SUMMARY     Matt: Hey, I'm Matt Gray, founder of Leveld. Marcus: Awesome, Matt. Well it's good to have you on the podcast. Matt: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it. Marcus: Yeah, absolutely. So we'll get into a little bit about what Leveld is here in just a minute, but to get started, why don't you tell us the story of Matt. Where are you from? Where did you go to high school? Did you go to college? Married? Anything else you want to share with the audience. Matt: Well I'm a simple creature for the most part. So yeah, I grew up in ... born in Alabama, actually born up near Birmingham, spent a lot of my childhood in Alabama, grew up just out in West Mobile, I actually grew up in Mississippi, West Mobile was always our home. Marcus: That is considered West Mobile by now, right? Matt: Yeah, well you know, some people argue that, right? Marcus: [crosstalk 00:00:51] Matt: Yeah, yeah. So I grew up in Mississippi, all my family is there. Went to school there in Mississippi, near Hattiesburg, I actually graduated high school there, little small town called Purvis, Mississippi, and from there, went to school at Mississippi State University, got my engineering degree. Mechanical Engineering is my background, so the tech venture and all of the things that I'm diving into here with Leveld has been new for me. But yeah, I'm a single entrepreneur if you will. I've spent a lot of my early career, early life traveling the world. My first career out of college took me abroad to about nine different countries, so I spent the first three to four years living out of a suitcase if you will. So just kind of traveling around. I spent a lot of time in Asia and Africa, and made my way back here to Mobile about a year and a half ago, to this area, and started trying to figure out what's next for Matt, what's next in the journey. So I kind of came up with the concept of Leveld, and it started getting really rooted here in this area, here in Mobile on the eastern shore, so this has just kind of been where I set up shop if you will. Marcus: Yeah. Matt: Spending all of my time here, so. I'm calling it home if you will. I'm putting down a flag. Marcus: Yeah. I know you ... I mean, when we talked originally, you had mentioned that you were doing a lot of traveling and stuff- Matt: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Marcus: So I'm glad to hear that some of that's calming down, because I know that as Leveld kind of grows, that the focus you're going to need to have is ... traveling is not going to mix well with that. Matt: Sure. Well there's a good bit of personal time that you could use there that works well for you. I get a lot of my inspiration, a lot of the great ideas I've had, I've learned from abroad, my travels abroad, but yeah, absolutely. It's imperative I guess at this point, when you're trying to launch a business or a company or anything like that, you really have to spend a lot of your time and focus in the business and not so much in airports and traveling, so it's got its balance for sure, so yeah. Marcus: So tell us about Leveld. Matt: Okay. Marcus: What is it? What do people need to know? Matt: So when I kind of brand it to people and people who have no idea what we're doing, I pitch it as we're just like Airbnb, but for tools and equipment. So granted, I'm not licensed to use Airbnb as a reference or their name, but we're taking that platform and we've kind of put our own little spin on it. We've innovated a little bit in trying to implement that type of marketplace, peer to peer interaction, into a new industry that really hasn't had much of that yet. If any yet. So Leveld is an out based marketplace, essentially, where we bring together two people who have a problem. We have, on one side, we have people who have tools, equipment, whether it be large equipment, small equipment, lawn equipment, whatever that is, might have that in their house, their garage. We tend to find, or at least I have so far, where you have a lot of angry spouses who said, "Oh, I've got a garage full of stuff that I would love for my spouse to get out there and get out of our way." So you have these people who have a lot of inventory that's not being utilized. They spend a lot of money, it's being used a few times a year, and it's just kind of thrown out of the way, right? Out of sight, out of mind. So that's one side of the fence. On the other side of the fence, we have people who need items throughout the year to do projects around their home, whether it's a DIY project or some kind of larger undertaking that they've decided to do themselves- Marcus: Renovating a potential office space. Matt: Renovating, right. Building a new office space, absolutely. Just like you. After this is over, hit me up, we might could work. But yeah, you have folks who don't necessarily want to invest time and money in purchasing things, they don't have space to store things, and maybe they don't use it but a few times a year or a few times every couple of years, so it doesn't make economic sense for them to buy something. So the polar opposites there, that's what we're here to connect. So we created this marketplace where we can allow people to put their own items on there. They set their own price, they set their own availability to rent it in and out, and it's a great way for those folks to make some passive income, right? I mean, they've got a lot of money invested potentially into these things, and it's just sitting around, so why not put it out there to work for you? Marcus: Now, I mean, I'm keenly aware because I have tons of tools that literally just sit, and my issue is just time. You know, like the idea of sitting down, and I'm sure this is going to get easier. And I'm not making a judgment call on the app, so let's be clear, but even just sitting down for two or three minutes would be a bit much right now with a renovation project and running a business, but getting some of those in so that I can make those kinds of transactions is interesting to me because I've got all kinds of power tools and torque wrenches and all kinds of other stuff that just sits around unused, so. But yeah. Go back in your history to your first job, and not your first engineering job, but your first burger flipping job or sweeping the floor job, that job. Your first crap job, how about that? Were there any lessons that you still remember from that? Matt: My first job that I ever had, I started when I was fifteen years old working for a local ... he was an entrepreneur himself, he was very successful in real estate and construction, and he had a large farm, and I went to work for him afternoons after school, weekends, that type of thing. And even today, when I'm going through a challenge or when I'm faced with something in business or even in my "day job", there's one thing that resonates with me from working for him, and one thing he used to say all the time, he said, "If there's a will, there's a way." So anytime you're in business, anytime you come across challenges, there is a way, I should say, if you're willing to look for it. If you look hard enough. And that's been something that really has resonated for me. Yeah, is to really think about that anytime you hit a roadblock. If there's a will, there's a way to get around this, there's a way to get through it. Marcus: Absolutely. Matt: Yeah. Marcus: Yeah. And setting your intentions on that positive outlook versus, "Oh my gosh, the sky is falling." Matt: Right. If you focused on the negative, you'd just give up and quit, right? If you focused on the negative, you wouldn't be moving into a new office space, right? You wouldn't be growing your business. So you have to be able to look at the positive side of it and think, "Well, there's always an out. There's always a way to get around something." Right? So- Marcus: Yeah. No, very good. Matt: And search it out. Marcus: So tell us a little bit about how you started Leveld? How did that come to fruition and what efforts have you kind of undertaken so far? Matt: So the idea came about, I was sitting in a conference actually through my prior job, and we were listening to a speaker, the keynote speaker, his name was Jack Uldrich, and he was ... and he is, I think, a New York best-selling author, I guess, if you will ... New York Times best-selling author. And he was giving a presentation on kind of the evolution of technology, and he was really kind of looking in the present where we are and kind of flipping backwards in real time on the screen as to where we came from, what we were. Really, he focused around Uber, right? Twenty years ago, no one would have thought about sharing a car with a random stranger- Marcus: Shoot, man. Five years ago, nobody would have thought about it. Matt: Well five years ago, for sure, and he was really showing the rapid expansion of technology in about a twenty year span, so he was kind of flipping back and forth between twenty years and now, present day. This was a year and a half, two ye