Tampa Bay Staffing Success: Matt Becker’s PrideStaff Transparency Strategy

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Matt Becker, strategic partner and franchise owner with PrideStat. The franchise or was founded in 1978 and is based in Fresno, California. They are a staffing and recruiting firm that focuses on providing exceptional client experiences across multiple industries. By connecting businesses with top talent nationwide, their mission is to consistently deliver what clients value most.

They’ve earned widespread recognition, including the prestigious Best of Staffing award from Clearly Rated. Matt is the owner of the Tampa Bay franchise and has been instrumental in helping Tampa Bay businesses navigate a challenging talent market by leveraging local market data and proven recruitment strategies. He holds a BA in political theory and constitutional democracy from Michigan State University with previous roles as COO for the 2012 Tampa Bay Host Committee and vice president of private banking at Regions Financial Corporation.

Matt brings a wealth of experience and leadership to PrideStat. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. Alright, back to our guest today, strategic partner and franchise owner of PrideStat, Matt Becker. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Matt Becker : Hey, thank you for the invitation. I’m looking forward to this.

Anthony Codispoti : So Matt, you actually had a number of civic and government related jobs in your career before becoming a business owner. What attracted you to that type of work?

Matt Becker : The competition, the personal interaction that you have in politics and public policy. I think having an ability to shape what our world looks like, having the ability to really have an influence in who’s representing us and what they’re doing and what direction we go. Back in the early 2000s, late 90s, when I was really heavily into it, it was a fun place to be. It’s someplace where I tell anybody, if you’re just graduating college, it is a great start to your career because you get exposed to so many different things.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m looking at one position in particular, deputy chief of staff and White House liaison for the U.S. Small Business Administration. What was that role like? What were you doing there?

Matt Becker : So it’s a two-pronged role. The White House liaison role traditionally within any administration, doesn’t matter, Republican, Democrat, it doesn’t really matter. You’re a conduit to the White House and their agenda. Whatever that policy agenda may be, whatever agency you’re in, that’s part of it. But the other part of it is really hiring people within the administration to join the SBA. So you’re going to work with White House staff, you’re going to work with outside groups, you’re going to try and find the best people you can to represent the administration’s efforts within the agency, in my case, the SBA, so that we can push the president’s agenda forward. On the deputy chief of staff side, it’s what you would generally think. It’s program management, it’s oversight, it’s looking for improvements, it’s trying to hit your deadlines on deliverables. So if there’s a management side and a recruiting side, when you think a White House liaison and deputy chief of staff.

Anthony Codispoti : And I’m guessing that recruiting experience at the SBA is probably very valuable to you once you would go on to eventually start your own staffing business.

Matt Becker : You know, jumping ahead, when my wife and I finally made a decision that said, all right, we want to stay in Tampa Bay permanently, what are we going to do? The downside of the Tampa Bay market for somebody like me is there’s not a lot of people, there’s not a ton of opportunities down here for government affairs, political consulting. I mean, you have a lot of one-offs, one people, or one person shops, excuse me.

So we started to look back at what do we enjoy, what do we like doing? And she was in presidential personnel. So she did the same thing, but she did it from the White House. We both said we enjoyed this piece, but we enjoyed putting people to work and watching their faces light up and feel like they’ve got a jumpstart. And so that’s where we started to move. And that’s really where the pride staff journey started. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : And I want to come back to that in a minute. But I know at one point you kind of left the government work and you went into private sector. You were working in private banking. Tell us about that experience and what you learned there that would later be helpful to you at Pride Staff.

Matt Becker : You know, this one is always challenging to talk about because I don’t want it to be a sob story. But I think from a father-husband perspective, there are times in your life where you have to make a choice. And it says, is it my career or what, you know, where do I prioritize? Is it my family or is it my career?

And in this particular case, my family went out and in the short story behind it is my son was born six weeks early. He had RSV. His lungs were not fully developed.

He was at, he moved from Sibley Hospital to Georgetown in DC because his lungs were not reacting to Shafakhten. He was a mess. He’s fine.

He’s great. He grew up fine. But for the first four or five years of his life, he breathing was a struggle for him until his lungs got fully formed. At the same time, no sooner did we bring him home, my mother-in-law was re-diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. And so dealing with the leukemia from the mother that, or my mother-in-law, excuse me, my son’s illness, the pressure of being dealing with hurricanes, Katrina, Rita and Wilma, truthfully, we made a knee-jerk reaction. It was my wife needed to be home with her mom and her dad and her brother. My son needed to be outside of DC where we could care for him better because the hours and the pressure wouldn’t be so bad.

So my choice at that point is how do I get from DC to the Tampa Bay area as fast as possible? So there was no thought behind it. There was no strategy of, hey, I really love banking.

I want it, it was just how do I get from point A to point B and make it work? Why specifically Tampa? She grew up, sorry, she grew up in the Clearwater area. So her family is right here in the Clearwater area. So we wanted to come back so that she could help both with her mom, but then also have more time. She could be a stay-in-home mom to help with our son.

Anthony Codispoti : And so I see that you were there for about five years at the bank. And then the opportunity- Can you add visible to that?

Matt Becker : I mean, because you really think about it, you got the recession, you got the TARP funds. I mean, if you want to pick a bad time to get into banking, I chose the best bad time to get in.

Anthony Codispoti : Recession everyone’s familiar with, explain TARP funds.

Matt Becker : So that was when they did the bank bailouts because the banks were really failing. And so what banks were trying to do, you had layoffs throughout the banking industry, because all banks were losing money on all their real estate investments, and now all of a sudden they had to find other ways to generate revenue or cut expenses.

