Rock your sales team management with Matteo Papaluca from BOOM

The world of sales is not an easy one. With a decade of experience under his belt, Head of Global Sales Matteo Papaluca has learned some tough lessons about sales leadership, time management, and work culture. Now he’s sharing all of them with us.

Matteo takes us through the top three priorities for all managers, the best coaching strategies to use with your sales team, and the importance of celebrating the little wins. Tune in (or read below) to learn why Matteo doesn’t work overtime, how to take back control over your week, and what compassion management can do for your team.

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In the episode “Rock Your Sales Team Management,” we discuss:

• From airlines to startups to BOOM: Matteo’s 10-year journey in sales and what it taught him
• How BOOM helps teams save time and lets them focus on their business
• How Matteo reduced the time he spends in meetings by half: consulting his team, tailoring to the individual, and using productivity tools
• What is compassion management and why is it vital to Matteo?
• Why listening to sales calls is the most effective coaching you can give to your sales team
• The top priorities for all managers: master your hiring, coach the individual to coach the team, and challenge directly but care personally 
• The most crucial aspects to keeping your sales team’s motivation high
• Why Matteo doesn’t work overtime and encourage his team to do the same
• The importance of mental and physical fitness to job performance and work-life balance
• What’s next for Matteo: the impact of recent big life changes, BOOM, startup advising, and starting an international school

Favorite quotes

“We don't want to, in a remote world, you don't want to make boundaries. Okay? You don't want to feel, Matteo is not accessible. You need to do this with compassion and you need to do this in a way where you are always successful.” - Matteo Papaluca

“The people you work with, the right people, will get you to the moon. The bad fits will get you to hell, okay? So it's very, very important that you find what works for you and for your company.” - Matteo Papaluca

“You need to challenge directly, but you really need to care personally. So there is no team, there is no management if you're not fully, fully dedicated to get to know each other. To get to know the person you have in front of you.” - Matteo Papaluca

“Sales is the only job that you lose 80% of the time.” - Matteo Papaluca

Meet today’s guest, Matteo Papaluca

Matteo is a driven and compassionate sales leader passionate to build and lead sales teams in tech.

Matteo started in tourism then landed in tech and loved it. He spent 4 years at LinkedIn and

then started his management career at Rebrandly (leader in link management), Cloudbeds (hotel software), and now BOOM (commercial photography).

He left Ireland after 10 years to move back to Italy. Matteo lives near lake Maggiore with his beautiful wife Federica and their two daughters Mia and Greta.

Productivity resources to explore

• BOOM
• Matteo’s viral LinkedIn post
• Asana
• Slack
• Gong
• Salesforce
• Radical Candor by Kim Scott
• Headspace
• Calm
• BodyFit
• YouCanBook.me Twitter
• YouCanBook.me Forum

“Rock Your Sales Team Management” full transcript

Ben (00:00):

You're listening to Get More Done. I'm your host Ben Dlugiewicz. In each episode, we will talk with business leaders from around the world to discuss how they are helping their teams be more productive building systems to scale or leveraging automation. In this episode, I caught up with Matteo Papaluca, the Head of Global Sales at BOOM. With a decade of sales experience under his belt, mostly in management, Matteo talks about the importance of nurturing your people and focusing on their development individually to help the team grow and succeed. Enjoy.

Ben (00:41):

Excellent. Welcome back to Get More Done, the podcast all about productivity and just being awesome and getting things done. Joining me today is Matteo Papaluca, the Head of Global Sales at BOOM. So Matteo, welcome to the podcast.

Matteo (00:57):

Thank you for having me.

Ben (00:58):

Yeah. Super pumped that you can join us. And if you're not familiar, we typically start these conversations with an icebreaker to kind of break up the nerves a little bit. Get a bit comfortable. So with that, what was your favorite class to, or what was your favorite field of study in school when you were growing up? And why was that your favorite?

