HI, I'M COACH MATT
OFFICIAL BIO
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Matt Savarick is an active investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and performance coach who works with individuals and companies to catalyze personal and organizational change. He is considered to be one of the premier performance and mindset coaches in the U.S. and has coached and advised start-up founders, Fortune 500 executive teams, professional athletes, celebrities, artists, political figures, and, often, their families. For leaders, coaching comes to life by unlocking and scaling executive skills - ​​actions, will, and commitment, anchored to norms, accountability, and integrity - while building cultures of collaboration, sustained high performance, and psychological safety.
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Matt brings a broad senior executive portfolio to his coaching practice with leadership positions spanning sales, marketing, customer success, operations, learning, and development. Many of the J.T.B.D. (Jobs To Be Done) revolve around People, Process, and Performance... but most often, People - the critical asset in modern economies around the globe. Matt is a well-rounded mental and physical health, mindset, and performance expert. He has deep expertise in building and running cross-functional teams at multiple leading healthcare and technology firms with a keen focus on helping hyper-growth companies prepare for exit and scale beyond M&A or going public. He helped build Stryker into the world’s leading medical device manufacturer, from when it was a small public company, owned the revenue of a top-producing sales vertical at TriNet, a Fortune 50 company, surpassing $3B in annual revenues, was on the founding leadership team of Headspace's B2B division, owned and scaled all commercial revenues at Talkspace to prepare for a public offering, along with various other leadership and coaching roles at Equinox, ReThink First, and LetsGetChecked. Matt also co-founded and is a General Partner of Iter Investments - an early-stage venture capital fund helping to solve the global mental health crisis.
Matt enjoys giving his free time giving back to his community with a focus on children, teens, veterans, J.E.D.I., and marginalized communities. Matt and his beloved wife Ashley live in South Florida with their 2 children and pup Coconut.
MY STORY
UNOFFICIAL BIO
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“Who is this person, really?”
“Are they fulfilled?”
“What is the texture of their experience?”
“What is their life really really like?”
These are things I always wonder about when I read someone’s bio.
So here’s a bit more about my life so far…
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3 shifts in my life -
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Shift 1:
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My peripheral vision went dark. My life flashed before me. I fell to my knees. I was choking.
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I’ve choked before, but not like this. It was silent. With no oxygen to my brain, only one thing appeared in my mind’s eye during this near-death experience - a crystal clear vision of me on my deathbed at my funeral surrounded by all of my friends and family - and a voiceover:
"Dearly Beloved, We gather here today to honor the memory of our friend Matt Savarick. He died without doing the thing he dreamt of.”
In that moment, I made the decision, that if I survived, I would dedicate the rest of my life to helping others live up to their potential. If you know me, it's what I'm built for! Always have been, always will be. Performance coaching is the most impactful way to achieve lasting, meaningful change. I had been coaching for years, but always maintained a 9-5 job (or as I call it, a 5-to-9) at some of the world's most respected organizations, but this near-death experience showed me that my true calling was to choose to coach full-time.
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This isn't a dress rehearsal - it's the show - and the show is life.
Well, here I am! Alive. Well. Fulfilled. Today, I am a full-time coach - coaching every single day. Living my vision, which is all about helping you uncover and live yours. My clients call me Coach Matt.
My wife Ashley and I spent the last decade building several $100M+ ARR companies, teams of 100+ people, and raising over $1B in venture capital to achieve meaningful exits. Then, in 2018, together, we made the choice for Ashley to walk away from her leadership role at a hyper-growth startup and build a family. We founded Savarick Enterprises to spend our time working on projects we are inspired by, passionate about, and can have the greatest impact on this planet, with an overarching mission to leave it better than we found it. Philanthropy is at the heart of all we do. More on B.O.G.O. (#BuyOneGiveOne) in a bit and how you can get involved.
We love what we do!
