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Episode Summary
You hit the revenue number. You hit the profit number. You’re sitting in the chair you spent a decade building toward, and you still have a pit in your stomach. Nobody at the bank, nobody at the CPA’s office, and nobody on your team is going to ask you about that pit. They’re going to ask you about Q4. I sat down with Matt Altman, co-founder of Sportique, and we never once talked about the mechanics. We went somewhere else. Matt’s framing is that your life has revenue (the job, the house, the achievements) and your life has profit (what you actually experience day to day). Plenty of owners are running a deeply unprofitable life on the back of a profitable P&L. We dug into what it took for him to wake up to that, the formula he uses for moving forward (A + DEF × C²), why fixing the calendar is the wrong layer to solve emotional balance at, and why his logo is a buffalo. The buffalo, when a storm hits, runs into it. Every other animal runs away. That image is what this whole conversation is about.
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## Top 10 Takeaways- Your life has revenue and your life has profit, and they are not the same number.
- Revenue is the job, the house, the title. Profit is what you actually feel sitting in the chair.
- You can hit every external goal you set and still run an unprofitable life. The pit in your stomach is the variance report.
- Time balance is external. Emotional balance is internal. Slicing the calendar finer doesn’t fix what’s happening between your ears.
- You can’t control your thoughts. You can choose where you put your attention.
- The gateway back to yourself is your breath, because your breath is the only thing always in the present.
- Awareness plus desire, effort, and focus, multiplied by choice, is the formula for moving anything forward.
- Trust first is courage, not naïveté. Cynicism after one bad deal costs you the next ten good ones.
- Your values shape every hire, every conflict, and every trade-off, so write them on purpose or the culture writes them for you.
- Run into the storm. The owner who faces the hard conversation first gets to clear sky faster than the one who runs from it.
Sound Bites
“I had seen myself with all of this stuff. But I still was feeling the way I was feeling, which was a pit in my stomach, having anxiety, you know, not confident in things of that nature.” (@TBD) — Matt Altman
“When you look at yourself over a period of time, like what is that profit? Because again, you can make millions and millions of dollars, but then be super depressed and not happy. Well, then you’re running a deficit business when it comes to your life.” (@TBD) — Matt Altman
“The further we are away from self, from our own humanity, we can then justify a war. We can justify killing somebody.” (@TBD) — Matt Altman
“When the buffalo, when a storm comes, the buffalo runs into the storm. The genius and wisdom behind running into the storm is you get to the other side faster.” (@TBD) — Matt Altman
“We as leaders have to show up in our view on the future, our goals, and our approach to handling those goals. We are the linchpin that changes the trajectory of energy throughout our team.” (@TBD) — Ryan Tansom
About This Episode
Matt Altman is the co-founder and CEO of Sportique, a global lifestyle apparel brand he started in 2006 after more than a decade as Director of Merchandise for the Phoenix Suns, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Arizona Coyotes. Sportique has outfitted more than 5 million people and works with brands like the NBA, Nintendo, Trek, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Warner Brothers, and the Dave Matthews Band. Matt also serves on the board of the Prem Rawat Foundation and is active in EO. This is a mindset conversation, not a mechanics conversation. Ryan and Matt were introduced through Vistage and bonded immediately on the question of what business is actually for once you’ve already built one.
Resources Mentioned
- Sportique — Matt’s apparel company. — sportiqe.com
- Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia — The book Ryan keeps coming back to that frames stakeholder integration
- Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy — Matt’s reference for how he started solving the inner work
- Dr. Andrew Huberman — Referenced for the two-inhale, one-exhale physiological sigh breathing technique
- Sam Harris’s Waking Up app — Ryan’s reference for meditation practice
- TM.org (Transcendental Meditation) — Ryan’s daily practice for the last three years
- Ali Nasir — The Business Owner’s Dilemma — Referenced for the concept of ROE (return on experience)
- EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization) — Matt serves on the local board
Connections
Phase + Module:
- Module 7 — Leadership Team — Culture and values as the operating layer underneath any team you build
- Module 1 — Ownership Goals — The owner-level question Matt is really asking: what is this all for
Milestones:
- Milestone 19 — Functional Leaders — The leadership team you build is downstream of who you are in the seat
Concepts referenced:
- 168-hour constraint — Matt’s distinction between external balance (calendar) and internal balance (emotional state)
- Noble Aim — The values-first approach to building Sportique’s culture
- The Owner-Operator Trap™ — When the business gives you everything you wanted and you still feel the pit
- iBD North Star™ — The vision for the life behind the business, not just the business itself