Welcome back to the show. My fellow extraordinary Americans are today’s guests. We have Dr. Matt Markel. 

Matt is an entrepreneur, corporate leader, investor, author, speaker, and engineer. Guided by the belief that there has to be a better way, he has forged I have had a remarkable career as a technology leader and entrepreneur with a background in corporate leadership. In engineering, technology, and product development, he has excelled in both the defense and commercial sectors. 

Doctor Matt is a compelling speaker who simplifies complex topics, drawing on his extensive insight. As the CEO of Spartan Radar, a radar technology company, Doctor Matt is dedicated to advancing radar capabilities through cutting-edge software. 

He’s also the author of Radar for Fully Autonomous Driving, a seminal resource shaping the future of self-driving cars. Beyond this, he’s an active investor in entertainment and retail projects, a founding investor in Amani Resorts and the Business Ethics and Education Commission, and an advisor in the e-commerce and financial domains. 

Dr. Matt Markel’s Journey includes creating and leading the radar division of ghost autonomy and advancing collision avoidance for tension FreeCell drive. Previously, he led the radar team at Weibo, contributing to multiple generations of radar technology for self-driving fleets. At Raytheon, he served as a principal engineering fellow technical director for Raytheon Advanced Electronic Warfare and the principal investigator for radar and EW research programs. 

He’s an extraordinary American. And I’m glad and honored to have him on the show. Doctor. Matt, are you there?

Hey, Cosmos, how’s it going?

It’s doing amazing. Thank you so much, Doctor Matt, for taking the time to do this podcast with us. I’m truly honored. Can you tell the audience more about yourself, your background, and how you started?

Yeah, absolutely. So, I started in the defense industry. I was working on cool things. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do as a kid, but I knew it would probably be technology-related, pretty, and challenging. I started working in defense, and I did that for quite a long time. I was working on some very advanced weapons systems. Some very events, missiles, and so forth. And then, yeah, I started in that and thought I’d never leave defense. 

Then, I had the opportunity, kind of a little bit later in my career, to make a pivot.

So, I pivoted from defense into the weird world of self-driving cars. And didn’t one thing lead to another after that? I did that for a while, building a radar division for another company in the self-driving car space. Then, at the beginning of last year, I pivoted again to work with this company, which I’m leading now, called Spartan Radar. 

So, it’s a great opportunity and journey that I’ve had so much fun doing in every part.

So, Doctor Matt, this is like self-driving cars, which is still a new concept. There are too many people. I will ask you a bit about that later, but what was your strategic vision from when you were in defense? I want to see where you are now and how your career has evolved over the years.

So, that’s great. I think the point is that some people seem to have this vision—some may be smarter than me. You know, maybe the time they were in first grade or second grade or stuff like that. They knew exactly what they would be doing, which wasn’t me. I’m even in the last 20 years, 10 years, five years, etcetera. 

The strategic vision for me hasn’t been. Almost as much as I am. I’m doing it as I’m doing it, and I think that if there’s one strategic vision, it’s like, in everything I do, try to do it very, very well, try to learn as much as possible, try to make as many connections as I possibly can, and learn from it. Make the most of each opportunity. You never know what’s going on. To happen next. Ice, ice, ice shares like I didn’t like what I said. Maybe many smarter people than me had their whole lives planned out, but I didn’t. 

Yeah, I have everything you have. Please make the most of it, which will lead to more opportunities. I think that if there is one strategic vision, like making the most of everything, that will lead to great things that follow, and that will lead to more and more great things.

I see. Matt, what was your alternative career like? What was the motivation factor that keeps you going? Because you know that different people have different motivations and different ways of thinking, but what was it for you that made you so successful in what you’re doing?

That’s a great question; I think it’s Kind of two things. One is that I’ve always liked to work in industries. And in opportunities where they’re you’re doing something bigger than you, right?

For the first almost 30 years of my career, I worked in defense, and that’s super important; that’s what keeps our land safe. You know that on a show like yours, keeping America safe is very important. They had many friends on active duty and worked in many deployments. 

What you think of becomes very personal. What you’re doing is helping keep them safe. I remember when I was just starting. I had a friend who was an F15 pilot, and I was. I would think about what I was doing. I was working on the missiles that went on that jet and would help protect them if they met the bad guys. And I was like, yeah, I’m keeping my friend safe. My fighter pilot friend is safe with my actions, so always work on something bigger than you. That’s for a bigger purpose. 