Matteo (01:16):

Yeah, so I started economics back in high school and also in university. I did also a master's degree in economics, in tourism. I think the best was leadership. We had a class in leadership in high school. I remember it was a famous manager. At the time was a high-rated manager in Italy. He was a leading part of a big production company. And this guy was coming to talk to us and I always, I started to remember, I like engaging with him a lot. So he was talking about those leadership styles. So, you know, all about this, we were kids, you know? But those things that, you see this guy or, you know, all the shooters, you know, big, big guys. Oh, I want to be like him. So yeah, leadership I think was one of the best. And I also, when I started the university, I had the chance to have many, many courses on leadership. And then, because I really liked it. I took actually, I was in Dublin at the time in Ireland, and I took a leadership course. It was a diploma actually. It took some, lasted for six months, at Griffith College to really go into leadership, understanding how to lead people, you know, leadership inspiring versus managing and so on.

Ben (02:39):

Oh yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. I mean the love of economics and then leadership kind of combining together is basically your foundation to everything you've been working on. So that's really awesome that you stacked all that up. So on that note, tell us a little bit more, you know, about yourself and your role with BOOM.

Matteo (02:58):

Yeah. So I've been in sales for 10 years. As I said, I started, I was working in sales sneakily in business travel. And then I, you know, I kind of, with my girlfriend at the time and my wife now, we just said, okay want to go abroad? Let's go, let's start, you know, seeing some opportunities. We moved to Dublin, Ireland. Beautiful place, beautiful people, Irish people. I started in Ryanair, an airline. It's the biggest local airline. It's like Southwest in the US, it's the biggest in Europe. I started there as a manager for a year. Very tough job, to be honest with you. So it helped me a lot, building resilience and strength, lots of travel. You know, it wasn't easy. And then from that, I just said, I want to go into tech, you know? And then I started my career in tech, went to a startup.

Matteo (03:51):

My first one was acquired by J2 Global. It was a telecommunications start-up. And then LinkedIn, which you might know. Four years at LinkedIn. And then I ended up at another startup, Cloudbeds. And then I said to my - sorry, Rebrandly actually. My first job as a manager there. It was a super cool startup. Small, but very, very, very tough. We would do, we did lots of good things there. And then Cloudbeds and other scale-ups, like from San Diego to do software for hotels and, you know, vacation rentals. And ended up then in BOOM. BOOM is, we work, it's the first spot for, you know, ad companies to produce, manage, and get insights and analytics from photos and visual content. So imagine all of those photos that you see on your DoorDash app or your Deliveroo app or your Airbnb. Those photos are taken by companies like BOOM. We do work at scale. So yeah, I've been here for now, over a year now and I'm loving it, to be honest.

Ben (05:00):

Yeah, awesome. That, you know, track record and that tenure of just scaling up and right, managing teams all over the world. That's really awesome. Awesome to hear. So, you know, one of the biggest ways that teams save time is with delegation. So let's dive a little bit more into how BOOM helps with that. Cause you mentioned, you know, having the capacity to capture all the imagery and manage all of that. So how does BOOM help with that?

Matteo (05:25):

That's a good question, Ben. BOOM is actually, I think the best, one of the best examples for externalizing a part of your business, right? So imagine these companies in real estate and food, or a product or profession, and that usually they take photos and they need photos for their goods to go online, right? And they need good photos, you know, to sell more. The old way was you have thousands of those, let's say freelancers, like people, even sometimes people with your phone. It's okay, I'll take a photo. All those kinds of things. Which is not scalable, really. And you ended up, instead of selling or doing your core business, like selling houses or, you know, selling food, or supporting, selling e-commerce and product, you ended up creating another BOOM, right?

Matteo (06:12):

Creating a platform that helps you manage all of that. Because it's not easy to do that and BOOM does that. BOOM does actually. It takes that away. So you give everything to BOOM. We have 35,000 photographers around the world. A beautiful platform that works. You can book a photo shooting in one second. You get a photographer dispatched, then photos in 24 hours. And that's exactly what we are. Leaders in operation and marketing leadership teams, in those companies I mentioned before, they can really focus on their own business and we take the photos. We make sure that those photos are good and they sell better. And, they can, in this way, focus on what matters for them.

Ben (06:59):

That's awesome to just let them focus on the core strength and you take all the headache away and help them with that production side of things. That's really, really great to see.