And so even with what we were doing in private banking, your calling loans, you’re trying to keep ahead of your sales targets, because you could be the next person laid off tomorrow. And so for that stretch from 06 to 2009-10, it was just a fist fight. I mean, that’s really all it was.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, it doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but as a dad, as a husband, and as a son-in-law, you stepped up, put your family first, and you did what you had to do for five challenging years, and then a new opportunity comes about. You’re the chief operating officer, then at the 2012 Tampa Bay Host Committee. That sounds like kind of a big undertaking. Tell me about this. What was your role there?

Matt Becker : It was huge. So there’s two sides to any convention. And again, Republican and Democrat doesn’t really matter, in part because of federal election rules. And without going too deep into the federal election rules, the host committee, which is what I was part of, represents the community. So we are nonpartisan. We don’t care who the nominee is.

We don’t care what the message is. That has nothing to do with the host committee. But we put on almost all the events. We’re responsible for paying for the staging. We’re responsible for the welcome event. There’s a lot of stuff that is considered nonpolitical that the host committee does.

And the local economy for our community, in this case, Tampa Bay, the other side of it is the political side of it. And they obviously do care who the nominee is, and they do care what the message is. And they work on that stuff. But we’re really the funding source behind it to make the convention go.

And it is a huge undertaking. But I will also say, as much as I’ve enjoyed Pride staff, and as fun as it is, I never have enjoyed a job more than that one. What was so fun about it? The challenge. It was the people you meet, the things you see, and the conversations you’re in, like you’re sitting with the Secret Service, seeing how they work, and seeing what worries them, and things that you just never, and even in my business life today, you just sitting there going, I never in a million years would have thought of that.

But now that you mentioned it, I get a perfect idea. Like they’re looking at when the nominee is in, in our case, the Emily Arena, speaking, you know, they’re doing math to figure out if an IED is going to blow up, what is sort of the radius they need to be out of? Well, that’s not my everyday vernacular, but for them, it has to be. And it’s just fascinating to see how they work and how good they are at it.

Anthony Codispoti : Now, taking on a role like this, obviously, you know that there’s a life cycle to it, right? Because once the event takes place, there’s probably a little bit of wrap up, but then, you know, this isn’t an ongoing role. So you kind of, I’m assuming, went into it understanding that, right? And so what’s the thought process as this is wrapping up? And, you know, you need to look for the next thing.

Matt Becker : Yep, that’s exactly right. So a large part of why I took it was I figured, okay, this gets me out of banking, I couldn’t really find that lever. And it was a bad time. Even then, I mean, yes, we were coming out of the recession. Yes, things are getting better. But my background still is not conducive to finding great roles here in Tampa Bay Markets.

There’s just not a ton of them. So the thought process was go back in, we broaden the network that we know in Tampa Bay. We also reconnect with people in DC. And then when it’s all said and done, we can sort of then, as a family, make a decision, okay, what, you know, what is the best course? Is it going back into DC?

Is it staying here local? Like, what do we want to do? But for me, I felt like it was the best place to really broaden the network to figure out what could I do in Tampa Bay? And do I want to get back into DC?

Anthony Codispoti : You know, I want to rewind for a second, though, because I’m thinking back to the five years that you did in private banking. And obviously, it was clear that this was not something from a professional standpoint that you wanted to do. It wasn’t a passion. This wasn’t, you know, the chosen path.

It was, it was a necessity, you know, born out of families. And it’s one thing to sit here and say it was a tough five years. But I’m kind of curious to, you know, pull back the curtain a little bit. And like, how did you really slog through that? You know, it’s tough when every day you’re getting out of bed, and you’re like, I hate what I do. You know, I’m not looking forward to this. This is, I want to be somewhere else, but I’ve got to show up. Like, like, how did you push yourself through that?

Matt Becker : You, an argument, not really an argument, a discussion my wife and I have really have frequently, and especially with our kids. Education is important. You know, getting good grades important would not shy away from it. But, but what I’ve always told her an answer to that similar question is I grew up as a swimmer and a water polo player. And I think athletics more than anything else has what drove you through that. There is no quit.

There is no stopping. If you want to be good at your sport, you have to, you have to show up every day and get it done. And I think the argument I’ve always had with my wife is yes, academics extremely important.

But I will also say what we did athletically will match academics because of the willpower it instills in you and the discipline it instills in you, because you’re right. I hated going to work and I was terrified because I’m watching, you know, our private bank members are, you know, the staff dwindle because they’re laying people off and, especially for the guy with no experience who just showed up in the market and knows nobody or anything about banking. I’m waiting for that shoe to drop on me when I’ve got, you know, a two year old and then in 2008 a second child. It was one of those things where the willpower said you can’t quit. You cannot stop. You have to keep pushing. And that more than anything else drove me is my back was against a wall.

Anthony Codispoti : Interesting that you mentioned sports. This comes up in a lot of my interviews, you know, and I wonder was the competitive spirit there before sports? Or do you think that sports and competing and swimming and water polo really helped to fuel that inside of you?

Matt Becker : I think having an older brother beat up on you when you were like four and five really got you to go like, no, we’re going to get after this bud.

No, I think both really, I think it was there. I think it got further refined and further developed as you go through the process and you see your hard work pay off or you start to see people that you don’t think work as hard as you were. You don’t like that may beat you that you’re like, that’s not happening again. Like we need to redouble our efforts and get after it.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m curious how and I guess if you’ve been able to instill a similar sense of competitiveness in your kids, you know, your one son, I know had breathing issues. I don’t know if that continued to be kind of a factor or maybe limited some of the things that he might have been able to do in competition. What do you say to that?