And the second thing? The thing is, in everything you do, do it with excellence. How much can you do with what you’ve been given, and how much more can you do with what you’ve been given? 

So, I would say they’re the two overarching principles for me.

Doctor Matt, that is amazing. And you’re right. Whenever you have a why, whether it’s about something bigger than yourself or just money, it fuels so much of your path and purpose. I agree more, and that’s something that I want the audience to know: you have to know your why. And ideally, it has to be something bigger than that. 

It doesn’t have to be the same “why” all the time, you know, I served defense, right? I love that working in the self-driving car industry is equally as important because it’s something bigger than you might like. Wait a minute. This is some goofy tech up in Silicon Valley. But when you think about it, and you look at the numbers, we lose in the United States about 43,000 people every year on the roads—43,000 lives lost. And to put that in perspective, most people don’t know how. How do you know that that’s a number like that? But that’s the same number we lose due to breast cancer. So basically, the number of people who die in traffic crashes is equal to the number that died due to breast cancer. 

So, if we can take a bite out of that, that’s an industry doing something good for society. Then, in the industry. We are helping make automobiles safer again, so take a bite out of that. It also makes commercial vehicles safer, so things for big box trucks or off-road vehicles are being constructed. So again, always working on something bigger than you, but it is up to you to be the same thing, the same bigger than you think, throughout your entire career.

No, it’s true, and like the entire concept of saving lives. It is a deep motivational factor in itself. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t know about the statistic that 43,000 people died on the roads. That’s a lot, you know. 

So, Doctor Matt, I wanted to ask if you’ve been an investor and a leader in the corporate world. How do you balance these competing desires?

Yeah, so it’s always good to use two parts of your brain and be able to switch back and forth between different things. Back when I was living in Florida, I was both. When I was living in Los Angeles, I did this as well. Well, I was. Both work as engineers in the corporate world. And I was gigging and recording. I was a musician. 

So, which is it? You’re like, wait a minute, that’s pretty diverse things there. Still, it’s great because you use one part of your brain and one set of skills—one set of social skills, one set of things like how you interact with other people when you’re working a job, especially in defense, in corporate America—an entirely different set of skills. And parts of your brain, how you interact with people, and how you are on stage when you’re a musician. So, that way of balancing one versus the other. 

So, you’re not just using one part of your brain and sticking with that. I’ve, you know, enjoyed the success that brings, at least for me, the balance that it brings with you, the other that keeps you from going on like weird tangents. If you just think of things in one way, this happens all the time. You know the investor, and being a leader in the corporate world is very similar to when you’re. When you’re an investor, you have to take as much data as possible and as quickly as possible so that you can decide on something. But there’s a ton of uncertainty. There are many unknowns, and you have to be very comfortable with that. 

As a CEO, you know there’s still a lot of uncertainty, but it’s a little bit better because you’ve got your hand on the stick, and you can see if I move this way, the company will react this way, the customers will react this way, etcetera. So yeah, there’s more data to use, but it’s a different aspect of your mind.

That’s interesting. Doctor Matt and I know that, throughout your career, you have done a lot of things; there have been some major pivots. Right. What was the reason for your pivoting? How do you multitask and organize the different things whenever you go to a different industry sector?

One of my friends uses a phrase like if you don’t feel imposter syndrome about every 18 months, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough, and I think that’s just a super, super useful motivating thing. It’s so easy to get comfortable and get good at something, and pretty good at something. 

And maybe make a little bit more money doing it. You’ve become the go-to guy, which suddenly becomes a very comfortable situation. You know, you get pretty good, and you continue to add more and more value. But what I found is you have to push yourself out of that. 

So, I’ve made several different pivots. One was when I returned to school in my 30s to get a PhD. 

So, which is, you know, quite a bit older than most people who go up and get a degree that earns their doctorate, I pivoted from the Air Force Research Lab to Raytheon, going from being on the government side of things to being on the industry side of things, and in doing so, I moved my wife. After two months, 2-3 months, and two months, we’ve been married and moved from Florida to Los Angeles. You know, so that was a pretty big pivot. And then, I think I mentioned the pivoting from defense to commercial to the self-driving car industry earlier. I’ve been in defense at that point.