My entire professional career has been built around building high-performing revenue engines that scale. And I got pretty darn good at it. Anchoring to scalability and repeatability became my mantra. The 3 Ps - People, Process, and Performance had become a science more than an art. Marching toward quarterly/monthly/weekly/daily goals was my life for over a decade and I had perfected the science of sales. I missed the art. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where humanity happens. That’s where flow, alignment, engagement, compassion, and so much more flourish. So, it’s time for me to get back to doing something that doesn’t scale - the art part. Here’s to reigniting my right brain. On purpose. Rolling up my sleeves and diving in deeply with people who are ready - ready to do the work necessary to find peace, fulfillment, balance, space, harmony, and, on the other side of those things, is often the next stratosphere of renewal, energy, love, and power. I know it. I’m living this experience with you.
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Most coaches have a script and charge by the hour. These coaches tweak, polish, and adjust your life and/or your business – a little. That’s not me. I’m not in the business of transaction, but rather transformation. I change lives. I have no set curriculum because YOU are my material. My methodology is in your speaking, actions, relationships, hopes, dreams, work, fears, love, and loss.
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Steve Hardison, The Ultimate Coach, captured the essence of my coaching best;
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“You speak. I listen. We dance. Your life ignites.”
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My superpower is unconditional love and presence. With those tools, we’ll get to the core. I celebrate the experience of being with another human in the space of created mutual trust. It's becoming an ancient artifact in the hyper-connected, yet disconnected world we live in. I am constantly astonished at what gets generated when two or three people sit together, speak, and listen from a space of safety and directness.
There is nothing quite like creating this space. 1 + 1 = 3.
Confidentiality and discretion are at the heart of what we do.
Why do already-successful people need a coach?
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It's a want. It's a desire. It’s a choice.
No matter how well-trained you are, few can sustain their best performance on their own. That’s where coaching comes in. Many people are not ready for their opportunity or lucky break when it comes to them; not ready to achieve the next level of growth, happiness, and fulfillment. The prepared person is positioned to benefit from unexpected opportunities.
My natural state is happily being the guide on the side - not the sage on the stage… that’s YOU! I am here to be your co-pilot. I look forward to jumping into the cockpit with you and immersing myself in your life.
I look forward to what we will create together.
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I will bring my all and I expect you to do the same.
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It wasn’t always like this. It’s been quite the journey, which I look forward to telling you about. It started with solving my own mental health puzzles. Easier said than done.
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Shift 2:
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I was sad, angry, confused, dejected, lonely, hopeless, anxious, and riddled with self-doubt. This part of the story begins on July 4th, 1992. We lost my older brother Joshua Star Savarick that night; my mentor, my confidant, my sounding board, and my best friend. We were extremely close.
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He took his own life.
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I miss him every day.
At this point in time, there was no one talking about suicide in my orbit. Or mental health. Or death and life more broadly, for that matter. It certainly wasn't normalized to share my lived experience or my feelings.
Within 22 months, I had lost my big brother, my uncle, and 3 of my grandparents. It was a lot for a young person to handle and left deep wounds.
I was willing to do almost anything to not feel the pain of losing my brother Josh. I was not able to handle life and accountability without rationalizing, blaming, or shutting down. I didn’t feel like I was living, let alone ALIVE.
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Allowing myself to “feel” was often far too painful. Being the sensitive young man I was, allowed me to feel too much. The best path forward, I thought, was to take the edges off, as they say. I became an expert at numbing myself and sweeping it all under the rug. I used food, alcohol, drugs, school, work, caretaking, and whatever else I could get my hands on to numb my anxiety and vulnerability.
The emotional, mental, and spiritual pain I felt was worsening. Sweeping it all under the lumpy rug was not working. I know how dark some of these places can be because I’ve been there. They are unspeakably dark. It's hard to convey the horror when you are in the middle of it, and it feels as if there’s no way out.
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More specifically, there was one single moment in time that shifted everything. The moment someone gave me the gift of coaching.
