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Dave’s personal coach joins our podcast today! With his background in manufacturing and chemical engineering, Gary Mottershead believes it’s important for specialists to consider themselves entrepreneurs first. Gary founded GCP Industrial Products and today has become a forward-thinking, digital-first inspired industry leader. He has been a Strategic Coach client for over 30 years and associate coach for over 25!
Gary shares his insights into the world of entrepreneurship, he gives us a message on how we need to focus on our strengths and use them as a key component in seizing opportunities, “When we work on our weaknesses, we will have strong weaknesses”, Gary shares, emphasizing the importance of moving up by achievement.
Later Gary unfolds the concept of 4 Freedoms! He discusses how these 4 key points can take you where you can make a difference as an entrepreneur and achieve excellence that is driven with purpose and passion!
In This Episode
- Gary’s journey to entrepreneurship and where it all began.
- The format of DOS and its powerful dimensions.
- What unique ability is and how you can leverage it.
- Gary’s philosophy on a Holistic Wealth Strategy.
- The concept of 4 Freedoms.
Join Gary for this episode and find out how your entrepreneurial life can be turned around!
Hey everyone and welcome to today’s show on Wealth Strategy Secrets. Today we are joined by a very special guest, Gary Mattershead. With his background in manufacturing and chemical engineering, Gary believes it’s important for specialists to consider themselves entrepreneurs first.
In 1999, Gary founded GCP Industrial Products, which has grown to become the largest importer of sheet rubber into North America. Today, it has become a forward-thinking, digital-first, inspired industry leader. GCP sources materials from various countries around the world and was one of the first to make inroads into China.
Gary has also been a Strategic Coach client for over 30 years, an associate coach for over 25, and he and his wife are proud grandparents and the parents of two entrepreneurial grown children. Gary, I’m so grateful to have you here today and let our listeners know who my personal coach is and expose them to some of the wonderful ideas that I’ve had the fortune of listening to you for the past four years to help me grow on my path and journey. So, Gary, welcome to the show.
Dave, thank you so much. I always get excited and a little bit nervous when someone reads those things about me because I never think about it that way. But I got a little service… I hope we can live up to it, but I’m delighted to be with you. I’m delighted you’re putting this message out to your audience. Let’s give them everything we’ve got today.
Okay, excellent, Gary. So let’s take that momentum and propel us forward. Tell us a little bit about your background and journey. How did you start your business? How did you start your venture into entrepreneurialism? Where did it begin for you?
Wow, yeah. I have to go back before GCP Industrial Products in 1999. My background is as a chemical engineer, and I also have a Masters of Business Administration. I spent the first 15 to 25 years doing all sorts of technical things. Then, as I came out of that, I got to work for DuPont and into industrial sales. I realized the world was going to be about people, so I kind of flipped my head around.
I enjoyed being in sales and had always been into the technical side of things, but I found even then I always pushed the boundaries. Even though I was working for DuPont in Canada, I worked with the United States a lot. I was getting to make products for me that they’d make for nobody else in the world. Canada’s one-tenth the market that is the United States, so I tried to do things that I felt were in the interest of the client and the customer but weren’t really being done. Consequently, Dave, you’d probably guess that I was not a good team player.
I didn’t fit the mold anywhere, and as a result, they always gave me the most difficult challenges because I would take those on. But that led me, after being there for a number of years, to realize I didn’t see myself in that world. I stepped out and did a couple of other ventures with some friends. Then I found myself really on my own with a young family and my second child just being born. Somehow, I got into my head that I’d start a tire recycling business. Not just any tire recycling business, but one that had to be done the way nobody else had done it before. Of course, nobody had been successful before, and using liquid nitrogen to freeze the tires became a cryogenic system.
Recovery Technologies began in 1989, just shortly after our daughter was born, and that was the toughest thing I ever did in my life. I did that for eight years. We pioneered it all the way through and sold a number of units around the world. When my partners decided that we needed to get out of this and we sold it, I got a nice contract, nice salary, and whatever for three years. I turned to my wife and said, “I’m going to be here six months or we’ll make it the full three years.” Well, eight months later, I was gone out the door because I didn’t fit into the mold and everything else.