Almost shoot for almost 30 years. I was pretty well known in certain intelligence and technology communities, so I was. I was pretty well known, and to go into the self-driving car space where nobody knew me, not anybody, I hadn’t done anything on the commercial side before. 

So, what does that do? That scares the daylights out of you. It forces you to return to your core of proving yourself and keeping yourself from getting too comfortable. So that’s kind of what I did, it’s it, you know. It keeps you. It keeps pushing you. And again, like I said earlier, part of my strategy is to keep seeing how far we can go. With what we’ve been given,

So, doctor, if somebody, let’s say, is suffering from impostor syndrome or is too afraid to be uncomfortable on a console because this requires a certain level of discomfort, how would you go about advising such a person on overcoming this? 

You don’t Get away from that feeling of doubt, and you don’t get away from that feeling of impostor syndrome. It just, at least for me, I still get it. I was like, oh my gosh, sometimes there’s, you know, even in certain things that I’m pretty good at. I was like, yeah, eventually going to, you know, find out I’m not all that good at it, you know? 

So, I get it. You know, kind of these, these weird things. But I think everybody does that, and that’s what I would say to someone. It’s like it’s not going to. I’m not going to make your feelings go away, but I will tell you that you’re not alone in feeling them, and at least from my experience, those who are successful. Push themselves through that, and then you know it. Maybe it does get a little. It doesn’t get any. It’s easier, but you start building up these successes and say so well. This may not be the same situation, but that was OK when I left the lab to go to Raytheon to go into the industry side. 

When I did that, that worked out alright, and the time I left, you know, went into self-driving cars. Well, that was OK. So basically, you know everyone goes; everyone feels that way, and once you’ve done it a few times, you kind of build up this. This sense of, OK, yeah, it still feels kind of suck, but I’ve known that feeling, and I’ve gone through it before, and it’s, at least statistically, probably going to be OK.

Thank you, Doctor Mark, for explaining that. That is one of the main things that stops people from succeeding. People have fears that they’re not good enough, like faking it or something that prevents them from getting to the next level. And so, this helps. 

But, Doctor Matt, one of the questions I wanted to ask you was: From your perspective, what is the most important skill a company CEO should have to succeed in their career?

Yeah, that’s. I think there are several things that you want to have. It would be best if you had this combination of perseverance and Attitude. I think that probably the number one thing I would say is perseverance, but kind of a #2 right after that is attitude. And let me explain, you know. 

First of all, you know, much of the stuff you do as a company leader will stink. I mean, it’s—and I hate to burst somebody’s bubble and so forth—like I’m going to start my own company and lead a company where it’s all fantastic all the time. And I will be doing podcasts and all these shows, which will be great. 

And then, you know, most of the time, where are you going? You’re going where the problems are. Because they need you. You’re spending a lot of time trying to help solve the problems, so you don’t experience all the good times. Dealing with problems and difficult things and figuring them out—you know, this is a pretty tough economic time we’re in right now. You know, how are we going? How are we going to make it through? What are the right investments we need to make? What if I choose all these sorts of things? 

So it’s you who has to persevere through that. Perseverance is like the absolute. The number one skill you have, but a very close second, is attitude. You can look at all those sucky things when you think about it. It’s like, oh yeah, and you got yourself down. But you have an incredible opportunity as a leader. To impact not only the lives of every person that works on your team to basically, by your example, help them to be better and help your company to be better, but also for whatever your company’s mission is, that’s going to have a potentially big impact on society, and you get to lead. The team went through that. 

Yes, you’re doing a lot of sucky stuff, but you also realize this super great opportunity exists. I wake up every morning feeling incredibly blessed to have this opportunity. And so, it’s perseverance because it’s talk, but realizing it’s also super awesome. Focus on the awesome aspect of it, not the sucky aspect, and you’ll be okay. 

So that’s like #1. There are a couple of other things: I would say that it’s, you know, remember that you’re always on stage. So, as a company leader, you don’t get to have a bad day. You have a very small inner circle that you can vent to, but it’s, but you can’t be, you can’t, you can’t be. Letting your emotions show through regarding how you lead the company makes you vulnerable. You want to be open, but you also can’t be, you know, because you had a bad day. You could be, you know, taking it out on people or letting that impact your thoughts. 