Matt Becker : Mixed results, honestly, my son, the good news about my son is the doctors basically said he was going to have breathing issues until about kindergarten. They said somewhere in that four to five year old range, his lungs will sort of match the maturity.

It’ll just take that long to get there and his breathing issues will evaporate and that is exactly what happened. Once we got past kindergarten, he was just not that he was not a normal kid before that. He was just subject to asthma attacks is really what it was. But he was fine.

He played competitive basketball and I think the thing that I’m most proud about him, his work ethic was relentless and I think he really took that and he just made himself the best he could be with the talents that he has. My daughter is different. She’s a swimmer. She’s competitive when she wants to be. She’s a little bit more competitive on the academic side, like she gets really on herself if she doesn’t get the grade she thinks she should have. The athletic side, I haven’t figured her out per se yet because there’s days she’s like, oh well. And then the next day she’s like, we’re going to drop some time today and she goes and does it. So it mixed back.

Anthony Codispoti : It seems to me, my kids are younger, nine and 10 at the moment. At least at this stage, it seems to me like when I sort of try to push that, come on, let’s refine, let’s practice, let’s get better. I mean a lot of resistance and it becomes less fun for them and they sort of shy away. But when it comes from inside of themselves, that’s when, there’s the real inertia, the forward momentum that like, I’m going to do this, I’m going to figure it out.

Matt Becker : Well, the only job I’ve ever been fired from and frankly, now that I’ve mentioned this, I can’t sure this podcast should get mad at me. But the only job I’ve ever been fired from is when I was an assistant swim coach coaching her and she finally came up to me one day and said, you’re done. She was an eighth grade and she goes, I want to be a regular kid. You need to exit the deck. Yes, ma’am. And we’re gone.

Anthony Codispoti : All right. So you’re echoing what I’m saying here with my experiences have been. All right. So let’s move back to Pride staff. So the opportunity with the host committee there in Tampa Bay that was wrapping up and you had already mentioned that you and your wife had kind of done a little bit of soul searching. Okay, what from our past have we really enjoyed kind of doing? And it’s like, yeah, we really enjoy putting people to work.

All right. So at this point, was there a thought of maybe we just start our own staffing agency or let’s interview some different franchisors? Like kind of what was the thought process that kind of led you to the Pride staff opportunity?

Matt Becker : You know, fortunately or unfortunately, because I think it worked out best in the end is there was another business deal that I was working on prior to starting brought Pride staff that literally fell through at the 11th hour. It was one of those things where the business manager decided, I’m not selling. And it was we I mean, we were down to starting to renegotiate leases that it was more or less done deal and they just went, no. And so at that point, I sort of back to Wayne Center at what’s next.

And I was blessed. I had a friend introduce me to a franchise broker here in the area and they quit five franchises in front of me in Pride staff being one of them. So I can’t really say that we went into it saying, Hey, let’s do staffing.

It was only after that deal fell apart. And we sat down with the franchise broker that we went, Okay, what are we going to be good at? What do we want to do?

What, you know, what is going to interest us? Because the thing for me is I didn’t want to do something just to do something. I wanted to do something that would drive my interest and drive my learning and drive my sense of accomplishment, not from a financial standpoint, but when I lay my head on the pillow at night, I go, I did something to help this community get better. That has always driven me and that’s sort of back to my political interests. It’s I like thinking that we’re doing something that is benefiting society.

Anthony Codispoti : And so the five, you know, you get five sort of franchises put in front of you, were they all in the staffing space?

Matt Becker : No, price. The only one the other there is, we’re going back now 11 years, but I’m a business consulting slash business coaching were the vast majority. I had an older, you know, like a gym concept that focused on elderly people, which is a great concept here in Florida. And then there was a window cleaning business that I was like, yeah, we’re no.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, so, right staff staffing that intrigued you the most. Tell us about the kinds of staffing services that you provide. Are these temporary? Are these direct hire? What kinds of industries are you kind of specializing in?

Matt Becker : Yep. So pride staff will work the gamma from temporary temp tire to direct tire. I will say that I have modified that slightly from my market just because of what my strengths and my interests are. I very rarely do temporary projects. It’s generally with a good client who may have a need. I will help there. But generally speaking, I am on the temp to hire and direct hire side.

And what I like to say is I’m not a staffing firm, I’m an employment firm. I’m not looking to just put people and then try and redeploy them later. I want them to have stability. I want my candidates to have growth in a perfect world. I want to lose revenue because we did such a good job.

They don’t need a second person to replace. And then the challenge for me then is I got to keep finding new clients to keep that revenue up. But that is ultimately where we like to go in part because where my wife and I both enjoyed is we love the comments or we love the feedback. When we hear from somebody who’s been at a job that we placed them at six, seven, eight years later going, this has been the best job of my life. You change the scope or the trajectory of my life. That’s what makes us feel good.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, it would seem to me that and tell me if I’m right or wrong here, Matt, but it would seem to me that doing more of those direct placements is probably a better margin. But you don’t have the consistency that you would with the temporary staff. Hey, you placed five workers here, 10 workers there. Even if those employees are sort of turning over, you’re finding new folks to continue those roles because your client, that employer needs that ongoing continuity of that work. So I’m kind of curious, moving away from the consistency of that model over here where you constantly have to find new clients. What is your process for that? What have you found to be sort of the most effective ways to meet new clients on a regular basis to kind of keep your sales funnel full?