So, I found myself in my mid to late 40s saying I gotta start all over again. With two kids, a mortgage, cars, and all that stuff, and no income, I just started to do some work with Strategic Coach and a little bit of that. I said I got to start over. Looking back on it, it was another real tough time in my life but probably the best thing that ever happened because I had all that learning. As you know, the mark of an entrepreneur is not how many times they get knocked down but how many times they get back up.
This was another time for me to get back up, and that led us to GCP. There’s a lot more in there, but that’s the story that got us to where you started off with today.
Yeah, that’s fantastic. So what got you into coaching from there? What was your first inclination to get into coaching?
Well, you know, it’s kind of funny because when you, you know, we all go back and look at our life. I always love the word history because history is short for “his story.” Not being gender-sensitive here, but it’s our story. So we always go and create the story. Why are there so many stories about wars, the Second World War, and other things that people go back to? Because they all have it from their own perspective.
When I got into the tire recycling business, I realized that I was on my own. I’d worked with DuPont as I mentioned earlier, so I had the training. I got to do the Xerox selling, professional selling, and all those other skills with people around you. Now, you’re suddenly on your own. What do you do when you’re on your own? You know what? We’re not good on our own as people. We’ve learned that over the last couple of years through all these lockdowns and challenges. We’re not great; we’re much better when we can work with others, either cooperate, collaborate, or learn from them.
I was at a Christmas party for Imperial Oil with my wife, who was an EA for the senior executives, in December of 1990. The way those parties were set up, the guests had to invite all their assistants to come. The executives and their spouses were in one room, and the assistants and their spouses in another. One of the other EAs there, Michael Fine Silver, came up to me and said, “Gary, you’re an entrepreneur. You need to be a strategic coach.” I had no idea what that was.
I went to a presentation in April of 1991, and I sat in that room with Dan Sullivan and thought, “This guy’s crazy or he’s brilliant.” He’s the only other guy I think like, or he thinks like me. So I said, “If that’s the case, I better jump into this program.” I joined in November of 1991 purely because at that point, they’d accept anybody. We didn’t have income levels and everything else. I could get in when they had what they called the “fog test.” You put the mirror under your nose, and if it fogs up when you breathe, you’re in. They said, “How much money do you make?” It didn’t matter, as long as you could pay the dues.
So, I got in and stayed because I felt that, from Strategic Coach, you’re part of something. Dan committed to doing three things for us. He said he’d keep us out front of what’s going on in the world, he’d package the material in a way we could use it, and he’d bring us something new every quarter. I liked those promises. More than 30 years ago, Dan has kept that promise. Every workshop you come to, we have something new that keeps you going. As entrepreneurs, we can’t stand still; we have to keep moving. Momentum is what we bring to the table. As long as Dan does that, I’ll stay.
A couple of years later, they wanted to grow, so instead of putting a few people in the room, they started putting 20, 30, 40 people in the room. They needed more people to support them, so I was asked if I would sit at a table and be an associate coach. One day in Chicago, Dan turns to me and says, “How would you like to be a coach?” Me? I’m game for just about anything. So I thought, “What would it be like to be on the other side of the table?”
Thank goodness they didn’t have a full application program, so I got in early. I always thought about coaching. My point about history is now I said to myself, “How can I justify being on the other side of the table?” I went back through my life and realized that if I looked at it differently, I started coaching and advising people when I was 17. I can still remember sitting downstairs with the phone, talking to this young guy who was the son of a Baptist minister. I realized he just wanted to suck my time.
I learned early on that I can only help people who want to be helped. I went through my life and realized I’d been doing this for a long time, just not being paid for it. That realization built my confidence, knowing I could do it. That’s how it got started and allowed me to go forward without being too nervous, even though I probably should have been.
That’s fantastic, Gary. For me, this is my fourth year with Strategic Coach and working with you, which has been phenomenal. It all started for me when I heard Dan Sullivan on a podcast. I was always looking to learn and expand my network. He asked a question, which I still think about to this day when I’ve been asked myself. That’s what coaching is all about, right? Asking the right questions. Dan asks the DOS question—dangers, opportunities, and strengths. Maybe you can share with the audience the format of DOS and ask them that question because it’s so powerful in all dimensions of it.