So, you’re always on stage, which is like #2. The third thing I’d say is to seek out advice from others. You know many situations others have gone through, and you might not take their advice, but at least you should know what they did. I can’t actually say it, but I’m, you know, my company’s doing something right now, and I was talking and have been talking to several other of my close friends that are in different industries, like, hey, we’re going to be doing this thing. And do you know anybody who’s done that before? Because I simply want to hear what they are saying. What their stories are, so find people who have gone through things before. 

And seek out their advice. The last thing is, when building a team, absolutely focus on hiring players. Otherwise, you’ll always be pulling them, as opposed to what you want, which is that they’ll push the company, then everybody, even you. But if you hire B or C players, you know you will always pull them along, and it won’t be fun. 

So there’s a lot of stuff on there now, at least. Setting up these processes means that, oh, you don’t need to hire players. Instead, you should develop, you know, enduring processes. That’s fine if you know all the answers and everything’s already done. But really, in technology, in most industries, that’s not, you know, just like a rinse and repeat. You need a player because you don’t know all the answers. You need to figure things out along the way. So having the best team possible is super important.

So, Doctor Matt, you’re completely right—perseverance and attitude play a huge role. Because I mean attitude, I would say that our attitude is everything, like how we see the world. You can look at the problem and see a barrier or an opportunity. 

One of the things I noticed among the people I interviewed was that They see problems as opportunities to jump to the next level. And whereas most people see them as barriers, it’s an interesting thing that way. It came to mind, you know.

Absolutely. And it’s, you know.

It’s as much for your ability to execute and lead the team as it is for you. I mean the. What you focus on expands, right? If you’re focusing on negativity, you’re going to be negative. You’re focusing on the blessings and opportunities and how awesome they are. Yeah, it’s tough, but if you focus on that, then you’ll be in a much better space in your head and enjoy your life a lot more. So, it’s as much for you as everybody else.

No, Dr. Matt, one of the things I wanted to ask you was about your career. What was your greatest lesson or revelation regarding business investing, leadership, and human nature in general?

Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the greatest, but one of the things that’s true is that. I used this phrase, and it’s kind of like a spin on Ecclesiastes. It’s the, you know, sun that shone on our fathers and shines on us today that there is kind of some pretty deep human ways of seeing things, and if you can learn about those and how humans think, see, and react, you will know yourself better and the people you’re dealing with. Maybe the people you’re negotiating with will know you. Your staff should try to understand how people see things. 

I started my career as an engineer. I was an engineer for a good portion of my career, and it’s, and it’s, and you’re pretty much taught to think very cut and dry. This is the equation. You know, this is the relationship between these two things. You boil it down to a science like that and often miss out on these aspects. Humans don’t think like that. They don’t. They don’t behave like that. 

So, it took me a while to catch the wave. You know, people are different. And then even just the concept of taking the first personality assessment test, where I realized that, like, you know, it’s crystal clear the way I see things because it’s me. Still, other people will see things in a dramatically different way, and that’s just the way that they’re wired. Realizing that not everyone sees the world the same way was huge. It was huge. I didn’t know they taught you that in engineering school, they’re teaching equations, math, physics, and all sorts of other electrical engineering, and V equals IR and a bunch of other stuff. So, trying to understand people is extremely important.

So, Doctor Matt, like me, I was studying electrical engineering when I was in university. Right. One of the greatest revelations I had at that time was that when you’re with people, some people will like you for no reason, and others will see the same personality, which is you. And then they’ll just like you. 

It’s just like you’re the same person, but they’re like two or multiple different groups of people, and they’ll see you differently and perceive you in completely different ways. 

And that was one of the greatest revelations of my entire life—that sometimes people interact with you with their likes and dislikes, for you have nothing to do with you but their perception of the world.

There could be some cognitive bias. You could remind them of a positive experience from the past or a negative experience from the past. You could present things in a way that they just intrinsically resonate with, or you could present them in a way that is. 

That is completely the opposite of how they’re wired to think if you start talking about it. Big picture, lofty ideas, without a lot of specifics and without a lot of like, you know, OK, we’ll have to figure some stuff out along the way. 