Matt Becker : Really, it’s been partially a big factor of it is networking. It’s being involved in the community. It’s meeting new people. It’s just become easier when Sally or Jim next door goes, oh, I know Bob’s hiring and they make an introduction. It becomes a much easier sales process. But to keep the overall pipeline full, what I’ve really turned to is a little bit more on the social selling side. I’m very active on LinkedIn. We do a fair amount of social media and pay per click advertising because I think really post COVID, the world changed and especially in the HR space, or even the senior management space, so many people work from home that you’re not getting them on the phone as often when you call.

You’re not getting responses to emails. So you have to find other ways to touch them, which doesn’t mean that those other ways aren’t helpful because somebody may see your pamphlet or they may get the voicemail or you hit the right time. But you have to, in my opinion, we have to increase the bandwidth or the total number of people we’re hitting. The only way I could do that on my own, I thought and think is really through social selling. It’s going to be through social media. It’s going to be through Google pay per click.

Anthony Codispoti : And you find people are really engaging with that.

Matt Becker : Yeah, actually, it’s been it’s been fascinating and bluntly the other thing that’s really where my newsletter started. Trying because it was the newsletter is a two for me. On one hand, I can get it out to a large number of people to sort of see what the data is and that begs questions and that brings interaction. But then the second part is I can now email it out to prospects who may not have seen it or clients who may be slow to hire and try and nudge them along gently with here’s what the real hiring market looks like. So the newsletter really helps me in two ways. It helps me with the existing but also helps me attracting new.

Anthony Codispoti : So the newsletter is part of what allows you to collect and analyze kind of local market intelligence. Is that right? Correct. Say more about that. Like how did it start? Like and how is it working now?

Matt Becker : So the whole start behind it is once we all went into COVID, everybody really became a lot more myoptic or at least I in terms of my clientele, because my clientele is generally small to mid-sized businesses. So they’re privately held.

You’re going to have an owner or you might have an HR staff, but they all know their business or their industry and they just don’t know Tampa Bay or they don’t know the national trends because they just got very focused on their business and especially during COVID when everybody went home, it became a struggle to get some people hiring even as we came back because they were working off of yesterday’s info or last year’s ideology and it just didn’t work. And so this was sort of my way of saying I want to take actual sources. I don’t want to do new sources. So you very rarely will see me put NBC or Fox or CNN. What you’ll see is conference board Brookings, BLS. You’re going to see the actual sources so that when the client or the prospect sees it, it’s not Matt Becker from Pride staff saying, hey pal, hustle it up, you’re going to lose this best prospect. It’s going to be somebody that is really well thought of within the market saying here’s what’s actually happening and Pride staff brought you this information.

Anthony Codispoti : Interesting. And so can you tell us how many subscribers you have or is that even relevant to what you’re doing?

Matt Becker : So right now I looked it up. It’s just about 1200 subscribers is what I have on it, give or take. But what I like about it is for me, my open rate so far has been generally between 45 and 50%.

So I know that I’m getting a good open rate. So people are seeing the information and one of the things I love to say is I got a call out of the blue and this is now maybe two years old, but it was a recruiter out of London who had seen my newsletter and was calling me to go, hey, I want to talk more about the United States market because I’m thinking about coming in. And so I know the reach that I’m getting is significant and that those conversations are great because the other part to it is how I put the newsletter together is through a lot of those conversations or the conversations we have with candidates. You start to see trends.

I know, generally speaking, what is interesting to most business owners or hiring managers and then I try and go find the data that is going to help them better understand what is actually happening based on that trend.

Anthony Codispoti : Matt, let’s talk for a second about Pride staff itself. What makes this franchise particularly helpful to the franchisees?

Matt Becker : So for me, the defining moment where I get along really well with Pride staff is transparency. When we started in the process, they told me what they were going to do, how they were going to do it, when they were going to do it, how long it would take and I’ll be darned if they didn’t find just do that to a tee.

I mean, it was like clockwork. It was perfect and that transparency is what really attracted me to Pride staff. Yes, the hiring and it hit what my wife and I enjoyed, but that transparency is really what put us over the top and I think that has never stopped. George Rogers, who was the founder who has since passed, he could sell ice to Eskimos but he had a personality that really drew you in. So when we did our discovery day, getting to know George and seeing the loyalty he built within his own staff, where people had been there for 20 and 30 years, it really set Pride staff apart from the other franchises that we had talked about or talked to. There was a great back office strength that they had. So as somebody getting into the industry, yes, I know how to hire, yes, I know how to recruit, but yet on the other hand, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that you just don’t know. I felt very comfortable making that move and it was that trust built through transparency in my opinion.

Anthony Codispoti : And so as I understand it, we talked in the intro about, you have the franchise in Tampa Bay, but you actually have two franchises, is that right?

Matt Becker : That is correct. I’ve got one in Clearwater and I’ve got one in Tampa. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : And they’re just sort of right across the bridge from each other so that… Yep.

Matt Becker : So essentially, I mean, I’m 30 minutes from everywhere within the Tampa Bay market for the most part. So they’re probably a little closer together than what I like, but on the other hand, the joy of being a business owner is I didn’t want to make my commute that far, so I get to choose.

Anthony Codispoti : And so what does it look like for you to be active in the community? Like, I don’t know, you go into the chamber meetings, are you, tell me, like, how are you, how are you meeting folks out there?

Matt Becker : So currently, I chair the YMCA of the Sun Coast, which is a collection of Six Wives as we go up through Pinellas Pasco, Hernando and Citrus Counties. I sit on the board of the Y State Alliance. So the YMCA is something I’m very passionate about and in part youth and sports and development and providing that next generation, the leadership for the next generation to come up.