As a young man, I had the opportunity to work with a life coach and explore my mindset in somewhat non-traditional ways, starting with mindfulness and meditation. She sat with me and helped me understand that “you can change and improve your mind just like you can your body.” It was the first time I had someone other than my parents, teachers, or a sports coach, coach me. She went on to explain, that our minds and thus thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, and perspectives are not fixed, but rather malleable. After establishing a well-rounded mental wellness practice with her guidance and coaching, she opened up and shared a seminal life experience when she was a young woman on a retreat over 40 years ago, involving a coach.
The relationship we developed, is one of the most formative, influential, and important threads in the tapestry of my life. With her guidance, I was able to gain perspective in a way I had never before regarding the game of life. I felt great clarity and surefootedness - something I had not experienced steeped in the fog of despair. From then on, I was different. I gained confidence in myself. I became fearless. There was an absence of fear inside me so I was able to take meaningful action toward goals I cared about. I saw the world in a new way with lightness and brightness all around. More at peace with greater access to love and compassion for the planet, and people.
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In school, I enrolled in all the multidisciplinary courses I could get my hands on - sociology, philosophy, neuroscience, interpersonal communication, physiology, genetics, psychology, and mental health, to name a few. I was tinkering. Curious. Open. And the subject under the microscope was me. Outside of school, I dove in head first too; attending all seminars, classes, workshops, masterminds, certifications, support groups, and experiences, that might provide a clue, a blueprint, a roadmap for me to get back to myself. I was so deeply curious about how brain imaging, personality, societal norms, chemistry, cross-cultural analysis, non-verbal communication, history, and so much more, amounted to my own personal experience as a human on this planet. This learned curiosity and, well, coachability, has shaped the man, father, son, husband, friend, colleague, and coach I have become. It ignited a desire in me to work in healthcare with a specific focus on mental and behavioral health.
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Having the right words and feelings can open up entire universes. Language is our portal to meaning-making, healing, connection, learning, and self-awareness. It often starts with talking. I am here to help shine a bright white light on the darkness, with you. I know that light will drown out the dark. There is so much greatness in the shadows - we just must look, on purpose, lock eyes with it, and develop a practice therein.
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Shift 3:
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After my father passed away unexpectedly just before my wedding, I was crushed. If your parents are around, stop reading and send them some love right now. I took a huge risk leaving the executive ranks after building a top-producing sales team within a Fortune 50 publicly-traded company to jump in on the ground floor of a new meditation and mindfulness app, Headspace. I wanted to work on a project I deeply believed in - mental health support in the workplace - which, at the time, was not a top priority for most CHROs, let alone even on their radar. I was laughed out of a lot of rooms, but I woke up feeling fulfilled knowing that the toolkits I was selling, helped me along my path so there must be some people out there whom they may also help. I was curating a fundamental understanding of mindset and a complementary set of tools to sleep better, focus more, dance with stress, deepen relationships, and enjoy life overall. The risk paid off and the newly formed B2B division of Headspace, which is now Headspace for Work, quickly became one of the fastest growing offerings in the industry.
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There you have it. The 3 BIG shifts in my life - all related to death - have brought me to this very moment. The key is that, with guidance, I was able to take these life experiences, which I had no control over, and proactively use them in positive ways. Controlling the controllables. My life's work has focused on change and growth. Change is hard, but if you're not changing, you're not growing.
Together, we will explore how you want to feel when you take your last breath, and work backward from there.
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Today, I do what I love with the people I love. I live in my dream home in one of my favorite cities in the world. I’m madly in love with my beautiful wife Ashley. I’ve built a life around being present with my 2 wonderful children. And I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in.
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Now it's time for us to work together. If you're ready.
When I say - "you can have it all" - I’m speaking from experience.
I see no limits, no obstacles, I see everything as possible. I believe you can be anyone, have anything, and be with anyone you want, but only if you're willing to do the work.
I’ll leave with 2 questions we’ll begin our first session with:
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1. Who are you?
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2. Why are you here?
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This is my story; thanks for listening. I’d love to hear yours.
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Love,
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Coach Matt