But notionally, this is kind of what I’m thinking. You talked to a very particular type of engineer. That’s not resonant because they’re going to be like, Alright, I don’t see how we get from this step to this step. For that reason, I’m out. You know, they, they just won’t resonate. 

He started taking a very detailed engineering plan from that person and presenting it to the guy who sees just the big picture. They’re like, dude, I cannot handle all these details. I don’t know where we’re going. You’ve got them from step one, point 1.2 to point 1.3. And I want to know what step 50 is because that’s how I’m wired to think, so it’s just how people like you dislike you. You could have been cognitively biased in the past. 

It could be how you’re presenting things that resonate with how they’re thinking about things, you know, or it could be. I’m having a bad day, too. Just, you know, that’s just sometimes. That’s the way human things see things. So, you know, you could be tired and have a bad day, but realizing, like you said, that people are different is huge.

No, totally; it blew my mind back in the day. 

But, Doctor Matt, I wanted to ask if you could take a time machine and return to a younger version of yourself—like before you started your career, maybe you were in college or something. How would you advise such a person regarding the future, and what could it be? Would you tell them to do it differently?

So, I would probably. I would tell them to do so if it was me specifically, so I’ll talk about me specifically and what I tell when I talk to earlier career folks and what I tell them. But specifically, you know this: I got asked this on a show once. You know what you wish you would not have done, and I was like… I can’t think of anything. You know what I would have given up on, what piece of experience I did not want to have, or what I would not have learned from, though it could have made me who I am today, now granted. I would say that if I’d told myself. 

Some advice: #1. You Know how to spend time with people and be more present for people, especially in your early career. We get so focused on things, and you know you don’t get people back, so that’s one of the things that I would have said: Perhaps take an extra minute with someone to connect truly. You know, much more. I would have told myself to focus more on relationships and go deeper into those. 

And then, the last thing I would say to myself would be to trust myself more, you know? Then we’ll talk in a second about what I would do or what I tell other people, but it’s just something to think about for me.

I grew up in the OR; my impressionable years were in the 1980s. So, you know, I started high school in 1982 and college in 1986 and graduated with my undergrad in 1990. And you know, The Who? 

So, who are the big influencers? In that time frame, you know. Alex P. Keaton. You know, and Gordon Gecko. So. So that’s what you know. So. So the concept of, like, corporate America and.

And functioning in that was, you know, really big for me.

Where did the entire concept of greed influence you?

Love it, love it. It’s and, and still to this day, it’s, which is, you know, probably beyond the scope of what we have time for today. But there are a lot of interesting human psychology-related things about it. Acting in one if everyone acts in their self-interest and how that kind of mutually might balance some things out, but anyway, and the fallacy of like believing that people don’t act in some, you know, at least some partially self-serving way anyway, you know, but you know, but trust in yourself more. I had a I had a lot of self-doubt when I was young. When I was younger, I used to look at all these different things. 

It’s a story I remember thinking about right when I got my undergrad. It’s like, you know, these people that had a doctorate, they have like this, this absolute smartest ever. And there’s no way I remember distinctly thinking there’s no way I could ever get a PhD. I could never get a doctor, you know? No, 100% never ended the conversation; it was kind of. I was kind of weirdly wired. It was as if something was easy. For me, I just assumed that it was easy for everybody. 

So, it was—it’s this weird thing. So, I had a lot of, you know, kind of self-doubt to overcome. You know, I definitely could never be the VP of an organization and build an entire division. I could never be the president or CEO of a corporation, or I could never be an advisor to a business. Or have the guts to help get a hedge fund off the ground or convince organizations to invest millions of dollars in a company I’m running, but you know. But I did all those things. And I think you know many of the cases I’ve handled fairly well. 

So I would have some trust in myself. More now is what I tell other people. I mean, I’ll tell all of them. Tell them all that, too, but they’re probably a bit different than me, and they may trust themselves a little bit more from the start anyway. 

But I will tell them to make the most of it out of every day. You know, each day you have an opportunity, you can do this much or this much. I try to note how I will move the needle that day in my planner. How specifically am I going to move, not just how am I going to meetings or, you know, what will I do to move the needle? But if you think about that.