I think the YMCA is an absolute fabulous place for it. And so I’ve invested a lot of time and effort there. But previously, I was part of the Clearwater Downtown Partnership. I’ve been part of Chambers. You know, I’m involved with Relia Questball as a member, a patron, whatever you want to say. I try and get involved in various activities where I can meet a large number of people, but also involved in activities that mean something to me. Excuse me.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, Matt, so I understand from having talked with lots of folks at the staffing industry, I mean, like any industry has seen its ups and downs, right? It goes through sort of different cycles. Kind of curious to hear how you manage that uncertainty.

Matt Becker : You know, the beauty of it is you get used to it in government. You never know what your day’s going to be like. You never know when you think you’re going in that direction and then something happens in the world and all of a sudden you made a hard left turn and you’re going in a different direction. Staffing really isn’t much different. We are the consummate middleman. I can’t control the candidate and I can’t control the client. All I can do is control my activities and how I respond to both sides. So that uncertainty is just part and parcel of being in the industry. And so I think you just have to grow accustomed to it and stay committed and stay focused and stay diligent and stay consistent in all your activities and eventually through just sheer volume of numbers, it’ll work itself out. But if I get too caught up in one client or one candidate and have that roller coaster of emotions, we’re just not going to do well in the staffing industry. You really have to build that. I’m focused on what I can do and what I can control and how I handle it.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, earlier in the interview, we were talking about how you and your wife had this conversation. Hey, what, you know, do we enjoy? What might we want to get into? Is she involved in the business with you?

Matt Becker : She is. It originally the original start processes, she wasn’t. But then once both kids got into school, she was like, you know what, I want to get back into this.

I want to do something. And so really, we split the business now. She will do much of the hiring with our internal staff. She’ll lead the hiring and the candidate development. I am out on the marketing and business development and community relations side.

So it’s very helpful to me, especially with two offices that we can sort of divide and conquer. How would you describe your superpower? You know, I don’t know that I have one.

I mean, I think, you know, you talk to my mom, she’s probably saying that, you know, no brain, no pain. I just don’t, I just keep trucking along. I think that may be it is I don’t really react to the ups and downs. I think I can stay pretty emotionally stable, which allows me to make good decisions that are not emotionally based. I can make strategic decisions because I’m not letting emotion dictate what I think is right or wrong. I’m trying to let the data, I’m trying to let, you know, the things that matter most to me, which is going to be transparency within my own office and how I treat people. That’s really where I go. So if I had to say something, it’s that emotional stability.

Anthony Codispoti : Steady Eddie, Mr. Ewing-Keele. Yeah. How about your wife? How would you describe her superpower?

Matt Becker : She’s a private investigator in waiting. She is very, very good at being very detail oriented and really uncovering who is good at this type of role by digging deep through the interview process. She is exceptionally good at that because her where we compliment each other is I’m more of the 30,000 foot view and she’s at the zero foot view. And that really works because when I find that order and I bring it back and she starts working or the team starts working, she’s so focused on the detail of what they want. We do a really nice job on that attempt to hire a side of finding the right people and moving forward on the direct hire side as well. But most of our business is tempted to hire. That is where we work very well together because she can pull that 30,000 say here’s how it’s going to work.

Anthony Codispoti : Matt, my favorite question to ask in these interviews is to kind of go a little deep into serious challenge that you’ve overcome, whether it’s personal or professional, how you got through it, what you learn. We’ve already touched on some things for sure. We can kind of go a little bit deeper into one of those or maybe you’ve got something else in mind that you want to discuss.

Matt Becker : You know, I think that that that region’s bank experience, I mean, the bank is fine. So I don’t want to disparage or think I’m disparaging the bank. It was really the timing of that, you know, getting into the industry, the timing of what was going on in my personal life that sort of led into it. I still got great friends.

Some of my best friends were built from those times of regions. So it just it banking was not for me. And I think to me when I look back, that was my sort of defining moment because life through your curveball, no matter how much you want to plan and strategize where my life’s going. At some point in time, you have to make a choice of what matters the most to you. And in that case, it was my wife and my child.

And I don’t regret it, but it also led to a good five years of pain, as you said. And I think the stamina to keep going proved something to me that when you started this business, it was tough getting pride staff from zero up to where we’re at now. But I relied back on all those experiences of you made it in banking where you knew nothing and survived, you will do the exact same thing here and you will apply the exact same principles, which is really transparency, consistency, hard work, good personality and keeping your mind open to new opportunities. How do I market? How do I improve? You know, what relations do I need to build to make this successful?

Anthony Codispoti : And how old were you when you first started that position at the bank?

Matt Becker : If I’m going to think about that, I’m going to say 32.

Anthony Codispoti : Well, no, I’m still relatively young, but okay, still relatively young, but difficult to make that kind of a switch from work that you had loved and sort of the civic and the government, you know, space to this is something I just got to do. And, you know, when you’re sort of in the slog of that five years in those moments, not knowing exactly how long that’s going to last, you know, I think, and I’m curious to hear if this has been true for you. I think a lot of times, you know, as human beings, we sort of get in our minds like, Oh, this is just my crappy reality forever. You know, like, I’m just going to be, you know, trudging along for the rest of my life, rather than like, Hey, this is a hard thing that I need to go through for now, because of the circumstances. And what can I learn?

You know, I this is what I find when I can sort of turn it around and be curious, like, what can I learn from this hard time now that’s going to set me up better for success down the road?

Matt Becker : It’s funny you mentioned that because I’ve got a son who’s going into a sophomore year at Michigan State. And as we sort of briefly touched on, you know, what is Michigan State football going to look like? And in his mind, he’s like Michigan State football is going to be awful for the rest of my life.

