The Grit Factor Podcast w/ Karl Jacobi

Matthew Hassler was a chemical engineer working one hundred and ten hour weeks on multi-million dollar industrial projects, on call at midnight, watching his weight climb to two thirty-five, watching his wife Logan cry on the one day off he had in a nine-day stretch because she needed more of him and he was spending that one day off working on a house flip. He was demonstrating grit at a level that most people never reach. He was just demonstrating it entirely for someone else.

The moment that cracked it open was not dramatic. It was just the quiet realization, sitting in the middle of all those hours, that the same focus and dedication he was pouring into a company that did not value his time the way he valued it could be aimed at himself instead. He moved to a new company with fewer hours. Got into real estate. Discovered Amazon. Started with five thousand dollars. Then took a leap that would define everything: left the W2, moved into a camper with Logan, and started selling full time while traveling across the country.

Year one: seven figures. Year two: three million. Year three: seven million. Eleven million in total revenue in just under three and a half years, built almost entirely from a camper. When Uline was delivering pallets of inventory to their campsite, Logan was dealing with the freight delivery because Matt was at work. The campground was not happy. Logan held it together. The business held together because of systems Matt built from an engineering brain that could not leave inefficiency alone.

Today Matthew runs a scaled Amazon wholesale business with a growing international team, gives surprise bonuses that change the lives of employees making two twenty-five an hour in the Philippines, and has just launched Replen Pulse, a SaaS platform born from the exact problem he lived for three years before he built the solution. He is also Karl's coaching client of over a year and one of the kindest, most precise and data-driven builders Karl has had the privilege of watching grow in real time. This is the first time that story has been told publicly.

This episode is for the engineer, the operator, the planner, the person who is better at building things for other people than they have ever let themselves be for themselves.