Laid Off After 20 Years? Here’s How This Former Biz Dev Exec Took Control

Brett Trainor (: 00:01

Hi, Matt. Welcome to the Corporate Escape-y Podcast.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 00:04

Thanks, Brett. Thanks for having me on.

Brett Trainor (: 00:06

My pleasure. Looking forward to this. always like to show people what's possible, right? And I think what you're working on, not going to, I used to lead with that, but now I'm going to tease it a little bit. I think it's interesting. think escapees can learn with the model that you've built. But before that, why don't we, one, tell the audience a little bit about what was your corporate job? That's one thing I think I need to do a better job on these is just tell us what you were doing in corporate.

And then we'll get into did corporate ask you to leave? Did you figure out it was time for me to leave? We'll get into your journey, but start off with what did you do in corporate?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 00:42

So yeah, that's a great place to start. And then I can kind of go back through that history a little bit. So, and I'll start with a story, kind of a family-focused story. I'm in a hotel room in Shanghai. I'm responsible for building relationships for the software group within the company I was working for at the time. And my daughter, who was about two years old, I'm on Skype with my daughter.

her high chair and my wife had set the computer up in front of her and I'm having breakfast. I'm in Shanghai. I'm having breakfast with my daughter and it dawns on me, I'm gonna miss a whole lot of these kids growing up if I don't change my situation. within a year of that epiphany, my company actually,

you know, it was part of a reduction in force. So I was let go after 20 years with the company. It was kind of interesting. A week before I was let go, I got my 20 year award with the company. And so I actually had a set of pots, Calphalon pots and pans to remind me of that time, right? But a week later, my supervisor came, flew out to Salt Lake City and

and let me go and I called my wife and told her and she had someone in her office at the time and the person in her office said something like, do you need to go now? You need to talk to your husband. And she just said, no, no, he's been freed. He's really happy right now. But if I go back in that history, it was about a year after an acquisition where we had actually, our company, we'd actually been through three acquisitions.

Brett Trainor (: 02:18

Thank you.

Brett Trainor (: 02:24

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 02:33

over the course of seven years. And this was, yeah, this was from first acquisition was in 1996. And then the next one was 2000. And then the next one was 2007. And when the 2007 acquisition happened, I was kind of, I was ready to leave. And my wife encouraged me, go see how it's gonna be. It couldn't be any worse than it was before.

Brett Trainor (: 02:36

And when was this? Sorry, man. When was this?

Brett Trainor (: 02:42

wow, okay.

Brett Trainor (: 02:48

Okay.

Brett Trainor (: 03:02

Right.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 03:03

And that's when I started traveling, was on a plane all the time, you know, building relationships, partner relationships for the company. And, and so just had to do, you know, just had a year and then was, was freed and, got a bit of, you know, you get a bit of severance with that kind of a release and that, that kind of gave me the, the buffer I needed to, to escape. And that in my wife's career too, that's, that's the other element of it that people.

Brett Trainor (: 03:27

Okay.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 03:32

You really need to coordinate with your significant other, I believe, so that you plan this almost strategically with them. Because if you're both doing the escaping thing at the same time, that may be too much risk for your family.

Brett Trainor (: 03:47

Yeah, no, it's got to be a partnership with this thing and no, a hundred percent. And I didn't have a plan that was, you know, that's why I tell people now have a plan when you plan for the worst, hope for the best. And yeah, no. So hindsight being 2020, was just, you know, corporate kind of quit on me. kind of quit on it. I knew I wasn't going back and it was time to go figure it out. So part of me says there's, there's value to that sometimes because there is no plan.

be, but in hindsight, if I would have had one client and kind of got through the repetitions of networking and not, I want to say pitching, so it's really not pitching. It's the problem solving on the fly and how do I work differently than the way I do in corporate? That would have saved me, you know, six months. I could have done that in corporate very easily. anybody out there that's still in corporate that's thinking about it, start now, you know, you may find you like it, at least you know, right? There is no one. So, sorry, I didn't mean to derail where

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 04:43

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. And what was so interesting is I didn't really have a plan either, Brett. I kind of, felt like I was ready. I'd gone back to school at 40, gone to business school and got my MBA. And so after that, entrepreneurial spirit was just totally jazzed. I was ready to go. And that was about 2005.