It’s going to be miserable. What I’ve really been working on with him, because it really worked and helped with me is you have to be looking at the light at the end of the song. You have to be thinking, I have to learn from this, I have to take from this, and I have to build from this, because I’m not going to allow this to define me. And I’m not going to allow this situation to go on indefinitely. I will deal with it for as long as I have to. But I am always looking for ways to improve or looking for ways to get a better situation for me and my family as opposed to just sitting back on, ah, we’re awful. You know, it is what it is. So really working with him to change that perspective of, no, no, you’ve got to look at the bright, you have to look at the glasses half full, especially if you want to go into sales or business development, the glass always has to be half full.

Or that glass empties out real quick. And so there’s been a lot of work on him, because that’s sort of his mindset and his default. I’ve been different. I’m always a glass half full guy. This is my time for today. It’ll be better tomorrow.

Anthony Codispoti : Have you always been a glass half full kind of a guy, or did you have to develop that? I think I’ve always had it.

Matt Becker : I think I’ve always sort of approached is tomorrow will be better. And I don’t know why I just think that’s just how it’s made.

Anthony Codispoti : And as someone now who’s trying to, you know, coach their young adult son into a similar mindset, do you have any advice for folks who are sort of not naturally wired the way that you are? Like, how can I develop that perspective? How can I strengthen that muscle?

Matt Becker : I think it’s back to consistency. I think it’s it’s and it’s looking for the positive as opposed to the negative. I think in today’s world, and I think the the decided advantage I have over my son is the fact that we didn’t have social media. We didn’t have phones locked into our hands.

We didn’t, you know, you can just sit there. And I think the new term is doom scrolling, like, oh, the markets tariffs are going to destroy it. And all of a sudden, you start believing everything you see.

And I think part of where I was able to develop that skill was really, I didn’t have that when I started my professional career, and we’re making jumps and making decisions. What was it? I said Twitter, I think it was Twitter. The 2012 election or the 2012 convention was the first convention that had Twitter. So you think that before 2012, we didn’t have all this instant information. And I think that was really helpful because you can meet somebody, you can see stuff on the news, and you think, this is just passing, it’ll get better.

Whereas today, it’s just every day, you’re getting reinforced messages of doom and gloom as opposed to, hey, it’s going to get better. And I think that’s a decided advantage I have.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, and it’s sort of, there’s two parts of that social media, right? You get the doom scrolling, the doom and the gloom, right? Because what leads, it leads. But then you also get people that are showing sort of the very polished, sexy side of their lives, right? And wow, look at that person, you know, it looks like everything comes so easy to them. They’ve got this big house, this fancy car, beautiful vacations. And then you don’t see like the day before, they were sucking them thumb, like crying in the bathroom because something that happened. We don’t get sort of like the real view into what people’s lives are actually like.

Matt Becker : Absolutely. Just recently, we were at an event, and we were talking to a couple who are great friends of ours, and they had gone on this great vacation down in South America and so on and so forth. And I was like, those photos are incredible. You did this, you did that. And the wife looked at the husband and she goes, yeah, but she didn’t post this about getting mugged, did you?

Anthony Codispoti : Which just proves the point. Perfect example. Yeah, thank you for that. Matt, are there any daily practices for you? You’ve talked a lot about consistency, you know, for some folks, it’s exercise or meditation or prayer, like things that kind of get you started in the right direction, keep you centered, keep you going in the right way.

Matt Becker : So first and foremost, I generally, to and from work, I like listening to podcasts. And oftentimes it’s staffing podcasts. If there’s days where I’m really frustrated or I just I want to tune out the world. This is probably the crazy side of me. But what’s it called spy true spies.

And it’s really stories of espionage of like how in World War Two, you know, United States was able to figure out this or Robert Hansen was one that they did, you know, how he was caught. I love that. I absolutely love that. So there are times, depending on my mood, where I get off the staffing podcasts and do some more entertainment or just fascinating ones. Those those are things that I do mostly. But then the other part is I found where maybe I’m a little bit different. I so many times here, I get up before a time and I start working out and then I meditate. I don’t do well at four in the morning.

I found this kind of holder that is not my that’s not my thing. But after I get home from work, I do exercise virtually every day. And it’s partially to let everything settle in my mind. It allows me to exert some energy. I generally find that I’m much more emotionally stable. Just because I’m able to work out and burn and sweat. And, you know, even in my head, start yelling at people. And that helps me sleep better at night, which I think helps, you know, keep that emotional stability. So yeah, you can generally find me after work and even after a community event, doing some type of physical activity.

Anthony Codispoti : I think the physical exertion is a big one. But I love what you said about the True Spies podcast, because I think you and I are probably wired somewhat similarly in that I’m always looking for, you know, how do I improve myself? You know, how can I learn something new?

How can I, you know, keep sort of pushing the boundaries? And but there’s a lot of value to just letting your brain kind of turn off and go in a different channel, you know, so for you, it’s True Spies. For me, I like getting lost in like a Netflix series or something that maybe it’s based on a true story. Maybe it’s just a like fun, like, I don’t know, just like just a story to tell because it allows my brain to shut off over here and just go over here for a minute. And then when I come back here, this site is refreshed and it’s ready and it’s recharged. Do you find the same thing?

Matt Becker : I couldn’t have said it any better. That is exactly how I feel.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. When you think about how you build your own internal team, what are some things that you’ve tried and found success with to recruit good folks? And then when you find them to hold on to them?

Matt Becker : One, you have to identify what’s most important to them. I think one of the things and it does change and I get it. If you’re in the big multinational corporation, your hands are somewhat tied because you’ve got policies and procedures and you don’t want to discriminate and I get it. And the smaller businesses have a little bit more flexibility where I can look at is it leave, is it raises, is it bonuses, is it lunches, what is it, what lever can I pull to really try and keep that person engaged if I really like them and want to keep them. And obviously, especially in today’s market, money is still king.