Matteo (07:10):

Correct.

Ben (07:10):

Now, recently you posted on LinkedIn, something that really stopped me in my tracks about how you reduced the time you spend in meetings each week by nearly half. So tell me a little bit about the, you know, the process. How did, how did you put that in place and what results have you seen so far, and maybe any challenges that have come up from that.

Matteo (07:28):

Man, look. Okay. First of all, I wrote that, on, okay. My daughter was sick. I couldn't sleep because we were, she was a bit with a cold or something. So I couldn't really sleep. So I was on my phone and I wrote that, which I don't know what definitely is. This went viral, I got above 300,000 views and almost 3,000 likes. Something that had never happened to me on LinkedIn. I always had good engagement, but not like that. So the reality is this, I woke up one day and I was clearly under the water, you know? It was back in August this year. I took, I remember a week of holidays, after a year at BOOM, a very challenging year. I mentioned COVID, kids, homeschooling. All, okay. We know that. Right. So we were all in the same situation.

Matteo (08:21):

So I ended up, also lots of some changes in the team, you know? So I ended up really under the water. I remember I went on holiday for a week and I came back from holiday. I was even more tired, you know? I was even more under pressure. And I said, man, what's going on? There's something going on. I actually, my manager came to me and said, "Man, I want to book a meeting with you, but it's impossible." And I just said, "What do you mean, it's impossible?" "Yeah, man, it's, you're fully booked". And I said, "Oh yeah, you're right." And then Google, I think released actually insights. You know, if you go in your Google calendar, you start seeing the hours to meetings that you are in and with who?

Matteo (09:04):

And then I said 40 hours, you know, it was like 37. It was unbelievable, man. It was basically each hour on my calendar was booked in meetings. And look, it's normal. Okay. I understand it's normal for many people. I manage 14 people directly. Now adding another 9. Now I'm also adding managers because people told me, "Oh, you should have managers." Of course the mighty now managers, I just thought, you know, sometimes in startups, you don't get all the support you need. You know, you just try to do everything yourself. And, I just said, "No, I need to do something. I clear the calendar today." And I sat down first of all, with myself and said, what do I need to do? Where I'm spending most of my time? And unfortunately, Ben, because I love one-to-ones, you know, I am the biggest driver of one-to-ones, unfortunately, I was doing 14 hours of one-to-ones, okay?

Matteo (10:02):

And one hour per person per every week. And then I said, "Okay, I can go and consult them or I can do better. I can ask my team." I sat together with my team. I said, "Hey guys, we're doing one-to-ones with all of you. And to be honest with you, I'm very stressed out. I feel that I cannot give you, I cannot deliver." Sometimes, those one-to-ones, they were really okay. After half an hour. Okay. Now, you know, no agenda. Not really, you know. If all of them were heavy conversation, I wouldn't even, you know, start from that. But I felt my team, we were pretty aligned with all my team. We were doing good. So maybe it wasn't needed. And they told me, "Oh man, I actually don't need them." I said, "What do you mean?" "No, no, no. It's too much for me, too." "Really?"

Matteo (10:55):

And then I started talking with my team and we ended up doing that with my team. And then I went to my leaders and my leadership team peers. And they told me, "Oh no, no. Yeah, you're right. Actually, I need that. We can do that every two weeks." I said, "Oh, okay. I didn't know that." And then I started doing that and, I would get a calendar invite and I will just ask a simple question. Do I need to be there? You know, this is simple. It's not, look Ben. We don't want to, in a remote world, you don't want to make boundaries. Okay? You don't want to feel, Matteo is not accessible. You need to do this with compassion and you need to do this in a way where you are always successful. And then we talk about Slack and all that later. The question I asked myself, "Is this meeting really needed," you know?

Matteo (11:44):

And I ended up understanding, but almost, get almost. Actually, it was blowing my mind that the people in that meeting, they didn't want to be there either. You know? So we ended up - well, actually I started - it happened, Ben, very quickly. In like two days. Monthly one-to-ones, but daily check-ins. So, you know, with my team, we will use Slack. We will use, because I need to be available with my team all the time. You know, anything personal or professional. I'm always there, you know, day and night. That's the only, this is the only notification I get here, my team and my family, that's it. I have no other notification. Right. So I just said, "Okay, you need to tell me if something's wrong and I will check with you every day." Okay. That's fine. We can do it on Slack. So Slack huddle quick chat, videos, all that.