Brett Trainor (: 04:47

where you're at.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 05:13

It was kind of all lined up. And then a good friend of mine who was actually a groomsman in my wedding, he stopped by to visit to show me this technology he and a couple of other guys had developed. to your point about network, I think this is what's also important too, is to have a network of really trusted, you know, people who you would hire, people who would hire you. I might call it like your high value network. So you can think about

Like all your connections on LinkedIn, yada, yada. But then if you have this core of this high value network, because this friend of mine showed me what they had done and I just thought, gosh, I'd really love to help you guys. And so I didn't, I did not immediately go to being, you know, the complete escapee starting my own thing, but I started, I took a much greater risk working, working with them and spent five years with them.

And it really kind of rounded out what I felt like I needed to be completely independent. After that five years, that's when I really became independent. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 06:18

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 06:21

Yeah. So again, I don't know if I, what were you doing in corporate? I know you're flying across the world building relationships. What was your corporate job or function if we want to super simplify it?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 06:35

Yeah, so I was, was, before I got to that flying around building partnerships, I was, I was a director of industry solutions. So we had this, this, stack of software and we were focusing it on various industries. And I had had some experience in the aerospace industry, with the simulation work that I had done in the past. And so we leveraged that. and so.

So I was building relationships, building the client base in aerospace and defense. And then when we got acquired again, that transition into global partnerships, kind of software partners. So this is working with companies like SAP and the big database companies and such. yeah, exactly. Yeah. Worldwide channel partner. So, so.

Brett Trainor (: 07:15

Okay.

Brett Trainor (: 07:22

So like channel partners, I mean, simplified. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So I can honestly tell you before you get, you're the first one in the podcast that that was your, your job responsibly was channel partner. I'm sure you did a lot more, but now I think it's an undervalued tool. We're going to get to where the value comes in this, but yeah, interesting. All right. And so then you went to work for this smaller company. you, was it a startup or how would you describe what your role was?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 07:45

Yeah, yeah.

Well, yeah, was a new company. I was the fourth person in. yeah, could, one could call it a startup. They'd been going for a few years when I joined them. And it was really wonderful because, know, in that environment, I started to see how we could innovate very rapidly. Like we would brainstorm and all sorts of kind of fun marketing ideas and ways of.

Brett Trainor (: 07:52

Okay.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 08:14

of, you know, getting, raising awareness in the industry. and so it was really fun to go from, was to go from the corporate environment where it was really difficult to get, it was difficult to get changes in our website, right. That we needed to go from that environment to, you know, being able to do just about anything we wanted sales and marketing wise was, was really incredible. And this is a software tool that, that took some time to learn. And one of the first.

Brett Trainor (: 08:38

refreshing.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 08:44

innovations that we came up with was, you know, paid evaluations. So, you know, people will download a free trial and they might tinker around with it for an hour or two. But with with simulation software, you really need to build something and show your boss that you built something that's going to really add value at the company. And that takes a little bit of training. So so what we did was we

We built up a paid evaluation with some training. So it was a, it was a package that required, you know, a small, a nominal amount to get into it. But that also raised awareness within a company because some boss somewhere had to approve that. Right. And long story short, you know, we were able to raise our awareness and, and raise awareness within companies. And we were able to get those evaluations across the line a lot faster.

Brett Trainor (: 09:29

Right.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 09:41

right, close that business rather than, I mean, lots of evaluations out there that are kind of stuck. So, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 09:47

Yeah, for sure. No, makes sense. I can, previous life, I used to talk all the time about customer enablement, right? Too many organizations just throw the onboarding or they call it onboarding and the client, good luck. Maybe you have a customer success or customer service. But yeah, but if you actually have somebody to help enable that customer to find that value quicker, stick your longer value. Yeah. I mean, this is a really underappreciated strategy. It's not even a strategy. It should be a fundamental within companies, but it's not.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 10:16

It's not, yeah. Yeah. That was just one example of the kind of innovation. So I really enjoyed that environment for about five years. And then, yeah, yeah, I was still an employee with a little bit of commission-based on top of it. yeah. But then after that, I haven't been an employee anywhere. in...

Brett Trainor (: 10:25

Were you an employee with those guys or were you an independent? Okay.

Brett Trainor (: 10:33

I gotcha, okay.

Brett Trainor (: 10:41

Kind of freeing, isn't it?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 10:42

It really for 13 years, I've been my own employee.