There’s just no way stands or butts about it. But there are other things that make people feel good within the office and it’s just really identifying who that is. But then I think the other part to it is when we’re going through the interview process, I’m looking less at skill, because I think a lot of that is a function of will. I mean, short of being, we’ll call it a nuclear engineer or brain surgeon, most of the things that we do in any type of environment really comes down to a function of will. Do you want to be good at it? Are you going to put the work in to be good at it?

And if I think you have that will and I think you have the right personality and you fit with us, I’m going to give you a chance because that to me is more important than knowing if you’ve had 15 years of recruiting experience, because anybody can do that. And I don’t want to lessen the load. I think you can learn that skill if you want to be good at it. And so for me, it’s looking at how do we mesh? Do you mesh with the team? And do you have that function of will?

Anthony Codispoti : How are you able to, as best as you can ascertain that during the interview, during the hiring process? Do you have specific questions you’d like to lean on or that are, I don’t know, simple tests that you put people through?

Matt Becker : Bluntly, I think it’s similar to the question you’ve asked me here today, which is, you know, tell me about time you’ve struggled. Like, tell me what matters to you. Tell me, you know, you get into this role, what do you want to accomplish?

What do you want to do? And then generally speaking, those people start to shine out after some of those questions, where they come in and they go, I want to be good at this and hear things I’m doing. Or the other thing I really like, which is a lost art and forgive me, most of mine are entry level to mid level people. So, so when I say this, there are probably some executive recruiters going, I see it all the time, but that’s not my, my, my pad or the people I deal with. They don’t do a lot of research. So when people really walk in and say, I want this job, because I know you did X, Y and Z, or I want to help people do whatever it is when I know that they’ve done some homework, that is a very telling sign. And unfortunately for especially those recent college graduates, you know, you just don’t see it as much as you used to. All you get now is, I’ll do anything, like I’ll just, I just want to be employed. And that’s just not good enough, because now we really have to, we have to dig. But usually it starts to show itself out through, through the interview process, especially when you start to ask them, tell me about you. I don’t want to hear what you have done or what I want to know about you and where you’re going.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s interesting. I like that. You know, in my experience, Matt, sometimes our biggest mistakes end up becoming our greatest teachers down the road, or what we perceive as our mistakes at the time. Curious if you can think of a moment in your career, whether at Pride staff or before, that seemed like a setback to you at the time. But when you look back on that, you’re like, oh no, that actually propelled me forward.

Matt Becker : You know, I think when I first opened, you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think getting my wife sort of came into the business because I had to unfortunately let the first two people I hired, unfortunately had to let go. One was just not the fit for our business.

The other one was not probably the best hire I just completely wrong. And so at that point, she wanted to get back to work and she went, I’m coming in. And I think for the first six months, we really struggled in the business. And then once she and I found her footing, all of a sudden, you almost see the light switch go on and you start to see us grow and you start to see it get easier and you start to see it build. But when you’re in that process of, oh, I got to let these two people go, you feel awful about it. You think, did I make the right decision? Should I keep this open? What should I be doing? And then you make that right call, which in my case, thankfully is a wife who supported all my crazy ideas, who jumps in and says, we’re going to make this work. And she did.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I love that story because and I was just talking with this, that somebody yesterday and this idea of, you know, sometimes in life, it feels like we’re just swimming upstream. And like, man, is that hard work. I mean, you’ve come from a swimming background, right? Your daughter as well, like, imagine swimming up a river is so hard.

And then when things start to click, and then all of a sudden, you notice you’re turned around and you’re floating with the river. And it’s sort of what I envisioned there as you were talking about bringing your wife in like, you know, a lot of second guessing, a lot of doubts, like, and I’m curious, you know, when that happened, like, what was it specifically that she was able to come in and do differently that affected such big change?

Matt Becker : She took responsibility. I mean, it’s our business. It was our money. It’s, you know, it’s us. But but when she came in, it was, I am going to find the right people and I am going to outwork the original people in partially my own fault because I didn’t know what I didn’t know. They were waiting for me to direct, they were waiting for me to lead. And when you’re trying to do the business side of things, as well as get the recruiting side set up and the paperwork set, you know, to make sure your I nine compliant and all that, it was a very, it was a lot of sit and wait for Matt to figure this out.

When she came in, it really helped us divide and conquer because now I could focus on sales. And I knew that internal back office stuff for us was done. And I didn’t have to worry about it. I didn’t have to think about it.

It was just done and it was done right. That is probably the biggest thing was it was taking that bite out and knowing I had somebody I could trust in that internal or inside office, where everything would be done.

Anthony Codispoti : You could put every single brain cell now on the business development side of things allows you to free up that part of your brain, just think more creatively. And like you said, be a little bit more consistent. That word kept coming up here in our interview, be more consistent with those business development efforts going.

Matt Becker : Absolutely. And the other part too is you kind of had a tether to the office because you knew you had to be back in the office by say two, three in the afternoon, because I don’t know how many interviews they did that day, you had to go back through the on edge, you had to go back through the interview notes, you had to think of who was submitted, you’re like, you had to go through all that the internal mechanisms to make sure your business runs. But the minute that was gone, not that I was off playing golf, but in the sales environment, you know, you might have to do what you got to do. But more often not, you could do the community events, you could do the other sales call, you can make another appointment, you just you just get that much more done on the sales side, which therefore builds your orders, build your pipeline and so on and so forth.