You know, it is, Dave, and it’s really fundamental and a cornerstone. The additive to that piece is what we call the R Factor question—R stands for Relationship. There’s a really interesting… I’ll ask you a question. You know, you’ve had friends for a long time, right? Personal friends of yours for a long time. Do you know more about their past than their future?
No.
Do you know more about their future than their past?
Yes.
Perfect. You’re one of the unique ones because most of us really only know the past about our friends and we haven’t asked them about what they think about the future.
Yeah, well I focus very hard on future-based relationships, growth-oriented relationships.
That’s so important. That’s where the DOS comes in. DOS stands for Dangers, Opportunities, and Strengths, but not ours—it’s the dangers and fears that our friends or clients might have, the prospective prospects would have. The second part is opportunities, which give some excitement because that’s what they get driven for. The third one, which is strengths, is really very important because it’s about what brings them confidence. If you think about it, it’s really their operating system.
People want to go away from dangers; they want to try and capture their opportunities. Being a good friend and having a good relationship is complementing other people’s strengths. As you pointed out, which I’m thrilled to hear, you focus on future-based relationships. You have to ask those questions.
People know more about the past because it already exists—you can see it, touch it. But the future doesn’t exist yet; it exists in our minds. It’s what drives us in the directions we want to go in, whether it’s from a financial perspective, a family perspective, or a business perspective. We have momentum from the past, but we’re driven by where we’re going in the future.
DYeah, absolutely. Can you shed some light as well? We talked about strengths being a key component of how you’re able to seize your opportunities and really mitigate some of those dagers. What I’ve found so powerful and part of the framework we’ve built around this holistic wealth strategy is this all starts with you, the person. You have to have a vision for yourself and your family, and then you have to create the right mindset to achieve these things.
Part of that is this unique ability concept, which was new to me. I had done plenty of things like Myers-Briggs and those types of assessments, but nothing was as insightful as unique ability and understanding your cognitive wiring and what works. Can you help elaborate on what unique ability really is and how you can leverage that?
Yeah, and as I do that, let me ask you this question because you brought it up. What did unique ability mean to you? What are the one or two things that meant so much to you, Dave?
It’s the fact that I can double down on my strengths. I’ve given myself permission to double down on my strengths and let go of my weaknesses and have other people fill in the weaknesses.
Absolutely. If you think about all of us, we’ve gone through schooling systems. If you’ve worked for big companies and gone through reviews, everybody tells you what you’ve done wrong and says to work on your weaknesses. In the concept of Strategic Coach unique ability, if we work on our weaknesses, we get strong weaknesses but don’t get further ahead. We’re always put at a disadvantage, never enough, never confident, always in scarcity, lacking something.
We’re measured to somebody else. When we measure ourselves to ourselves, to our strengths, that’s what unique ability is—things we do uniquely well that others don’t. We appreciate each other on an unconscious or subconscious level for what they do and who they are, but we never talk about it. If you think about the whole school system, it trained us this way. In school, you start with 100 and lose marks. Can you think back and remember losing marks for spelling, grammar, etc.? The concept is starting with 100.
You know why gaming and online gaming have been so popular? Because of the scoring. You start with zero and move up by achievement. It’s addictive because we’re achieving something. We think it’s bad that everybody’s using that time, but we’re teaching people how to achieve based on their strengths. They may go to different games that work for them. I used to think this was bad, but I’ve begun to look at it differently. I never fit the mold in the school system. I worked to the level I wanted, not theirs.
I was constantly told I was an underachiever by their measurement system, not mine. So, I only worked to the level I wanted, which negates what the system is set up for. I’m not a fan.
No, I could tell you’re not a fan.
It really helped me deal with our children. That wasn’t the be-all and end-all. What do we need to do? What’s the purpose of going through this? Anyway, coming back to your point about unique ability, I believe everybody has a unique ability. If we work together and bring our unique strengths, we are much stronger as a team because everybody works at what they’re best at doing and what they enjoy doing.