Brett Trainor (: 10:48

So I would, you get categorized as an OG of the escapee world, right? Before it was cool, you were one of the folks out there. So as an employee, what were you thinking? You just wanted to go out on your own. What was kind of your, I know you kind of buffered it from corporate, so you got a little taste of the small business world. What was, how did you approach it when you knew you were going to go solo?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 10:54

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 11:11

Yeah, I just got to the point where I did want to be independent and they didn't want me to be independent. know, I wanted to go for it. Basically, I wanted to go fractional with them. they even though these were my friends, right, they didn't. That's not really the way they wanted to go. So that was kind of the motivation for me to say, OK, well, if we can't have fractional, then I'm going to have to go.

Brett Trainor (: 11:25

Okay.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 11:40

And I actually found another company that a software company that needed needed to regrow their, their user community in North America. And they were totally fine with fractional. So yeah. And so in fact, I did that only commission. I was commission based. So that was just perfect for me. And then I combined that with the consulting gig that was kind of the predecessor to roar simulation. So my current company is called roar simulation spelled.

Brett Trainor (: 11:52

No interest, okay.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 12:08

spelled the easy way, R-O-A-R, like a lion would say. And that's how you pronounce my name.

Brett Trainor (: 12:11

Thanks.

And we're going to, I'm to get into that, but because I'm kind of curious, because the questions I get all the time and you're newer to the community, you're going to start to hear this too is, so those first customers, right? You were actually building relationships with that smaller company. How did you, did you already have a relationship with this company? went on commission only, or was that, how did you end up getting networked? One question, one and question two, where did you start to find the customers after that?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 12:28

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 12:35

I did.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 12:40

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think my big awakening about networks was in business school. We did an exercise in business school where you answer a bunch of questions and you kind of get a numeric score for how strong your network is. And mine was pretty, this is in like 2004, my network was pretty weak compared to my neighbor.

I realized that how important the network was at that point. And then when I was with, working with my friends on growing their company, that's when the network just, made it really important. And we were, we were at a lot of trade shows. And so I got a lot of face to face with a lot of the companies in our supply chain space that I hadn't gotten before. So, you know, my LinkedIn network went from, you know, a hundred or 200, it just grew.

really quickly during that time period. then, and then when I went independent, when I went to the next company I went to work with, I actually was friends with with their founder. It's a, it's a Scottish company. And we had, we had known each other for 20 years. And so I reached out to them and, and I liked working with UK based companies. And so I thought I'd give it a try. I reached out to him and said, Hey,

You know, do you guys need some help here in North America? And that's, that's how I got, I got that gig. And at the same time, I had another, you talk about a high value network. had another colleague who we had done a large project for the U S postal service many years ago, large simulation project. And so he and I had worked together on that project and he wanted me to come work in, his consulting business too. So I kind of.

was using that high value network to get my first two fractional gigs, basically.

Brett Trainor (: 14:45

Yeah, makes sense. I think that's what people don't appreciate or understand that. Again, even if you spent 20, 30 years in corporate, you've got the skills to network. Now, even if you don't have, if you've got a few, it's one, your network is probably bigger and stronger than you think it is. You just need to go rekindle some of it. But two, you know, it doesn't have, you and I are relatively new, recent connections, right? Less than a month. And I think, but I feel like I already have known you. So, I mean, it's very possible to build your network quickly if you're intentional and.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 15:09

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 15:15

curious, right? think that's the biggest piece of this thing. So I just wanted to remind folks, hey, you don't think you have to have this massive network to get started. Start today. But it's not, it's not that hard.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 15:29

Yeah, yeah, just a big low value network. you think about if that's what you have on LinkedIn and then you, you you put up your sign and you start your business and you broadcast to all those people. Well, that's, that's not a very efficient way to get that first customer from my, that's my perspective. There's so much the signal to noise ratio on, some of these platforms is still.

There's way too much noise. And so to get through to the right first customers is going to be a challenge. And so, yeah, I think my, my journey is a perfect example of I leveraged my high value network while I simultaneously working my call my acquaintance network. And in the middle there, you've got kind of, Hey, we've done a project with, this guy or with the people he's worked with. so that would be my kind of middle value net.

if you want to call it that. Like we haven't ever worked together, so I couldn't vouch for you and you couldn't vouch for me, but you do good work, right? You have a reputation to do good work.

Brett Trainor (: 16:34

You're connected. Yeah. Yeah. We had a Tom van Dyke was on not too long ago and he talks and I've referenced him a couple of times just because of the networking. And when he said, cause he was actually in a church environment, big church. So it was almost a corporate environment. Then when he went solo into all things marketing, the story brand, right. He small businesses tell their story. And so he's like, I had relationships. They liked me, they knew me, but they had no idea if I could deliver on.

