In this latest episode of our ‘3 Learnings From…’ video podcast, we talk to Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing!

Matt tells us all about maintaining the right work ethic, creating a strong company culture, and how important it is to invest in self-care before trying to help others.

“Work hard, be humble, and stay kind”

Matt Heinz has a mantra for achieving long-term success and a happy life: ‘work hard, be humble, and stay kind.’

As the president of his own company, Heinz Marketing, and with over 20 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations and industries—Matt has driven himself onward and upward by sticking to his principles.

Matt and his team at Heinz Marketing focus on delivering measurable results for clients with greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty.

They are innovators at heart and are not afraid to challenge convention to deliver the results their customers need. The Heinz Marketing team has an impressive record to match, having helped organizations such as Amazon, Seagate, Morgan Stanley, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with their marketing efforts.

Matt is also a prolific author, a nationally recognized blogger and a dynamic speaker. He has won numerous awards for his work, including Top 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management and Top 50 Sales & Marketing Influencers.

Based in Kirkland, Washington, Matt lives with his wife, three kids, and a whole host of pets. When he’s not hard at work, Matt spends his time watching college football, woodworking, firing up a BBQ and spending quality time with family.

Learning #1: Work hard and stay humble

Whether it’s in life, work, or business, Matt insists that the right attitude is what really counts:

“The longer I live, the more mistakes I make, one of the key things for me is to be humble and to work hard.

My parents are from the midwest of the United States and they taught me to really respect hard work, to put in the effort, but also to keep your hard hat on: do the work and don’t talk about it.

I’ve been trying to lead by example with our team, with my children as well. Work hard, be humble, stay kind—some key tenants that are gonna help you get through life, work, business, and all of the above."

Learning #2: Work with people you enjoy

According to Matt, creating a strong company culture and nurturing core values is the best way to ensure a hiring plan succeeds:

"A number of years ago I was at a conference, and Eric Schmidt—who at the time was the CEO of Google—was being interviewed. One of the questions to him was ‘I hear you took the job at Google without really knowing that much about their business strategy, what the product strategy and what the roadmap was.'

He said ‘no it’s true! I spent time with the co-founders and some time with the board and executives...’ He kind of paused, and then he said: ‘life is short. Work with people you enjoy.’

That’s really stuck with me: whether you own a company, or whether you’re a rockstar working somewhere else—you get to choose who you work with. You can make a lot of money and you can be in a fast-growing company, but if you don’t enjoy the people you work with, that’s gonna be a slog.

So I’ve really taken that to heart and I think about: how do you manifest that idea into your hiring, into your values? How do you create and manifest a set of values and a culture in a business that fosters the kind of people you wanna spend time with?

{Discussing the candidate’s role of assessing the culture fit at a company]

When you’re looking for a job, obviously they’re interviewing you but you should be interviewing them as well.

You should have a sense for ‘what's the culture that I wanna work in, what’s the working environment, and what’s the working relationship that I wanna have with my colleagues, with my peers, with my team?’ That should be something that you’re assessing within the organization…

Find out from other people what it's like to work there, what it’s like when things get hard… Every single company—whether you’re dealing with a pandemic or not—faces challenges, faces heavy winds. How do you deal with it, approach it, handle it together? That is a key part of understanding whether this is a group of people you want to go to battle with."

Learning #3: Put your own oxygen mask on first

You have to take care of yourself before you can help others. From getting enough sleep to disconnecting from work, Matt says self-care is essential for every leader:

“It’s a metaphor, but it’s also an instruction. If you get on an airplane and go through the whole safety message at the beginning of the flight, one of the things they tell you is ‘listen, if we lose oxygen, these masks are going to come down.’

And your instinct is to help your children or people around you, but they explicitly tell you to put your mask on first. I remember when I first start being aware of what that meant and I was thinking: ‘that sounds kind of selfish… shouldn’t you be helping others first!?’

But you can’t help others unless you take care of yourself. You can’t be of maximum use to other people, be as helpful and valuable, unless you’re doing self care… If you put yourself last, you’re not gonna have enough energy left to continue giving to others.

So it means everything from: get enough sleep, drink enough water, go out and exercise, get away from your computer, get away from your work, find a hobby… it may be hard for people that feel like ‘I’m always on all the time and that’s what’s valuable.’ You cannot sustain doing that.

So, there is no common playbook for ‘putting your own oxygen mask first’ that works for everybody. But, the longer I live and the more mistakes I make—the more I realize how important self-care is to being more useful and valuable for those around me."

Thanks Matt!

Matt recognizes the value of self-care to make sure he’s always on top form for his team. With the right attitude and a healthy work-life balance, setting a good example for his colleagues comes naturally.

Are you putting your own oxygen mask on first and ensuring you’ve got the long-term energy to support your team? Are you manifesting a company culture that fosters the kind of people you want to work with?

Tune in for more career learnings and insights in the next episode. We’ll be speaking with Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at TripActions... Don’t miss it!