100%, Gary. I would say through my evolution of really understanding unique ability—and I think about it all the time—it’s such a powerful concept because it truly drives fulfillment in a way you wouldn’t have thought. One of our freedoms is having freedom of purpose, to do what it is you want to do. If you’re doing your unique ability, which I know you’re at the 100% goal, my goal is to try to get to 90% of the things I do being all unique ability.
What’s really insightful about this is not only are you good at it, but it’s also the most energizing to you and it comes naturally. Just think about those things that are non-unique abilities. For me, it’s like administrative type things—dealing with bills in the mail, like some insurance bill or hospital bill, or having to troubleshoot some of those things. They’re completely draining and take away all of your energy. Versus things like this, when we’re center stage and having these kinds of discussions, they’re completely energizing and you don’t need that next cup of coffee.
Well, you know, it’s crazy because they think of entrepreneurs as really being very controlling. You know what? I don’t sign a check, Dave. I don’t look at the bank accounts, either personally or professionally. People say, “God, you’re crazy. Why don’t you do that?” I don’t know. Whatever goes out there, people have my authority with the bank to wire millions of dollars a year. My expression is, if we run out of money, you’re the one that’s out of a job. I’m okay.
So, it just keeps it balanced. But it’s not that I don’t care, because I do. What I do care about is that they have the responsibility and the authority to look after it. If you’ve given it to them, you really find out how well people work. But it also allows me to do what I’m best at. When we do what we’re best at, there’s a tremendous amount of energy.
Yeah, energy, and then the value that you can provide your clients just goes up. You’re always increasing your value. I want to come back to what you said earlier about this unique ability and its evolution. I think the beginning is really understanding yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and how you apply that. But the evolution of that is graduating that into teams, and teams also being family.
It’s been so insightful. My daughter, as an example, she’s 23, super high follow-through, and a high implementer as well. When we have some kind of house project, I create the vision, she completely implements everything, and we have so much fun doing it. We all work together. We have a family of six, so sometimes there can be too many cooks in the kitchen doing a family project. But when you understand this unique ability and how people can work together, it becomes really seamless and so much more powerful with what your family can do.
On the same side, I’m doing that with my team. We’re hiring people whose unique abilities are complementary. They’re not just coming with experience. We’re able to be much more congruent as a team.
Well, you brought up a really good point that companies are facing a great deal of right now too, and are going to face, which is people and how to motivate them. We motivate people by allowing them to do what they’re best at. There’s a big difference between management and motivation. Management is getting people to do things they really don’t like and aren’t good at, while motivating is encouraging people to do more of what they already do well. I totally believe in motivation.
Even though our company is relatively small, we haven’t lost anybody through all of this pandemic and lockdown. That’s very unusual. I don’t feel we always do a great job, but when other people from the outside look at us—Christine, who heads up HR for me, has been on a few conferences—they say, “We don’t need your hiring practices because we haven’t lost anybody.” They say, “Wow, you must be doing something right.” That’s the only way I know. We still look at things we haven’t done well.
As people are listening, how do they figure out their unique ability? It’d be great to go through a course or program. Strategic Coach has books about that, written by Julie Waller, which do a fabulous job. But if people think about what they feel like when they’re doing activities, we call it four levels of unique ability.
As you said, you have energy before you start it, energy while you’re doing it, and energy when you’re finished. For me, coaching is one of those activities. I can be up there all day—you’ve seen that experience with me over the last four years. Dan Sullivan saw that in me.
The next level is excellence—things we might have been trained for. I was trained as a chemical engineer. I could do it, Dave, but I’m reasonably good at it without passion. What separates unique ability from excellence is passion. People can tell when you have passion for something and when you don’t. Then we go to competence—no matter what we do, we never get better. It’s frustrating. And then there’s incompetence—it’s so frustrating you procrastinate, don’t do a good job, and don’t feel good about it.
Just get a sense of when you’re enjoying what you’re doing and when it’s causing frustration. Make note of those activities and begin to bring yourself more into the area of what you do well and how others react to you when you’re doing what you enjoy.
That’s so powerful, Gary. Really appreciate you sharing that and creating a systematic way for people to think about it. We’ll put links in the show notes to how you can take your Colby score and also the book that Gary mentioned. Gary, let’s transition now into the overall concept of wealth strategy from a holistic perspective. I really credit you for inspiring me to write my book on holistic wealth strategy. That’s a big win this year; we’re rewriting it, working with the publisher Scribe Media and Tucker Max to put it out. That is underway, and I appreciate your insight.
