that because he knew what you know, what would happen and yeah, it's a tough one.

Rishi (42:13)
Yeah. So while p everyone was blaming Boeing, there was a lot of noise in the media, but as soon as the mental health stuff came out, media went quiet.

Matt (42:23)
Yeah. I mean

Rishi (42:24)
They

didn't want to talk about it. Like Boeing, it's easy to target Boeing, right?

Matt (42:29)
Yeah, they've been a punch and bag for a few years.

Rishi (42:30)
Yeah. They're not gonna talk about this little guy's mental health issue.

You call yourself a heart on my sleeve guy and you are choosing to tell this story openly. Why do you think finance leaders, especially in construction, are so reluctant to be vulnerable about the political side of the jobs?

Matt (42:50)
I mean I think you know, everybody's gotta get theirs, right? Bill's gotta be paid and anything that jeopardizes bills gotta be paid. people that are totally risk averse will push that out of their you know, they're not gonna talk about anything. I've been pretty open on LinkedIn in the past and I've been told, Hey, that's not helping your case and from recruiters, but

I mean, I've also been told by recruiters to lie on a you know, to change my resume to downgrade titles and do other things that I didn't think were above board. I think it's just retro you know, getting retribution against that person, I guess. I mean, who knows what'll you know, what my story will end up being, but you know, to me it's I would rather get it out there and talk about it.

because I'm probably not the only person that's dealt with this in the past or and probably won't be the last, but I don't know, try to normalize talking about this because it's part of the job. I mean, not it not everything is board decks and this and that and that. these things happen. and I'm like I said, I'm an open, you know, you everybody knows how they stand with me.

Rishi (44:07)
Yeah. And some people in the industry they might get a perspective on this side of the problem as well, the political side. Some owners are not even aware that there is so much complexity in there, in the organization.

Matt (44:19)
yeah. Especially when you're when you're relying on the emotions and whims of you know, if you've got a ninety five percent owner, you know, you you don't have to convince a board to fire somebody. I mean, you're the you're the hammer, so so those decisions come a lot more impulsive sometimes.

Rishi (44:41)
You and your wife finally made the call to open your search to relocating to Atlanta to keep your career moving. How do you weigh family, roots, and career when the right opportunity isn't where you live?

Matt (44:57)
I mean I in my mind I always knew that where we lived that it was I would likely reach a point in my career where, you know, there's just not a lot of opportunity near here. I was hoping that maybe something would open up or another opportunity because, you know, it may not be a CFO role but it could be something adjacent. so that's just you know, we've we're both from Georgia.

But we met at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama, which is, you know, just twenty minutes up the road. and we liked this area and made a lot of friends here. And it was tough raising a child here because when you're away from you know, all your family, you don't really have that outlet of, you know, hey, something happened, I got need to drop this child off so I can ru you know, you don't have that outlet. But we've had a lot of friends that have

helping you know, we help other people too. But you know, at a certain point there's just you know, you've gotta decide. I taught and this time I told my wife, I said, we may have to open it up. and she was open to it because her her parent her mother's in Atlanta. and since her father passed there's you know that's a whole new situation for all them and and we've got family near Atlanta so

We kinda made that as a natural starting point in my big city because I was thinking if I can't find anything here, maybe we can find something in Atlanta. it's been kinda slow over there too, but you know, we're basically looking, you know, within half a day's drive of Atlanta, just to get, you know, if she needs to get back for something. but, you know, it's tough. Like it was one of the reasons in the military I kind of decided to retire instead of

stay in the reserves. I mean y you've got some reservists that, you know, they want to make colonel or they want to make general that, you know, they may live in Alabama and they're, you know, paying out of their pocket to fly to San Diego once a month so they can go to drill and that just wasn't me. but it's one of those things you just deal with. You either take it to the house or you start traveling. but yeah, we've we've at least been open about it and she's kinda like, all right now I'm open because

We've been in this we've been in an in the city that we're in and in the county for twenty plus years. so it's almost been more of a home than you know, more time here than I spent growing up in Georgia, but it's just part of it.