What I was doing and so basically I was looking at the sympathy clients. My first ones were, hey, I'll give you a chance. I don't know if you can do this, but I like you enough to give you a shot. And I think we don't appreciate that aspect as much, right? Sure, you want to earn everything based on this long history of everything you've done, but to get started, sometimes it's okay. Somebody's going to take a chance on you to do it.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 17:28

Right, right. Yeah. And I think when I came into the consulting world, I had my own existing network and I was able to leverage what, they actually made me a partner in the company, this colleague of mine in consulting business.

You know, I had my network, I brought my network in and, and, and my mentor there was an early baby boomer. So he still call it his Rolodex, right? So yeah. But the other thing that he did that was wonderful, was we would go to trade shows. We'd go to our main trade shows together and walk the floor. do marketing by walking around in the, in the trade show floor and make introductions. So we were kind of cross pollinating our networks.

Brett Trainor (: 17:59

yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 18:17

over the course of a few years. that was really, that was, that's been really valuable to me. And then I continue to do that. Like I've brought in someone that I'm mentoring to, you know, to continue this business if that's what he chooses to do. And I do the same thing with him at the trade shows. So, you know, that.

Brett Trainor (: 18:21

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

Brett Trainor (: 18:40

Make sense. Yeah, you never too young or old to roll that a mentor as you go through this, right? I mean, it's just especially in corporate you just You hardly ever asked for help, right? Because you just you couldn't especially from looking at an outside coach, right? If the company gave it to you, maybe you would take it but it's usually that was a sign of weakness that hey you need to improve or bringing somebody in to help you and Mentoring was it just wasn't common which is which is such a shame

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 19:08

Yeah. Yeah. One of my, one of my mentors, you know, I wanted to move into another position within our firm, before we were ever acquired. between 88 and 96, we were like a 50 person maximum company and it was like a family. And if I ever went back to a company that would be about the right size, cause we all knew each other and, talk about a great way to build your high value network when you work in an organization that is that small.

Brett Trainor (: 19:24

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 19:37

But one of my mentors said to me when I wanted to move into another role, he basically said, well, you can't go anywhere till you hire your replacement. And so that's really stuck with me. know, Brett, I'm thinking about what's next. I've got this thing that's going right now and I'm thinking about pivots. And that goes back to the pandemic. I started thinking about, you know, how can I pivot? What other things can I do here in the next 10 to 15 years?

Brett Trainor (: 20:07

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 20:07

The first thing I thought was, I need to bring someone in and mentor them and keep this thing going while I, you know, I got this plate spinning. I'm going to spin a couple more plates. Right.

Brett Trainor (: 20:18

Yeah, it's okay if you drop one of the plates, no one's it's not a bad. So let's maybe that's a good, good transition. Cause right now you're doing some fractional and then how did you pivot to where you are today? Was it a pivot or was it an evolution based on what you built?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 20:21

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 20:34

Yeah, it was, it was more of just an evolution. So my business partners got to the point where they wanted to retire and it made sense for, for us to spin down that company and for me to spin up more simulation. So I basically carried the clients, the Rolodex, I carried all that over into the new company and, and, and kept it going. And then, you know, I've continued to, to do outreach.

I think one of my biggest challenges right now is that one of the tools that my team uses is being sunset it. And so now we're, I'm spending a ton of time networking and figuring out which technologies are the best candidate to as an alternative to that. And, and my business right now is, is really built on expertise. So I don't just look at a technology.

and evaluate it standalone, I have to find the expert users who can really make that, who can do high value work with that technology. So I'm more than anything, I'm looking for people than I am a technology and whatever technology they know, that's, you know, that's doesn't really matter to me as long as they can get the work done.

Brett Trainor (: 21:52

Interesting and maybe this is good time to explain what your business is, what your business model is. I mean you're still technically solo or are you? No, I don't want to guess. Tell me.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 21:57

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 22:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah. everyone in the company is a contractor, including myself. and we basically we build simulation models of warehouses. And the objective of building those models is to help companies reduce their risk, evaluate designs, if there are some new designs or some new automation that they're considering and

identifying bottlenecks and really helping them, give them comfort that, you know, any change they're going to make, whether it's adding automation or something in a warehouse is going to work for them.