As we talk about in the book, I see this whole thing as a journey—like Maslow’s hierarchy or a journey to self-actualization. It’s all about providing financial security for yourself and your family. Once you move past that, you can start to create impact and do different things. We have an alternative approach that focuses on private equity and different strategies, but the strategy is holistic. For instance, if you don’t set your vision, if you don’t have a target, you’ll miss it every time. Also, things like health—how much would Steve Jobs have paid to solve his health problem and still be here today? You could have all the wealth in the world, but without health, you wouldn’t get there. It’s an overall mindset and holistic concept. Do you have a philosophy or overarching framework you’ve used personally in your life?
You know, you brought up a lot of things that I certainly resonated with. I always remember the Maslow hierarchy of needs. I think we all have an opportunity to have impact, and the impact we have shouldn’t be measured against others. I’m not going to measure myself against Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and others like Steve Jobs, whom I had a great deal of respect for. These are incredible individuals, and the world is better for their contributions.
But you look at the impact we have—like for you, Dave, you said there are six of you, so I presume you have four children in the family. What we do with our children and how they go out into the world is an immense source of pride for me. The greatest responsibility I felt I took on in life was being a father. I have two children, and I’m very proud of both of them. When you think about the impact you can have on others, it’s significant.
I want to share a story. When I was starting over back in 1998, I was driving down the highway one day. We had just bought a chalet, a ski place north of Toronto. I didn’t have any money; I wasn’t working, but I committed to it. I was driving down and thought, “What do I want to do in my life?” I said, “I want to be involved in a billion dollars worth of business.” That seemed crazy because I wasn’t doing anything. But I realized I didn’t have to have a billion-dollar company. I could be involved with people and companies that would be worth a billion dollars.
What happened, as you would gather, is that through the role I played in Strategic Coach over 25 years, coaching more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and other companies, our own company, I stopped keeping track of that number. But I’m sure it’s well in excess of that number just by adding what everybody else has done.
It became clear to me one day when I started a small scholarship many years earlier at the university I attended. I went to engineering and business in the same schools and started an award called the Entrepreneurial Spirit Award. I had a choice to put it in the business school, which was one of the top three in Canada, or into the engineering faculty. I decided on the engineering faculty because the business school wasn’t very entrepreneurial. They wanted people to go into private equity, capital, banks, Wall Street, and Bay Street.
Fast forward a number of years, and now the university decided to be all entrepreneurial, which raised tons of money. Instead of $1,000 or $2,000 awards, they were $250,000. My program didn’t mean anything, so I decided to give away all the money at once to have an impact.
I was sitting with the alumni representative, a great lady, having dinner one night and told her I wanted to shut down the scholarship and give it away. She got upset and said, “Don’t you want to know that when someone comes later on, they received the Entrepreneurial Spirit Award given by you?” I said, “I’ve started a couple of businesses, worked around the world, have two great children, and coached 3,000 entrepreneurs. I think I’ve got a good legacy. If I’m not making an impact here, I’m just not going to do it.”
It was one of the best decisions I ever made because I stopped thinking about that and put my energy into something else where I could make a difference. If there’s a piece of advice from this, it’s to not worry about what everybody else does. Worry about what you do, where you can make an impact, and what means something to you—whether in a charitable way or with your customers. Go where you can make a difference and where you have a passion for it.
Yeah, absolutely. That’s really sage advice, Gary. I think that’s a good segue into talking about the four freedoms, which is another really powerful concept. I think sometimes people think of these one dimension at a time, but it is really a multiplier when you look at freedom. This is especially true for entrepreneurs, but not only entrepreneurs—I think this will resonate with a lot of people.
Yeah, I used to think it was more appropriate for entrepreneurs, but it actually applies to all of us to certain degrees. Let me just express what it is: the freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and freedom of purpose.
Why are those important? Particularly for entrepreneurs, we got to be where we are because we were probably the proverbial square peg in a round hole and didn’t fit anywhere. We didn’t want to be captive, so we had the energy and wanted to have time. You need to have freedom of time to be able to generate money. But if we generate money, we can also buy time—by building your team so you don’t have to do all of the activities.