Matteo (12:33):

And then they start telling me, "Yeah. But I need to tell you, when I need to tell you to do something or when you need to tell me to do something, how can we do that to create a one-to-one?" I said, "Look, we have Asana. We can assign a task to each other on Asana and say, 'Hey, Ben, can you please do this for me?' We also put some references, some links, and so on." And then this started and my calendar went to, if you look around now, it's 15 hours per week. And, I am actually very happy myself. But most important, I found my team to be happier. I found better communication with my peers and my leadership team. Not expected, Ben, not expected. So this wasn't something I, oh I know how to do it. I'll do it now. I didn't know anything. I just went there because I was under the water.

Ben (13:27):

Yeah, totally. And that vulnerability to your team of being like, I need your help to help me. Right. It's like that I think, and you know, you're coming with that from a compassion and be like, I don't necessarily, you know, despise you from inviting me to this meeting. But if I don't need to be there, then it's not something that I need to fill my time with. So I think taking more control over your week is very empowering and something that a lot of people can take back. And as you said, as long as there's that communication, that way to still get in touch with your team, then everything else can still thrive. So that's really awesome.

Matteo (14:04):

Exactly. Ben, they need to know, because if you do that with compassion, it's okay. If you do that with no compassion, you're an asshole. Okay. So that's the thing, you know, so it's very important and compassion management, I'm very passionate about that. You know, Jeff Wiener, former CEO of LinkedIn talked a lot to us, a lot about that. And in a situation like this, when you, it's a tough situation because one-to-ones are most of the time, the most important time of the week. Because people really need to come to you and talk to you, Ben, because I don't do one-to-ones with, "Okay, what's your Salesforce forecast?" Or, "What's your deal?" I don't really care about this. One-to-one is your time, you know, goals, you know, how are you feeling? Oh man, I saw you were silent. You know, I love this time. I love them, but they were 14 hours per week, you know? So it was impossible. But as long as you come with a compassionate approach and say, "Hey, I want to be there. I want to keep this flow going, but help me." That's a different conversation.

Ben (15:06):

Yeah. Cause it's when you're a people person and you really enjoy hanging out and talking with your team members, it's kind of tough to pull that back. But like you said, just having that, open communication I think is vital. And on that note, you know, we talked a little bit about Asana and Slack, you know, doing daily huddles. Are there any other process hacks or anything else that you've used to help your team save more time and get more done?

Matteo (15:31):

Yeah. So I think that as a manager, these are the tools that help us a lot. Okay. So Asana for accountability. Okay, I'm not paid by Asana or anything. Actually. We paid our Asana every month and a lot. So, but Asana for accountability helps a lot. Okay. With projects, and you know, everything is accessible there and that there is also this task management that you can assign tasks to people and give context. So that adds a lot. Slack is crucial for remote working. So Slack is crucial for that. So it'll help us, there is no email communication. So there's zero email communication for internal in BOOM, for internal comms in BOOM. To be honest with you, we have also, with my team, different coaching moments. Okay. So we can have a tool like Gong. Again, I'm not paid by Gong, but we use a lot Gong for things that we're coaching about.

Matteo (16:25):

Right. Okay. Let's get together Ben all of us, two hours, let's talk about discovery calls. How are we doing this? And man wait there is, we go in Gong, we record all the discovery call. We tag the team and say, "Hey man, this is a good discovery call. Why don't we listen to this?" Or, "Hey, Laura, this is a good one. Why don't you listen?" You know, so this technology around sales specifically and companies it's that, right? And we almost feel that we are overwhelmed by that. But if you really pick your sales stack, right? And pick your technologies like Gong for sales, of course, Salesforce. Or any subs, different CRM, Slack, Asana, if you really pick the one that helped you do something, okay. Like coaching, for example, you save time yourself or you save time for your team, for example, with an issue.