Brett Trainor (: 22:45

Got it. So anybody in the audience that's in supply chain or logistics, You know, Matt's your guy.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 22:52

Yeah, yeah, if you need, the word used to be simulation. That was the traditional word. Now the, now the phrase is digital twin. and, and there are lots of different definitions floating around for a digital twin at the moment, but it's essentially the same, the same concept. It's a, it's a virtual, it's a computer-based representation of a physical system that I can pull a lot of levers and turn a lot of knobs on and run.

Brett Trainor (: 22:56

Okay.

Brett Trainor (: 23:00

Okay.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 23:21

all sorts of what if scenarios. And by running those what if scenarios, I get a lot of insight into how the system runs. And also I can troubleshoot, I can identify problems before you have those problems in the physical system.

Brett Trainor (: 23:38

Got it. are you guys, if don't mind me asking, so if you're all contractors, is it like a joint venture between, is it four of you, three you, four of you? do you?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 23:46

Right now it's solely owned by me, but I'm thinking about what the structure will look like, you know, going forward for that part of the business. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 23:55

Okay. Yeah. The only reason I asked, I think is super curious because I'm working on a number of smaller deals with some different folks where again, I want to go again, more like an ecosystem where you and I can go partner on a couple of things, but we don't want to create a whole new company. Maybe we do, but maybe there's a way you take my solo business, your solo business, we partner in this divided up whatever who's going to do what more of an S O W between the two of us.

So I was just kind of curious if you guys had cracked any type of code, because I think we're going to see more and more of this and we don't have to make it overly complicated, right?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 24:27

Yeah. What I did was, know, I have a parent S-Corp. So if you talk about corporate structure, right, I have this S-Corp that has a generic name. And then I'm, my plan is to have LLCs, just start up LLCs for different lines of business as it, as you need to, because you need to have, you know, some entity, some named entity, in order to do business with some companies. Right. So. Yeah, that's, that's, that's how I've structured it at this point.

Brett Trainor (: 24:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 24:57

And so, bye.

Brett Trainor (: 24:59

All right, well, if we ever do a panel, which I think is going to be a topic maybe for more of our paid community, have to bring you in. I think it would be an interesting conversation to talk about how to structure these things. Anyway, OK.

So I took you, you're talking about, so how do you, who does what, right? In the company and.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 25:14

And.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 25:19

Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a good question. So, in our former company, I was a project manager and, main, customer of the digital twin. So I had my, my team that would build the digital twin, and then I would pull all the levers and do all the analysis and everything and deliver that to the customer. And I've had someone come into the company that does that now. And so my main focus is business development.

So it's bringing in the, you know, the new clients and writing statements of work and, you know, keeping the business going. My philosophy is to keep my team as busy as they want to be. So that's, that's kind of the way we look at it. We all have a certain, you know, people say work life balance. Well, I call it life work balance, right? I switch it around. And so what I really try to do is.

Brett Trainor (: 26:13

Yeah, like...

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 26:19

have respect for everyone's calendar. You know, have one team member who's a really good golfer and likes to spend as much time golfing as he can. And so we really try to accommodate that with when we schedule meetings and things like that. And so, yeah, it's about building a team where we really understand everyone's values when it comes to life, work, balance, and trying to maintain that for everybody.

Brett Trainor (: 26:46

Yeah, it makes so much sense. I think we may have been offline. I'm getting older, so I forget if we're already talking about the, you know, the talent density within a company and a little backstory. I interviewed Ron, CEO of lettuce.co, well, it would have been yesterday. this, that podcast will be out just before this one. And he's going to get a 40 person company and it was all fractional. I'm calling fractional as loosely, but freelance, independence, solar businesses that came together.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 26:52

You

Brett Trainor (: 27:16

It was the same idea, right? So he's like, I wanted to get as much talent density as possible. And I wasn't going to get it through full-time hires. was going to be people had been doing this for decades. I could bring in. So if you look at his talent per dollar, talent per employer, however you want to measure it's the roof. And then when I mentioned that to you, he's like, you're like, yeah, I've only got four of us, but it's unbelievable the experience that we have on this team.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 27:39

Yeah, we're averaging 30 years plus for the four of us. Right. So yeah, it's pretty high talent density and it's very that talent is very focused. Right. So we not only know our tool set that we're using, but we also have that domain knowledge in the industry. So, we can actually anticipate problems with a design sometimes before our digital twin is finished, right. Before we finished it and we've actually started running it.