So, if you do that every day, you’ll move the needle a little bit every day. Then, that will get you to a certain point, and over months, years, and maybe, in some cases, you’ve gotten this far, someone else who’s maybe not quite as dedicated and maybe moves the needle once a week is down here. 

So, you’re here, and they’re here. You’re up here. Who’s going to get the next option? Unity will be this guy or you, so you get the next opportunity. Now that you’re playing on a different field you’re playing with some, maybe some, better players. Maybe you’re playing with some on a grandiose scale of investment opportunities. 

So now it is the same thing. Keep moving the needle more and more every day. It just opens up more and more opportunities. When? People who are early in their careers are young. They think of, you know, we’ve got all this time, and I can, you know, I may want to work hard. I may not want to work hard, but it’s critical to let you know that that compounding effect builds up and comes from moving the needle daily. So, if there’s one advice I give to every early-career person, it’s to make the most of every day.

Thank you so much for that advice, Matt. Doctor Matt, it’s really interesting how you like these. When we have the right mindset, we can attain so much success, and these small things we do daily get us to that level. And so, Doctor Matt, it’s running your entire career like that.

How and when were you happiest? I know you’re doing all these great things, but how do you find happiness?

So that’s actually. Like I said, sometimes I’m wired, which is weird, so the happiest I am when I’m about to win, but it hasn’t happened yet, so maybe it’s like the anticipation. So, it’s almost like there’s, I see, I can see towards the end of the game, and this could be in business, in, like, a game or something like that. I can see the remaining moves, and I know nobody can do anything to beat me. 

So, at that point, I’m the happiest. And also, at that point, I kind of clock out because it’s like, I’ve got this thing one, and I’m already looking forward to the next thing. I don’t think I’ve told many people; it’s almost like a celebration party for something I’m only marginally interested in. Because at that point, by the time we have a celebration party, I’ve already mentally moved on to the next thing. For me, it’s like, As soon as I know I’m going to win, it’s. Like. OK, done. Good. What’s next? 

So, it’s kind of weird, like with my doctor. Your graduation was cool. But as soon as I knew that I had kind of nailed the defense, I was like, Alright, this is done. What’s next? I had to figure out how to do some weird latex stuff, too, because my dissertation wasn’t compliant with university publication standards, so I had to do some stuff. Like the publishing languages you must use, I wasn’t a good latex. We had to use it in Florida. 

That was a little bit of a worry. But once I got that figured out, it’s like, you know, moved on, so, so, but the but for me. 

So, I always have to watch it to ensure I don’t lose interest in things. But for me right now, what I try to do is. Instead of being like the big wait for the big win and being happy, there is really to enjoy things as I go along. You know, we talked about attitude earlier and just basically taking the time to realize just how freaking awesome. This is today, you know. What is this? Today is the 18th of March for Saint Pats. Right. You know how awesome today and tomorrow are, and you are trying to be a little bit better at enjoying that than waiting for the big wins. But then I kind of lost interest anyway.

So, doctor Matt, part of the American national identity is about pursuing happiness. So, from your perspective, how do you think Americans can be happier in their lives?

So, one thing: first of all, humans aren’t good at absolutes, right? We’ll be good. We’re good at relative things, right? Do you pick a number if you make it? I don’t know. You make $100  a year, you know. Is that good? Is that bad?

It only makes a difference, or the only way to answer is what these other people make? If everybody in your circle makes 30 grand and you’re making 100 grand a year, that’s good, right? That’s pretty freaking awesome. You know, if you’re living in Silicon Valley, where I live. Live for a while. And you’re making $100,000 and not doing so well, right? And because no one else? Because, I mean, lots of folks there make quite a bit more, at least in the tech space. 

So, everything’s relative. And just to put that in perspective, If you think of the. The most successful person on Earth is at one end of the spectrum. OK. And you should, you should. It would be best if you were Bill Gates. And then maybe Bezos, I don’t know who the most successful person on the face of the earth is, is on one side of the spectrum and the most badly off person. And, like most, that’s like a third-world country. On the other end of the spectrum, OK. Do you think that that is the whole spectrum?

Almost everybody you know is right here. They are a lot closer to the richest guy than the poorest guy, and I think when we think about that here in the States, it can help us reset our need always to compare ourselves to that neighbor next door or that guy next to me. 

