About Me.

I believe a good business should fit the person running it.

Not just their skills or ambitions, but who they are, how they naturally like to work and the life they want to live.

I’m Matt Linnert. For more than 20 years I’ve worked closely with small business owners, while building businesses of my own.

Over that time, I’ve become increasingly convinced there isn’t one right way to run a business. There’s a way that’s right for you.

I can’t be a Chameleon anymore.

For much of my early working life, I did what a lot of ambitious people do.

I worked hard. I adapted. I tried to become whatever each situation seemed to require of me.

At that time, I didn’t even realise I was doing this. And for a while, it worked.

Until it didn’t.

In 2004, I found myself sitting on the floor of my loungeroom, completely exhausted. From the outside, things looked pretty good. But I knew something wasn’t right.

I remember thinking:

I can’t be a chameleon anymore.

That thought would change the direction of my life.

I decided to stop continually changing myself to fit into the world around me, and start working out how to build a way of working and living that fitted me.

Following my curiosity.

Let’s go back a little further.

I’ve always been curious about how things work - particularly why people think, behave and experience life so differently.

In 1992, I began studying education, majoring in Mathematics. I loved the logic of maths, but became just as interested in how differently people learn and make sense of things.

That curiosity kept taking me in different directions. Later I studied financial planning to better understand money and the choices it gives us, and trained in yoga therapy to explore what thousands of years of thinking might teach us about ourselves.

I’ve also travelled widely, experiencing different cultures and ways of living along the way.

I’m less interested in having all the answers than asking better questions - and letting the answers come naturally.

Building a life that fitted me.

After 2004, that curiosity took on a more personal question: what would it look like to build a working life that actually fitted me?

The goal wasn’t to build the biggest business I could. It was to find a way of working and providing for my family that felt right for me.

What surprised me was how much of my nature came alive when I found the right way to do it. I loved solving problems, creating opportunities and helping other people make sense of themselves and their world too.

I didn’t realise small business would be my path, but that’s what happened - and I’m so grateful it did.

Rather than taking everything from me, business gave something back. I had energy for my work, and more of myself available for my family and the rest of my life.

Over the years I’ve run this business, built and sold another with a business partner, and walked alongside hundreds of other business owners.

The business was never the point. Honouring my nature and finding a way to work and live that genuinely suited me was.

Having a go at something different.

I could see an opportunity to use what I already knew in a new way. The idea was to create an online education hub to help advance financial literacy.

It evolved into a platform used by superannuation funds and financial planning organisations to support their members and clients.

I knew the project needed strengths I didn’t have, so I teamed up with Rob Skinner, whose strengths complemented mine and who believed in the vision as much as I did.

Along the way, I learnt a lot about partnerships, leadership, technology, sales and building something with other people. In 2015, Innergi was acquired by IRESS, completing the journey from idea and incubation through to commercialisation and sale.

Innergi was another expression of the same values and personality - just packaged differently. It showed me there’s more than one way to build a business that fits.

Doing remarkable things together.

Collective Heart started with a fairly simple idea: bring together a group of community-minded people and see what might happen.

What followed was special. Over the years, people gave their time, skills, money and energy to support projects locally and overseas. We raised and distributed well over $150,000 directly, with individual members contributing much more beyond that.

But the relationships mattered just as much. Some of my favourite moments were simply seeing people turn up, work together and wholeheartedly contribute however they could.

Collective Heart thrived for around ten years. The friendships, experiences and moments it created will stay with us for life.

It reinforced something I’ve come to believe deeply: we all have something to contribute. And when the right people come together around something they care about, a lot can happen.

And here we are.

When I look back, there isn’t one experience that led me here. It’s been a combination of business, learning, family, travel, getting things right, getting things wrong and staying curious.

Over time, it’s led me back to something surprisingly simple.

We’re different.

What energises one person drains another. We have different strengths, values and ideas about what makes a good life. The better we understand our own nature and respect the nature of others, the better choices we can make.

And yet, we’re remarkably similar too.

Nobody wants more stress, pain or heartache. Beneath our differences, most of us are looking for some version of the same things: ease, peace and joy.

Understanding the dance between what makes us unique and what we share sits underneath pretty much everything I do today.

Aside from work.

Aside from work, I’m a husband and dad to two almost-grown-up kids.

I love travelling, being outdoors, time in the ocean, catching up with friends and anything that reminds me of all the things I can enjoy beyond business.

I still enjoy my work enormously. I like interesting conversations, helping people make sense of things and following ideas to see where they lead.

Mostly, I feel incredibly fortunate to have built a life where the things that matter to me don’t have to compete with each other.

Thanks.

So that’s a bit about me.

We could go much deeper into these moments and plenty of others, but I think that’ll do for now.

If something you’ve read here makes you think we might enjoy a conversation, get in touch.

I genuinely enjoy meeting new people.