Meet Matt Alexander

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Matt Alexander. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Matt, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I think that resilience is one of those things that you build over time just as many things are in life. Your resilience gets stronger and stronger as you get through challenges you face in life and start stacking up wins one by one.

For me my first big challenge was getting laid off from my first corporate “career” job at US Foods a year after moving to Colorado from Georgia. My business partner, Nick and I were living in Boulder at the time, and I remember him asking me what I was going to do, and I didn’t have an answer. Funny enough, a week later he came home and let me know he just got laid off as well. I was like “Well shit, what are we going to do” Ultimately, both of us getting laid off in December of 2010 was the impetus for us starting Georgia Boys BBQ. In the moment, it was scary as hell, but we put our heads down and made things happen. From December until about May of 2011 we operated what we like to call a “black market BBQ business” out of our apartment delivering BBQ to local businesses all around Boulder. In July of 2011, we officially opened the doors of Georgia Boys BBQ at our original location in Longmont, CO that we affectionally called “The Shack”

Over the past 13 years since we opened the business, we have faced so many challenges both big and small. In the early days, we had to bootstrap everything and there were many moments, where we were one payroll away from going out of business. I remember in 2014 when we about to open our second location in Frederick, we realized we weren’t going to make payroll if we didn’t open the doors a week earlier than we had planned. That’s exactly what we did, and we opened without proper training of the staff, and it was an absolute nightmare in the beginning, but we made it through it and became better because of it. We’ve also learned a lot about what it means to be the leaders of a growing business and in the beginning, we were pretty “green” to put it lightly. Put that together with an already notoriously high turn-over industry and we definitely dealt many challenges when it comes to building our leadership team. Every challenge we have faced and overcome has built our resilience stronger and not to mention our confidence and skillsets. We’ve learned that you just have to keep pressing forward and making progress while also learning the lessons along the way, so you don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over.

The Covid pandemic really highlighted our resilience as leaders and as a company. While it was the most difficult time of my career, looking back a few years later I realize that we are a very resilient company. We finished 2020 only 10% down from a record high 2019 when most of our industry was 90% down year over last in 2020. It by no means was easy, but we made quick pivots and bold moves, and it paid off by allowing us to come out of the pandemic stronger than we were before.

These days it’s much harder to really rattle us just because we feel like we have seen it all over the last decade. I know we can’t get complacent though because there is always an unexpected challenge right around the corner. We just have to keep stacking wins and making progress forward.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Me and my business partner created Georgia Boys BBQ out of a love for Southern BBQ and Southern Hospitality. In moving to Colorado from Georgia in 2009, we found that it was really hard to find a restaurant that reminded us of South. A place that felt like home serving “home-cooked” food made with love. That’s exactly what we set out to do in 2011 when opened our first location in Longmont, CO. Since then, we now have two other locations in Frederick and Greeley as well as two food trucks that roam the Northern Front range. We also opened Georgia Boys Commercial Services which is a refrigeration and HVAC company that focuses on commercial refrigeration including all restaurant equipment as well.

These days we are focused on growing the company in a sustainable way that doesn’t lose the soul of the business. We are looking to open a new more streamlined location in the near future which will become the go to model for corporate and franchise locations in the future. Our current three restaurants are very large 5500 – 8300 sq ft full-service operations that are amazing but hard to replicate with today’s real estate cost. We want to bring the average size down to the 3000 – 4000 sq ft range and streamline some of the operations to improve efficiencies. We’ve been very careful to not give away any equity over these last 13 years and funded all the growth ourselves, but we are now at a stage of growth that we are hoping to bring on a strategic partner to help us pave the way forward. We believe the brand has legs and can grow beyond the front range market. We’re excited for the future and growth of the company.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three invaluable qualities that I feel have been impactful on my journey would be:

1. Stay humble and always strive to be learning. There have been countless times where I have had to show humility in one way or another and every time, I find that it becomes a blessing in my life or in business. The best leaders are the ones who realize they don’t know everything and in turn are really good listeners.

2. Be of service to your staff and customers. This is actually one of our three Core Values and I have found it to be a vital key to our success. It is our job as leaders to “be of service” to our team. For me and my business partner, this usually means that we need to be of service to our leadership team and they need to be of service to the front-line staff. It falls in line with “Servant Leadership” mindset.

3. Spend time on the “Big Picture”. A great mentor of ours years ago told us that we need to spend more time “working on the business” than “working in the business” if we want to grow. This is really hard to do in the early years of a startup, but I can’t express enough how important it is to spend time thinking about and creating the vision for your business. The same can be said for your personal life as well. You need to think about the future and where you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years down the road. Have goals and a vision and get it on paper.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

One of the most influential books in my business journey has been The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber. When my business partner and I were first starting out, like many entrepreneurs, we were highly involved in the day-to-day operations, feeling that being hands-on was the key to success. However, after being turned on to Gerber’s book, I resonated with his central message—that we need to work “on” the business rather than “in” the business—completely transformed our mindset.

The book emphasizes the importance of creating systems and processes that allow the business to grow independently of the founders. This was a game-changer for us. Instead of getting bogged down by the daily grind, we realized the power of delegation and the need to build a business model that could run smoothly without us micromanaging every detail. Gerber’s concept of the “entrepreneurial seizure,” where passionate founders often become overwhelmed by the operational aspects, resonated deeply. It encouraged us to shift from technicians to true entrepreneurs.

One of the most valuable lessons was that a successful business is one that can be replicated, scaled, and ultimately, not reliant on any one individual. This allowed us to step back, empower our team, and focus on the bigger picture—strategic growth, culture-building, and long-term vision. It’s not just about running a business; it’s about creating a sustainable entity that thrives beyond the founders. This insight has been pivotal in both our business development and personal growth as leaders.

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