Name: Matt Bramson

Title: Founder & CEO

Organisation: Greenwyze

Matt Bramson is a seasoned management consultant and business strategist with a proven track record of driving growth and innovation. As the founder of Greenwyze, Matt specializes in helping mid-market home improvement companies unlock the power of customer referrals to generate profitable, sustainable growth.

With a deep understanding of go-to-market strategies and a passion for empowering businesses to build meaningful customer connections, Matt has positioned Greenwyze as a transformative partner in the industry. His expertise combines strategic insight with actionable execution, making him a sought-after advisor for companies aiming to scale effectively and authentically.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

We’ve gone through the interviews and asked the best of the best to come back and answer 7 MORE Questions on Leadership.

I hope Matt's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. As a leader, how do you build trust with employees, customers and other stakeholders?

Tell them exactly what you are doing, explain why, and then do it. If you need to make adjustments to your plan, communicate and explain that promptly. Many leaders believe that the foundation of trust is sharing evidence of your experience and competency: it isn't. What most engenders trust is clarity on what you WON'T do -- or at least won't do except as a very last resort (like layoffs, price increases, etc.)

2. What do 'VISION' and 'MISSION' mean to you? And what does it actually look like to use them in real-world business?

Vision is a simple concept that is very challenging to realize. Your vision is what you plan for the future to be -- what it looks like, sounds like, feels like, etc.

The more specific, the better. Mission is why you do what you do. Your mission can include problems you want to solve, people you want to help, or competitors you want to crush. Your vision is your destination, while your mission is why you want to get there and why others should help you or join you.

Everyone wants a vision to direct their life and a mission to guide them along the way. A business can be part of that -- for employees, shareholders, and companies -- by linking the business's vision and mission to them personally. In this way, a business can potentially address a universal human need of people to be part of something bigger than themselves. This can drive increased loyalty, productivity, innovation, and more.

3. How can a leader empower the people they're leading?

Implement and lead a process of consistently, monthly or at least quarterly, delegating tasks -- from the C-level to VPs, from VPs to Directors, etc. The idea is to identify a task that you perform regularly, but that you won't learn anything new by performing it again. Let's say, for example, approving expense reports over $5,000 as a VP. So you teach your Director how to do it, oversee her doing it once or twice following your methodology, and then you stop doing it -- delegating it to her from then on.

She is empowered, trusted, and encouraged, while you are freed up to focus on more strategic tasks. She does the same to her Managers and so on. It's a simple approach, but it works. It also steadily builds stronger leaders throughout the organization.

4. Who are some of the coaches or mentors in your life who have had a positive influence on your leadership? Can you please tell a meaningful story about one of them?

Pistol Pete Maravich taught me about accountability. Here is that story. When I was a teenager, I became obsessed with basketball for a few years. That’s how you become as good at something as possible. And so, for a couple of weeks in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I went to a local basketball camp. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but when I signed up, I had no idea what made the camp special. It just happened to be near my home, and a teammate of mine was going there too. But this camp was special because it was run by legendary basketball all-star Pistol Pete Maravich and his father, successful college coach Press Maravich.

The organizers of the camp shrewdly set us young men straight within a few hours of our arrival by ushering us into an auditorium and showing us a college and pro highlight film of Pistol Pete. Wow! Most of us had no idea that someone had ever AVERAGED 44 points per game over a college career — and this was before the three-point shot or the shot clock. His innovative style of play was groundbreaking and changed the sport forever. We walked out of that auditorium in spellbound awe.

A few days later, I was on the court laboring to accomplish one of the meticulous rituals that Pistol Pete insisted upon: no one left the gym for dinner without first making ten free throws in a row. After making four in a row, I sensed a presence over my right shoulder. I knew it was Pistol Pete. He was an intense and, to my sixteen-year-old self, intimidating person. So, of course, I missed the next free throw. He stepped up directly behind me and asked, “What happened there, son?” As I started to answer him with something like, “the ball rolled off the outside of my hand as I was releasing it”, he said something remarkable that I’ve thought about and repeated to others many times since.

Pistol Pete took me by the shoulders and turned me so that we were facing and eye-to-eye. The basketball legend and I were exactly the same height. He looked into my eyes, got my complete attention with a preamble of “I want you to remember one thing”, and uttered a single sentence. “Wherever the ball goes, that's exactly where you shot it.” And then he paused for a few seconds, watching my reaction closely. My face must not have betrayed what my teenage self nearly replied — something like, “well, duh!” — because he nodded his head, patted me on the shoulder, and walked away to coach someone else. A few months later, fittingly during a pickup basketball game, he died. But that brief encounter left a huge impression on me.

I’ve used this story and that line in dozens of meetings with teams and individuals. On the one hand, the line is trite: of course, the ball only goes where you shoot it. But on the other hand, it’s profound: if we are not succeeding — an individual or a team—we need to dispassionately look at what we have done to get there and make adjustments. And, perhaps even more than that, what makes it great coaching advice is that, even if it’s not always true, it’s the only practical way to look at most situations. Maybe a breeze did blow your shot off course; maybe you were distracted by movement in your peripheral vision; or maybe the ball did have an imperfection. But since none of those factors are controllable by you, pointing to them won’t help your performance on your next shot.

Pistol Pete’s sage advice to me that day didn’t turn me into a basketball legend like he was. I never scored 44 points in any game at any level. But it imparted a piece of his essence: the understanding of accountability for where your ball goes. It was a great gift, and I wish I’d had the wisdom and maturity to tell him so. “Coach Maravich, I will remember and I will share this with many other people when they need to hear it. Thank you, sir”, is what I should have said. And now I have.

5. Leadership is often more about what you DON'T do. How do you maintain focus in your role?

I try my best to focus on setting goals and metrics to measure progress while staying out of the execution details.

I do this for three reasons:

1) I'm honestly not great at the details or can lack patience for narrow discussions;

2) I want others to be fully empowered and accountable for their roles;

3) I never want to squash innovation -- very often, people have better ways of accomplishing things than I do.

6. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Everyone plans differently. How do you plan for the week, month and years ahead in your role?

I am a big fan of extended action plans -- with the greatest focus on quarterly timeframes.

I find that a quarter is the best chunk of time to work with: not too long so that things can stall or get off course to a disastrous extent, and not too short so that it becomes a form of micromanagement. My 90-day action plans are typically divided into weeks with specific weekly tasks and goals.

7. What advice would you give to a young leader who is struggling to delegate effectively?

Two things I would advise: 1) Honestly/vulnerably assess your strengths and weaknesses (this isn't always easy but it's crucial) and focus on delegating your weaknesses to others for whom its a strength (or at least not a weakness they share with you) and 2) utilize the methodology I shared earlier of delegating at least one specific responsibility every quarter to a qualified subordinate.

I would also advise a young leader not to fear delegation, as many do. It's natural to be concerned that you can delegate yourself into irrelevancy -- and you can.

The way you avoid this is to simultaneously lean into and amplify the impact of your strengths to the organization. This is how you get promoted -- not by being a whiz at a smaller role that you master and keep all to yourself in a typically ill-fated attempt at indispensability.