Matteo (17:13):

Okay. And I think most of the people that listen to this and they are leaders in startups, they have this issue onboarding. We need to onboard many people. Okay, I hire now until January 9 people. Okay. 9 people in my team only, and this is a 100 people company. 100, not 1,000. Okay. I don't have a university. I don't have a sales enablement team taking care of it. I need to do myself the onboarding. So what I did, I started recording my onboarding. Easy, all the sessions I was doing with the new hires. I tag them. I give them a name. I give them a number and I put them in Asana. So when you're starting BOOM, in a remote environment, because we are remote. For the week, I know it doesn't sound great, but for a week you have a week of video if you want, that will walk you through BOOM. So, and this is just leveraging what you have done, like a video tool and Asana, for example.

Ben (18:11):

Yeah. Awesome. That, all of that sounds really great of not reproducing the work. Like for the onboarding piece saying, "Hey, we did it once everybody can do it." And leveraging tools like Gong for just massive insights onto everything automatically. I think that's really, really powerful because I mean, that probably spent a lot of time combing through each one. Each conversation or talking about it when you can just say, "Hey, here's some good examples. Things we can extrapolate and learn from."

Matteo (18:36):

I usually listen, Ben, to 25 calls per week. You will speed them up 1.5, 2. Like Zoom calls or GMeets recording, but you still need to go through all the call. So that thing, you know, the Gong, which again, a very good tool. Very, very strong. Expensive, okay, for a startup. But it's worth it. But, it helps you a lot. I used to listen to calls, Ben because that's the best coaching you can give to your team. Right. So you listen to call or you are in a call, right? So that's the best, you know, I think you can do. And I used to listen to calls everywhere, you know? When I was walking, you know, because I couldn't, I didn't have time and technology is there. I think that we just need to find the right spot. Right for each stack, piece.

Ben (19:31):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, with your extensive sales background in a lot of different industries, what would be, you know, a piece of advice or a few pieces of advice that you'd give to other sales managers that are just starting out, you know, how to be more efficient from the start?

Matteo (19:48):

Okay. First of all, I think that you need to understand your priorities. Okay. So as a sales manager in a startup or a scale-up, even in a corporation. Okay, I don't want to take anybody off this conversation. You need to master your priorities, okay? Even if you sound sometimes a bit abrasive, let's say, when people tell you, "Oh, why don't you do this at -" No. Okay. No. I'm sorry, man. I love you. I don't do that. You know? So I think that knowing, master your priority, and hiring, unfortunately, or fortunately is your first priority. The people you work with, the right people, will get you to the moon. The bad fits will get you to hell, okay? So it's very, very important that you find what works for you and for your company.

Matteo (20:49):

Okay. So I didn't spend much time on this, to be honest. I started recently, but I always, when you come into a role, you're a sales manager. Okay. I want to close a deal. I'll do processes, you know? So, wrong. Hiring, hiring, master your hiring. Understanding who you want. Three things, you know, not many, you know, scorecards. Three things. What do you want, what you need, you know, and try to master that. The other priority is your team. When I talk about your team because I recently posted about this. But when you talk about your team, I'm talking about your direct reports, okay? Because then this is one. This is your team. And then you have your team here, right? Your peers. So develop them, coach them individually. Okay. Individually focus on the person to grow the team. There is always this belief and this was Rafa, Rafael Blanes was my VP of Sales in Cloudbeds.

Matteo (21:49):

He always, always said that. Coach the individual to coach the team. Coach the individual to coach the team. So you really need to focus on the person. Okay. And of course, this means point number three, which is the book. It's a most famous book. But it's for me, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, is, I read that five times, is the master, right? You need to challenge directly, but you really need to care personally. So there is no team, there is no management if you're not fully, fully dedicated to get to know each other. To get to know the person you have in front of you. But more importantly, to care about the person, that person. Okay. So if you start caring about people and about your team, you can challenge them also.