Brett Trainor (: 27:51

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 28:09

We can see, we've seen enough systems over the years, virtually.

Brett Trainor (: 28:13

Yeah. Yeah. And that's the value. All you escapees or want to be escapees. This is where your experience is so important and you can charge for it. you know, it's, think we get caught up and it doesn't sound like you had this problem where you're basically, Hey, you're charging an hourly fee and that's what the small business gets. No, you're, charging the entire package. It's the 25, 30 years of experience. It's the knowledge, it's the leadership, it's everything you can package into one to solve their

their problems. think part of that's just a mindset shift for folks in corporate because it is a different, right? When you're a corporate, it's straight line, stay in this box, don't screw up.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 28:53

Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. We do most of our projects fixed price, but at a rate that is much higher than the rest of the industry, because I believe you get what you pay for. And in this case, you get that experience from my team. I would prefer to do more work, I would have to say, time and expenses, because in our industry,

Brett Trainor (: 28:59

Okay.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 29:21

There's so much discovery that happens after the initial discovery. So you've got a little bit of discovery that happens pre-proposal. And then you have some that happens once the project launches. And then you have discovery that we garner right at the very end of the project, right? When we've got this whole virtual, this digital twin up and running and we're showing it to the customer, there's a lot of aha moments that happen. So I think.

Brett Trainor (: 29:25

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 29:48

That's one of the things for escapees to think about is, you know, is it better to start off fixed price? Is it better to start off hourly? You know, if, you're the one who's willing to take the risk with a fixed price contract initially, that's a good way to deliver high value for customers. You do want to be careful though, because if you really underbid yourself with a particular client and they love what you do, they're going to want to keep going at whatever that.

rate was, right? It's hard to go up. It's very difficult, if not impossible to go up, but it's easy to come down, right? So, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 30:24

Yeah, especially if you're viewing it as a long time client. And it may be constructed as, hey, make sure people know, it's 50 % off for this first time project. They can see on the line item what it would be full. they're not, they get used to seeing that number, even if you don't bill it, there's some, I don't want to call it a trick of the trade, but I learned that fairly early on. That you want the customer to know the total value they're getting, even if you end up discounting it.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 30:28

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 30:41

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 30:46

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 30:51

Yeah, I think that would be a great service that this community can provide is just a little vetting for people who are new to it. Especially outsiders, Brett, because outsiders, we don't have any of that bias that you have. If it is an escapee, you're going to have a ton of experience and that's going to create a little bit of bias for you in terms of what you think it's worth. And most of the folks I know underbid what they're undervalue, what they're really worth.

Brett Trainor (: 31:15

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 31:21

Right. what they're about, they deliver. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 31:22

All the time, yes.

Well, again, the surface, everything's super successful. but looking back, is there anything you would have done differently? What did you learn through this process that, because again, I think we're seeing definitely an influx of new escapees and experienced folks. what, what's some of the advice that you have for folks as they're, starting this journey.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 31:44

I think, and I mentioned this to you last time we talked, the book, The Hundred Year Life that I mentioned, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at that, but I only read that just a couple years ago. And I wish I had read that before I'd started my journey, because it really lays out a structure for you to be prepared for an escapee kind of life, right? So working on your...

financial assets early on so that you have an app, you don't have an appetite for some risks that you can take without having a steady paycheck, right? There's your physical health and wellbeing. So just taking care of yourself so you're healthy and you can work hard enough to do what you need to do for your clients. And then there's your skill set. So always be thinking about those three assets.

I really, the time that I spent, the five years I spent with my friends and their small company, I really had a chance to experiment with sales and marketing ideas that I didn't have before. And I think my skillset there grew substantially, right? And so always be thinking about those assets that you have and then map it out into the future. That's the other thing.

. then it wasn't really until: 2012

Brett Trainor (: 33:26

And then start. Yeah. No, I think it's a good point. I go back and forth balancing the structure with letting it flow because this corporate escapee never would have happened if I would have kept the super structured piece. But I know I'm also guilty of chasing too many shiny objects sometimes. So it's trying to find that balance of the meandering to make sure you get on that, that right path. And if it changes, it changes, right? It's okay because you're going to pick up new skills.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 33:47