Anthony Codispoti : Where do you and your wife want to take the business? Is it, Hey, we love the market that we’re in, we just want to continue to meet more people help more businesses in local area, do you think about taking on another franchise location or like other services? I don’t know, like, where’s your head on this?

Matt Becker : So we’re the technical term that we’re in is commercial staffing. And staffing in general has really gone downhill since 2022. So I think for us in the Tampa Bay market, because there’s no driving industry here, it’s just it’s really a collection of small businesses that deal in a variety of industries. We want to get back to where we’re to use your example where we’re floating with the stream, because right now we’re swimming back upstream, because the economy is is just something that is hiring is tough. Business owners are hesitant to spend money. Employees who are employed are hesitant to leave employees who are unemployed are desperate for anything they can get and I get it. But trying to make them the right fit is also a challenge. So I think right now more than anything else, we’re waiting for, I wouldn’t say waiting, we’re trying to affect as much opportunity as we can within the economic environment we have. But I’m hopeful that at some point this economic uncertainty unravels staffing gets back to some level of normalcy. And we can really take off again, because as I said, I had one son or I’ve got a son at Michigan State, I’ve got a daughter who is two years away.

So where do we want to take this business to pay for college? Because both of them are like, we want to go out of state, we want to go up somewhere in fall. So I have every expectation my daughter will be out of state as well. So right now it’s how do we get through the next whatever seven years and pay for college?

Anthony Codispoti : Why did your son choose Michigan State?

Matt Becker : In part me, I was rather dumb. And if you are a young father out there, think, if you live out of state, think about this, because I remember when he was like, hey, you know, we surprised him with the Michigan State football game, we took him up to a Michigan State basketball camp. Like I have put into his brain that Michigan State is the best place on earth. And sort of a quick aside, because it’s a story I love, his senior year, we were doing, you know, he’s applying at various places, but he applied to Michigan State, he goes, we’ve never really gone for a big game. And unfortunately for me, before the whole fiasco with Mel Tucker, I had bought Michigan Michigan State tickets. We’re going to Michigan Michigan State and unfortunately, we ended up losing I think 48 to nothing, it was just a debacle of debacles. But while we’re waiting, the band’s coming out and Tyler and I had spent the whole day out in the field or not on the field, but the campus. And my wife is calling me and I finally she goes, did you check your email? I’m like, this game’s about why am I checking my email? Like in my head, I’m thinking what who’s hurt?

What happened to the business? You know, like that. And she’s like, check your email. My son sitting next to me looks he goes, dad, I got in, I’m a Spartan. And I was like, you couldn’t script it any better than that. We’re sitting in Spartan Stadium with 75,000 people. Now, I wish I could have script the game better, but that was just an awesome moment that I’ll never forget.

Anthony Codispoti : Proud alum of Michigan State yourself, proud papa. Yeah, it’s a nice place to kind of get that message. Then I see that. You know, Matt, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, everyone listening today, I’m going to invite you to hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great interview today with Matt Becker from Pride Staff down in Tampa Bay, Florida. And I want you to continue to get more wonderful content like this. Matt, I also want to let people know either the best way to get in touch with you directly or to follow your story. What would that be?

Matt Becker : You know, follow me on LinkedIn. Take a subscribe to my newsletter. It’s free. It’s generating what I try and do is provide good information for hiring managers or business owners to figure out there is a national component to it, but I focus my efforts on Tampa Bay. But like I said, with the London recruiter, I get a lot of feedback or comments or interaction, and I really enjoy that. So it’s Matthew Becker on LinkedIn is the best place to come find me with Pride Staff.

Anthony Codispoti : And where do they find your newsletter? How do they subscribe to that?

Matt Becker : Within, within under your LinkedIn profile, the LinkedIn name, it’ll say, I think subscribe to newsletter or find newsletter, but there’s a button there for the newsletter, and they should be able to click on it and find it from there. Great.

Anthony Codispoti : So last question for you, Matt, you and I have had a nice conversation here today. I hope we stay in touch. Let’s say a year from now, we’re sitting down, you’re celebrating a thing, one thing, something. What is that thing?

Matt Becker : That’s an excellent question, because kind of like my own complaint, I’m so focused on today and how to out, you know, build beyond this economy. I really, I really hope that it just becomes easier. I just hope the economy and the uncertainty has turned itself loose. And we can get back to enjoying life and not being worried about is there a recession? Is there going to be a hiring market collapse?

You know, what is going to happen? I think that getting rid of that economic uncertainty, I hope, is going to be a big driver for the economy and for a lot of people. And if nothing else, I’m hoping that a year from now, we can sort of sit back going, that was a tough two years, but we’re back to doing it. And now I can really start planning more for the future.

Anthony Codispoti : So obviously, none of us have a crystal ball, but, you know, as you’re looking into your make believe crystal ball, what do you think it takes for the economy to make that turn?

Matt Becker : Right now, I would say once they figure out the whole tariffs thing, you know, whether they remove them, whether they come up with agreements, you know, whatever it is, because we saw good start of growth. Like January and February, I was really encouraged. We saw a good opportunity.

The minute the tariffs really started to rear their heads in the media in March is the minute everybody hit the brakes. I went, whoa, because I don’t know if I can spend money on inventory. I don’t know if I’m going to have new orders. I’m not getting as much. We’ve really seen a decline in higher, at least in the Tampa Bay market for us, coming in March. And I think tariffs more than anything else is really driving that ship. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : Hopefully we’ll get some clarity on that here in the coming weeks and months, recording here in early June of 2025. But Matt Becker, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Matt Becker : I very much appreciate the opportunity to tell my story. It’s been fun and probably a little cathartic.

Anthony Codispoti : Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.