Rishi (47:21)
The last section here, Matt, is advice and the ask. If a CFO or controller is about to take a seat at a family-owned or founder-led construction company, what are the red flags you tell them to watch for before signing and the questions you wish you'd asked?

Matt (47:40)
I don't know how you go about asking this, but you could probably just figure you know figure it out other ways is what all family works in the business and who's gonna be in my chain and how do we go about handling that? I've tried this in the past and and it's two of the reasons why two of the positions I left was, you know, trying to get under a contract or an employment agreement. 'Cause it kind of sets the for the relationship and you know, the

Company's gonna get some stability, you're gonna get some stability, and you may get some severance tied to whatever you negotiate. and then maybe that helps you and the company get on to doing the business, the work of the business without worrying about some of those things. you know, I've spent my own money on an employment attorney to draft documents for me before, only to get, you know, told that, hey, we're not doing that anymore.

So you never know. It's just one of those, you know, small business things that you have to deal with. But but yeah, I would definitely try to get an idea of what all I mean, you could do it through LinkedIn or or whatever, but to do some kind of recon, but figure out, you know, what are those weird working relationships that you're gonna have,

coming in there and and if you get a bad feeling I mean which you know a lot of people now are just trying to find something. So you have to weigh that as well.

Rishi (49:04)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the market's tough.

Matt (49:06)
But I like I like having a piece of paper, a document saying, Hey, here's what this this is and then you know, if somebody was gonna fire you on a whim, maybe if you had six months severance in your you know, in your contract they would think twice about it. But

Rishi (49:21)
The last question here, Matt is you are a CPA, CPA, a twenty one year army veteran and a construction CFO who's turned around distressed books more than once and you are looking for your next role. This audience is full of owners, CFOs and PMs. Make the pitch. What's the right opportunity for you? And how should someone reach out?

Matt (49:45)
ideally it would be another CFO role in some aspect of commercial construction manufacturing. I had a pretty good, you know, I had the ball rolling pretty good in construction, so I would hate to kind of lose the momentum from that. I like construction manufacturing because you see some tangible product as a result of the team's work. obviously I'm open to other industries, but you know.

as tight as things are now, it's if if you haven't worked in this particular industry, they won't even talk to you. and especially construction, like even if you took out the data center projects, it seems like there was an overall focus on, you know, upgrading and revitalizing infrastructure across the US. we'd started seeing a lot of these come down the pipe, like just in relation to the army, just you know billions and billions and

deferred maintenance that need, you know, everybody's seen that in the news, barracks that are falling apart and stuff. so regardless of whether where this data center issue goes, I think there's some other projects, some construction is gonna be pretty busy for a while because it feels like as a country we've kind of let things fall into disrepair and and hopefully now we're kind of moving towards bringing that up to par. But

But yeah, just hopefully stay in those industries. If I gotta move, I gotta move. I'm you know

I enjoy seeing just seeing something come out of the team's work.

But yeah, if anybody's willing to fight to pick up somebody with some bad luck and terrible timing, but a decent resume, hit me up.

And I don't know if you know, should I put my email out here or

Rishi (51:29)
your openness is so important man. I mean finance a lot of times the owners they want somebody who's brutally honest, man. I much rather know that I'm in trouble than somebody telling me some banal stuff.

Matt (51:43)
Well, don't I mean, I feel like when you when you're f you know, if there's too much BS then we can't get to the right answer of something. I'm gonna come in and, you know, sometime honest to a fault. I've been told I'm loyal to a fault. but that's one thing you'll never you know, I'll never be accused of being

Closed book. If you haven't already been able to tell.

Rishi (52:10)
Yeah, y this conversation was definitely very open. Yeah, please go ahead and give us your email or phone number.

Matt (52:18)
yeah, my email is MRH CPA one seven zero six at Gmail. and then my phone number is two five six seven seven zero five thousand.

Rishi (52:32)
Matt, thank you for coming on to the show.

Matt (52:34)
Thank you for having me, Reese. You're doing good work here, man.