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 33:54

Now, one of the things I found interesting, and again, just reflecting back on my time was, you know, the tail end of the corporate, I was just going through the motions quite a bit, right? It just, there were some things that were a challenge, but later in your career, right? You're really not up for many promotions. There's nowhere left to go in many cases. You're not learning a lot of new things. And so it just becomes stale. And I started this podcast while I was still in consulting and it was something I had never done. Took me out of my comfort zone.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 33:55

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 34:22

It was new. was learning and that just started me on like a three year odyssey of learning again, right? Just the energy level was way back and it just, don't know. That's why I tell people don't, if you're thinking about making a change, go challenge yourself, go learn something, get energized and then revisit this. So don't know if you experienced, I know you've been out a little bit longer, but it sounds like you're always on a quest to learn as well.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 34:48

Yeah, I think being committed to being a lifelong learner and that kind of fits in with that hundred year life, you know, building your skillset and continuing to build your build your skillset. You know, right now at, at 63, I'm I've done a bunch of coding through my career, but I'm learning some new programming languages, right. And, um, working in enhancing my skills as a data analyst, because, you know, back when I first started, you know, I was there when it was Lotus one, two, three, and then we got Excel and, so.

Brett Trainor (: 35:06

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 35:16

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 35:18

our tools have gotten so much better. And there are so many communities out there that you can learn from. There are so many great online courses. So it's really so much easier to be a lifelong learner. When I first started on that quest of learning, you were buying books, right? And you were just, when I had to a new programming language, was buy the book and spend the weekend immersing yourself in it, right? So, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 35:36

Yeah, 100 % right.

Brett Trainor (: 35:45

Yeah, I still like that. still, I mean, I just read.

You know, hardwired for happiness. We had to re schedule his interview, but he's come, he was a third year McKinsey guy and then just like went on a quest for happiness. And so I still got the tabs in the book from when I read it. And by the way, another book that you may find interesting in the audience too, I just finished was the 120 day year. Um, the author of this case and I listened to the E version or the, uh, the Kindle version of it. So.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 35:58

Mm.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 36:02

That's awesome.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 36:12

Hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 36:18

But essentially what he, this guy was advocating is a year is too long for planning. So basically break it into four and do our three, I forget how we three months, 90 days, 120, maybe it's 123, whatever it is. The concept was get much more focused. Things are moving quickly. And if you can look out 120 days, it'll help you prioritize what you want to do in the weeks before that. I found it again, it wasn't a new concept and it's like, aha, I can combine that.

with the 100 year life. then again, I'm not reinventing any wheels, right? I'm just pulling all this information and what works for me and then let's roll this thing. So.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 36:59

Yeah, yeah. I think the other premise of the 100 year life is that, you know, the next, every generation is living a little bit longer. So does the career that you and I had at first, the 20, 30 years, does that make any sense at all anymore? And I think the next generation, they're going to be much smaller chunks, you five to 10 year chunks, and then bigger pivots too. I hope that we see that.

Brett Trainor (: 37:26

Yeah, I think I forget who the author was. I need to do a better job with my notes or notes so can reference these books. basically our corporate career, Gen X, you're just a couple of years older than me, much. You know, ours, the first step was the first mountain, right? And now we're starting on our second mountain, which again, God willing, you and I both like to work out, eat well. We get another 30 years of healthy living. That's a long time. What are we going to do? So

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 37:52

Yeah?

Brett Trainor (: 37:54

I like to think of instead of a second mountain, give me a number of foothills, right? I'm going up this hill. I don't want to commit to anything for 10 years, but give me something for six months. I can go all in on and see if there's value to it. Do I like this? Do I want to pursue it? So just a bunch of little, you know, foot hills instead of mountains as we, cross that threshold. So I think it's good advice, right? I'm, it's the way I'm approaching it. can't imagine one retiring. I don't know what the heck I would do. Might as well keep busy, right?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 38:19

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It gives meaning to the fun that we have, right? To have something that's not fun or that you have to do. Although I will say, I want to keep working as long as it's enjoyable, as long as you get up in the morning thinking about problems, you know, and solving problems for clients. can bring you a certain amount of joy, right? And it brings me joy. So.