Matteo (22:55):

You can tell them when they're not enough, or where you can challenge them when they didn't meet something. Or did they meet a specific KPI or something. But if you don't care personally, and you just challenge, then you are aggressive or you are abrasive, or you are, you know, not the best manager. So just to, if you're in management, or you want to go in management. I think, first three things: master your priorities. And I'm giving you a hint. Hiring is your first one. The second one is develop and coach the individuals to coach the team. And then the third one is challenge directly and care personally.

Ben (23:34):

Yeah. Those are great insights for, you know, anybody maybe not just in sales, but just anybody managing a team of get to that human connection. Because it's easy to be like, "Oh, you're not hitting your numbers." Let's dig deeper into that. What, you know, what's happening? How can we help you get to what you need to do and provide you those resources? That's really awesome. Now tell me a little bit about, you know, motivation. Cause I know that selling every day can be hard and there's, you know, a lot of nos you maybe need to stack up to get to that yes. So how do you keep your team motivated?

Matteo (24:07):

All right. Sales is the only job that you lose 80% of the time. Okay. So, you know, when you get into this gig that you're going to lose 8 out of 10, 7 out of 10, if you're a top performer. I lose maybe 9 out of 10. Okay. So first of all, try to have a good compensation plan. Okay. Most sales are driven by more money or prior results. Or by recognition, so try to compensate your people fairly, regardless of how much you can give. Okay. If you cannot give money because you're an early-stage startup or you, because you have no budget, try to give them something else, you know? And try to give them, I don't know, a barbecue at your house, you know? Try to give them something that can at least keep them going.

Matteo (24:58):

Okay. So motivation, first of all, compensation plan. Pay them fairly, not cheap, you know? Like, "Oh, we don't pay you." Remove all those things. Just try to pay them fairly and give them recognition if they hit the number. Right. So, the second thing is that I always encouraged them to not work overtime. I know it's a big topic, but I don't work overtime. And trust me, man, if I want, I can work 80 hours per week. I just don't do it. At 6 o'clock, my kids. So I open this door, right? They flow in and then we start the other day, but today. So, and if I'm in a meeting and say, "I'm sorry, I'm in a meeting." I cannot, you know, it's family time now for me. Calendar blocked, they know it. If you do it as a manager, they will do it.

Matteo (25:56):

They will do it, you know, and I start blocking my calendar for lunchtime and do a workout. And I’ve recently seen somebody celebrating and sharing that in the, we have a slack channel called Sales Wellness Fun. They were doing a workout and I did first, okay? So try to really stay on the clock, in terms of not working overtime. Of course, you need to work overtime once. It's fine, but try to really not burn yourself. Okay. That's very, very, very, very, very, very important. And the last piece of the motivation is I celebrate anything I can without being cheesy. Okay. So celebration time, even in remote work. Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. You know, how guys, "Hey, well done. This is the biggest deal so far" or "$50 Amazon for the first person..." You know, try to keep them engaged in, with a little motivation all the time.

Matteo (27:02):

Okay. And we have Slack channels for that. We have Friday time together with a team. Like half an hour to finish the week together. Get some water, juice, wine, whatever you want to. Beer, or whatever you want to drink. Get together, make that remote environment, or even the office environment, more fun. Okay. And try to do that. Remember, one thing Ben that worked very well for me was, I changed it of course because otherwise, I do always the same. But it was awards. Weekly awards, right? Three awards about three priorities for the company. And that will start to, I remember I will click the best song of the person, we'll start singing and then the face will come up, man. It's normal, I took two minutes to do it, but people were so pumped up because there is this song. So you start wondering, oh, who is the song, who's this? And then there's the face of the person is, "Hey!" you know? And you get that. So I did it myself. Right. So I, and I'm not the best to do these things. But little things like that every Friday to celebrate three people really helps with the motivation. Indeed in sales and indeed, you know, in the remote environment.

Ben (28:19):

Yeah. I think that can't be, you know, understated of just celebrating those wins. Cause it, like you said, there's a lot of rejection you get in the sales and it could be demoralizing, but just bringing your team together to celebrate those wins and kind of stand on those wins and really celebrate those. And as you mentioned too, kind of having that incentive or something to work towards. Whether it's a barbecue, like you said, or Amazon gift card, or maybe, you know, the compensation plan. That type of thing that really, really can go a long way. You touched on it a little bit about the work-life balance and taking care of yourself. So working out, how have you seen that help, you know, in your work life?