Relationships are also important, as you mentioned earlier. There are some people we just don’t get along with, and that’s okay because other people can get along with them. There are others that don’t energize us, whether it’s our clients or friends. Do we want to spend time and energy in those relationships where we don’t see a future? It’s really important to understand people’s futures. The R factor question we ask about where they want to be in three years’ time stands for relationship. Relationships can either drag you down or build you up.
The same goes in a company—you want people on your team who want to be part of that team. I don’t take any prisoners, and I don’t want any passengers in our boat; they all have to be rowing in the same direction.
The fourth one is purpose, which can be harder for people. We’re all driven by our purpose. The clearest way to bring it to people is from Simon Sinek’s book or TED talk called “Start with Why.” People understand your why probably better than you do, and people buy into your why. If your why is about them—how to make them better—my purpose is helping people and organizations grow. That’s my purpose for you, my family, my team, my clients, and my vendors. It makes life quite simple when your purpose in all aspects of your life is the same, and you can fully devote to it.
I enjoy being on this podcast because we can help people grow and think about their world in a way they hadn’t thought about, relieving some of their stresses and applying their energy to having the time, freedom of time, money, relationships, and ultimately pursuing their purpose.
That’s really well said. I think, for me, it was an evolution of different thinking constructs that helped me to get to my purpose. I still have my notes, Gary, from four years ago when I was answering the DOS question on a good thinking day, and one of my top opportunities was to build a business out of wealth building. I literally wrote that down. Awesome. Then, trying to use my strengths to get there.
The purpose of this company for me is to really give back to people and have an impact, taking all these learnings from my personal and professional growth, as well as from a wealth standpoint. All these alternative things aren’t taught in school. It took so long to learn that, so I’m trying to encapsulate that and use my high follow-through and systematic approach to articulate it in a way that people can take action.
Dave, I have a question for you because it sounds easy. Do you feel a great sense of responsibility?
100%. Even more every day. As we get to do this, we take on more responsibility and have to appreciate the role we play in other people’s lives. I can talk about many things, but one that I go back to is right after 9/11. I coached two days later, and people drove up to Toronto and came across the border. We were still in shock, and I coached about 10 days later. At that point, I realized how important coming to Strategic Coach was for all our clients. I said, “Holy smokes, talk about magnifying what it meant to be there.” Since then, appreciating that as we move towards having our freedoms, we also take on more responsibility because of the impact we have on other people’s lives.
Looking back on my career, when I was 22, I was a new second lieutenant in the Marine Corps with 42 people working for me and millions of dollars of equipment that I was responsible for in combat. I thought that was the ultimate responsibility, but now, with four kids and a family of six, I’m responsible for taking on people’s precious capital they’re investing in our opportunities. So even more responsibility to protect, preserve, and grow that, and provide value for them as well.
You’ve carried that sense of responsibility from when you were 22, which many young men today don’t have. You’ve been able to carry that into wealth management and wealth planning, making it a more complete package. I hope others can appreciate their lives and accomplishments, not just for the things that happened to them but for what they did.
Gary, if you could give one piece of advice to listeners about their trajectory in life, what would it be?
You’re going to make what is perceived as mistakes, but learn from them. Take note of how you feel, what’s worked for you, and refine your path in the direction that’s working. The good feedback you get is what others value about you. We’re here to make the world a better place, so serve others’ purposes as well as your own. Pay attention to your journey and enjoy it, no matter your age or experiences.
Gary, how can folks connect with you or follow you?
They can follow me on my podcast, “Clarity Generates Confidence,” on Spotify, Apple, Google, and our website at www.gcpindustrial.com. I have a new book coming out called “From Hindsight to Foresight,” which encapsulates many of the things we’ve discussed. Also, check out Strategic Coach at strategiccoach.com for resources and online tools. There are in-person and virtual workshops available.
Gary, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Really grateful and fun being in the role reversal and getting to ask you some good questions.
It’s different for me, but I loved it. Hopefully, we’ve created some value for your audience, Dave. Thank you.