Brett Trainor (: 38:27

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 38:43

Yeah. I'm also seeing too, with a lot of the escapees that we head into this path of it's like leveraging, monetizing, making money from our corporate experience, right? But more and more are leading and doing more teaching. And like in this case, I've now got a community that I didn't had no idea that would be, I love this. I would spend every waking hour recording these podcasts, talking to people like you.

and doing it. And so I think that's part and there was another book out there that talks about our second life, right? As we decline, you know, with certain aspects, the teaching becomes super important. We get really good at it. So why not leverage it? And we've got the experience. yeah, like I said, I think the escapee life isn't for everybody, but if you're not done, you're willing to work hard, but it's for you, you know, there's a lot of upside to, to what we're doing. So.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 39:34

Yeah. Yeah. You just reminded me too, you know, there's a spectrum from introvert to extrovert, right? And, and from my experience, extroverts have a really difficult time with, you know, not being in an office anymore and not being in a, you know, an environment where you can always go to the water cooler. But we have technology now that you can create that kind of interaction and be real time with people. And so I think, I think.

You know, that's the other thing about escapees. They can't imagine not going into an office and not spending time with a whole lot of people in the same building. But it's really about getting real time with other people and learning how to work with them and learning how to work on teams and things like that. And you don't have to be in a physical space with them. And I don't believe.

Brett Trainor (: 40:25

I'm a hundred percent with you. rant all the time on TikTok about the return to office mandates. Because I was actually remote three years before the pandemic or before I even left in consulting, I was remote. So I got like, what the hell was I doing forever? Once you get good at being able to work remotely, and it doesn't have to be from home, but just remotely, I'm like, no purpose going into the office.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 40:30

sit.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 40:39

you

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 40:47

Yeah, I've been remote since 05, so 20 years, 20 years remote for me. And yeah, I, I think, you know, I really cherish the commute time that I've gotten back. Right. And what I can do with that is you can either be thrown into more work or something that helps me keep my other might, you know, build my other strengths. Right.

Brett Trainor (: 40:49

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 41:00

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 41:08

Yeah, into the mountains to ski or ride or run or whatever you got going this week.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 41:11

Yeah, yeah, we're very fortunate here in Salt Lake having so much so close to us. So we're getting a snow storm. Yeah, we're just gonna say we're getting a snow storm today. So if know lifelong skiers, just you just get excited. You get a little fever, a little powder fever. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 41:20

Well, Matt, time, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

Brett Trainor (: 41:31

And you can go take off because you're not tied to a corporate job.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 41:34

Well, yeah, and the other thing that's so freeing is we basically all have an office in our pockets too. So every Lyft ride for me is a quick email check. And so when it comes to keeping things going and making sure no one's stalled out and clients are getting their questions answered and such, don't have to be in the same place all the time. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 41:42

true.

Brett Trainor (: 41:59

100 % agree. Well, Matt, thank you so much. I appreciate the time. Yeah, looking forward to further conversation. Like I I thought the business model where all of you were contractors, right? And then I'm like, that's the world we're heading into. So I appreciate you sharing your knowledge. yeah, we'll check back in with you here before too long. And if people are interested, curious, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 42:24

have them find me on LinkedIn. There are only four Hobson Roars in the world, my wife, myself, and my two children, because when you hyphenate names like that, especially the roar parts, it's pretty rare. So you can find me on LinkedIn. You can also find Roar Simulation, the website there, and you can contact me through there. I'd welcome, yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 42:44

Yeah, check it out. I the simulation was what was in piqued my interest initially, but then we got talking like, we got to you on the podcast. And so yeah, when you said there's four hops and roars, I'm like, wow, and then you said it was all family. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 42:53

Yeah.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 43:00

It's a little teaser. It's a little teaser. like that. Yeah. And you will find if you just search for Hobson, my wife's career, she's she's been she's done quite well in her career. So you're to find her first. I think I'm still on the first page when you search. But, you know, I might be on the second page now because of her. So and that's.

Brett Trainor (: 43:14

Sorry.

Brett Trainor (: 43:17

Well, there you go. Just switch to the second page. You'll find Matt. Awesome. And we'll, we'll put that in the show notes too. So people, anybody that wants to look you up, but I'm sure they can, I rarely look in show notes and I Google or just take a quick look and I can, find you. So anyway.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 43:20

Yeah, yeah. All right, yeah, thanks.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 43:33

Yeah, yeah, that's great. Thanks so much for the opportunity. I really, I love this community and visiting the Slack channel, Slack channels every day now, and also listening to the podcast. And it's really, it's bubbled up on my list of morning podcasts. So thanks for the work that you're doing, Brad. It's wonderful.

Brett Trainor (: 43:49

Awesome.

I appreciate that and I appreciate you coming on. So Matt, we'll catch up with you soon.

Matt Hobson-Rohrer (: 43:55

All right. Thanks so much,