Matteo (28:59):

I'm not fit. Okay. First of all, I'm not that kind of person, guys. I, this is a normal arm. But I'm strong. Okay. I'm strong. I mean, what I mean about that, to function at the level I am and the level I need to stay personally and professionally, I need to have my workout. Okay. Or, I need to have my vacation, or I need to have my meditation time with Headspace or Calm, whatever you want to use. It would be impossible to not be fit, mentally first and physically second, in order to perform in work. Okay. So I say, I have a personal trainer who helps me, giving me some indication and I try to work out three times per week. Of course, time is tough because I try to do this in the morning, but then now my older daughter has nightmares.

Matteo (30:01):

She comes and sleeps with us. You know, we have the other one in the other room. So it's not easy, but I fit, I try to fit the workout any time I can. Okay. There's many apps that you can use. Plenty of them. I personally use BodyFit, which is an app. Also, I do advisorship too, which the, you know, they do wellness live classes, you know, this kind of thing. So anything that you can do. It's that, it's your friend giving you, you know, a plan or there was another one, a gym whatever it is, it's something. You need to do something. Okay. If it's not that. Okay. And then my wife was like, "I don't like this." Walk. Mid-time, midday walk. Then meeting. Asking the question: do we need the camera on? No.

Matteo (30:54):

Okay. Can I go for a walk? Yeah. Okay. Go for a walk. One-to-ones? Walk. So anything that gets the flow going and your body flow going. And trust me again, Ben, I have no expertise or anything, I just see this on myself. But when I started and I look at pictures, you know, I, myself, also sometimes, you know, you get those memories coming back from Facebook, those apps. It's this, you clearly see I'm in a much better state right now. Even if you don't, I don't look better. I'm in a much better state than 10 years ago. Or I remember when I started, which I didn't do any activities and so on, actually. I don't want to, because again, I think each person needs to find their, what they, what works for them. But get the blood flowing, you know. Get up, standing desk, doing something. 10-minute stretch, but something that can help you.

Matteo (31:52):

Because again, if we go back to the priorities before, Ben, this is all about your team. And when I have this energy, and now I have this energy at 6 o'clock. I have this energy 9 o'clock. I can help them because I see sometimes people come in to say, "Oh I had a bad day today." And then you feel, "Oh yeah. You're telling me. I have kids." You know, if we said that and then we just sink and somebody needs to be stronger here. And, one day it's you. One day, it's going to be the other person, but it's important that we keep this energy level up. Of course, one quick tip is eating. Okay. Again, I don't want to go there. Turn to people much more expert than me, but, you know, reducing meat consumption that helped me, for example, being more, you know, all different things. My wife, she's helping me also with that, you know? We have, with the kids, we try to since we eat, everybody eats the same thing.

Matteo (32:53):

So we don't do, there is, it's baby weaning, I think it's called. You know, even the one-year-old is eating what we eat, basically. You know, salt reduction. So all that, of course, we have our pizzas on Fridays. You know, we enjoy that or sushi. We love it. But, you know, during the week, I have in my body more veg and, you know, protein. A good protein then, you know, meat or fats and so on. So that definitely, I found myself, I find it helping a lot too. In terms of even my lunch break at home, you know. All that, I think holds it together, apps, also my performance. Definitely.

Ben (33:37):

Yeah. Fueling your body with some good stuff. Getting the blood moving anytime you can, like you said, just a quick walk or scheduling some workouts. That meditation time too, of just getting in, getting your head, all of that, I think, you know, builds that foundation, that then you can do some excellent work. And that thing that you said about, maybe it's, you know, you are having an off day and somebody else is having an off day. But if you have that energy, then you can help them turn it around and get it a bit more positive and get them moving in the right direction. So definitely words to live by, for sure. That's really great. So what's next for you? What are you excited about? What's on the horizon for you?

Matteo (34:17):

Look, Ben, it's been an amazing year for me. Okay. I think I was telling you before, right? I think we went through, and I try not to be cheesy, but I think we went through the toughest time of my life personally. When I decided to leave Ireland after 10 years, last July and moved back to Italy. And I did that chatting before I, there was this, the 6th of July, 2020. My wife and I crying behind the curtain, in our house, in Dublin. The house we bought with our money and looking at my daughter, Mia, the oldest to celebrate the third birthday with all their friends, right? And she was surrounded by friends and it was a beautiful day in Dublin. And then I remember that day, I signed the contract with BOOM, which BOOM is actually a remote company. But so they didn't want me, they said you can stay in Ireland but I took the opportunity also to, you know, to do something new and to challenge ourselves, to move to Italy.

Matteo (35:25):

So I remember my wife, heavily pregnant with Gretta. She was nine months pregnant. Gretta would be then with us after 2 weeks. So in all that Gretta, one month old. Mia, three years old with all her friends, you know? And we, after 10 years in Ireland, we decide to move to Italy. Toughest decision of our life. 55 boxes. So stay in two suitcases, but we left our house. There was this selfie we took, before leaving, which is, I think, one of the saddest moments of our life. Because at the end of the day, I was excited for BOOM and for what was coming for me. But man, it's tough, you know, to be excited when you have other people, depending on you, you know? And I remember Gretta so small on a plane, you know, it wasn't easy.

Matteo (36:14):

So last year, it blew my mind and, you know, BOOM treats me very well. And I feel I'm in a, I will say, top American company, right? Because for me, American companies are always one step ahead, right? In terms of treating people, I feel like that in Italy. So we're an international company, but we are, our HQ is in Italy. We're really a gem, right? In a country that is not really welcoming sometimes. For startups. So for, you know, people from abroad, speak a different language. It's a concept, it's going very well. It's developing a lot, but you know, it's the last year COVID, you know? Sure. So it paid off, so we're very, very happy for that.

Matteo (37:01):

So I wanna keep going with what I'm doing in BOOM. I want to be, keep doing the sales. I hope for one day, of course, to move on to Chief Revenue Officer or this kind of, you know, the Chief Revenue or VP of Sales. Those are my goal. One thing I found out recently is a startup advisor. I'm doing advisorship, for startups and go to market usually from zero to 1 million, you know. Zero to 2 million. The first stage. Also companies from the US that are locating into Europe. I didn't. I'm not getting paid or anything, but it just came up. People asking me for help. I add them in my free time. Usually Saturdays, Sundays and a couple of one hour in the day. You know you take thirty minutes for lunch, in the evening.

Matteo (37:48):

Also, the flexibility that we have in BOOM allows me to do that. And then that's very interesting for me and it's coming. I don't see that to be a full-time job. I still see BOOM and Head of Sales and what I do, my full-time job, but set up advice or something that is interesting. For me, on a personal level, my wife came to me one day and said, I cannot find a school, an international school for our kids that's in our area. And said, "Okay, let's build one. Let's do one." And they said, "Sure, yeah. Let's do one." We are starting this. We found out that in this area, which is a half-million people area, there's no international school. So my wife is now, she's the owner of that. So, but she's trying to find out, you know, how we can set up, for example, a primary school, in English and in Italian of course, but more English than Italian. So I think we will be busy for the next year, for sure.

Ben (38:52):

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you talk about your career growth. I think you're well on your way of just hunkering down, focusing on your people, building up your people, helping them grow. And then, you know, with your advising stuff too, that sounds really, really great. So, Matteo, I want to thank you so much for coming on Get More Done. It was a pleasure talking with you and sharing your expertise for our audience. And I hope you have a great rest of your day and good luck on the school and everything that you're building over there with BOOM. And, hope you have a good rest of your week.

Matteo (39:21):

I hope it works, as it worked for me, works for somebody else. So thanks for having me, Ben. I appreciate it.

Ben (39:27):

Yeah, absolutely. Alright, cheers.

Ben (39:35):

Thank you for listening to Get More Done. Be sure to subscribe anywhere that you get your podcasts as we have some great speakers lined up. And if you'd like to be on the show, please reach out to us on Twitter @YouCanBookMe or visit us on our forum, forum.youcanbook.me. I hope to see you around.