But instead of thinking about where we are on a macro scale, things are pretty amazingly good. Here and when you kind of view it from that perspective, instead of viewing it as things like the, the things that aren’t right, view it as like the, you know like these two or three things aren’t great views, it is like the thousands or 10s of thousands of things that are. And that, to me, helps. You get a much better view of life and can be much happier.

No, I mean, you’re right about the relative factor. You can look at the same thing at 100 grand as if some people make them happy and others just make them miserable. But it’s all about relativity. We have to learn not to think that our happiness should come from something more internal, and we should not be attached to those things, you know, because it will make us deeply happy if we compare ourselves to others.

Sorry. Yeah, run your race. 

Yeah, for sure. And Doctor Matt, you’ve been in this technology sector, right? And like technology, the hybrid of technology business. So, where do you see America’s future in technology and business, and how do you perceive that?

So that’s a great question. It’s a very, very loaded question. I think it’s, yeah, America is pretty big, right? So, there are lots of different sectors and things going on there. 

So, it’s hard to aggregate it because it’s so large. Hard to say. You know, one answer that fits all. We’re still pretty dominant leaders in a lot of things. But I think what happens a lot of times is. Maybe it’s because we’ve lived in relative peace for so long. Are we? Sometimes, we lose that edge a little bit, and, you know, we add on more. Regulations and more things slow us down and add more ways not to move, not to move, as you know. It was as fast or as strongly as we could. 

So, you know, I think there are lots of opportunities here, lots of bright people, lots of great universities, lots of great companies doing great things. But it’s increasing. Seeing how we can get in our way of inhibiting progress isn’t very comforting. Suppose you look at the self-driving industry, where my company now works. In that case, it develops technologies that work across the autonomy spectrum, not just for full self-driving but things that help out driver assistance features. But I’m still very much plugged into the autonomy space of the self-driving car. You look at what kind of California is doing on some things, and they’re, you know, always like one regulation away from basically shutting the whole thing down. 

And because of being shortsighted and letting one particular interest group dominate the entirety of the conversation, as opposed to thinking about the number of lives that can be saved, the number of jobs that can be created, and so forth. 

I think we’re. You know. We’ve got a lot of things going for us, but we need to make sure we don’t get in our way and slow ourselves down.

No. I mean, a lot of times when we have adversity, that’s when we perform our best. I think the person I talked to told me about this successful entrepreneur. He told me that sometimes we only do our best when we have half the situation, and then, for some reason, it unleashes the superhuman in us. And I didn’t know what it meant completely until I started thinking about it. 

And I realized that most of us reach our full potential only when we reach our full potential. We have to. And when there’s adversity, it’s one of the strangest things ever, you know?

Yeah. But you know what people talk about. If you only have to make X amount, you’ll make about X amount, right? If you need to make more, you’ll find a way to make more, but it’s a. Yeah. So, just keeping ourselves from shooting ourselves in the foot about technology, I think, is probably the case. The bigger, the bigger. Caution: I would say that I’m that I’m. I’m a little bit worried about it for us.

So, Doctor Matt, can you tell us more about Spartan radar, the premise, and how you started it?

So absolutely. So, I didn’t start the company; the Board of Directors brought me in to take the company to the next level, kind of do a turnaround on it, and then take it to the next level. But the company’s interesting. It was founded by several folks who worked for me or worked with me when I was at Raytheon. I’ve kind of kept in touch with them along the way as they were, as they were doing things in the company, and I, you know, I came by, you know, a couple of years ago and looked over what they were doing and gave them some advice and like, well, I would, I would, I wouldn’t do this. I would do this, etcetera. 

But this opportunity came in, like Q1 of last year in 2023, and they said that the board was like, Look, we want you to come in. Like I said, do a turnaround and then take the company to the next level. If you’re a big fan of crossing the chasm, cross the chasm on revenue. Start bringing in money and getting people to pay for these products, from research and development to product center companies. So that’s what I’m doing now. The company develops radar technology to make things better for mobility, whether it’s moving people around, like helping to save those 43,000 lives that are lost every year, or everything on their commercial vehicle side, which can be construction, agriculture, mining, forestry over the road, or applications like Amazon Prime truck that drops off all that stuff that we buy for long-haul class 8, even in warehouse material handling like forklifts and so forth. 

So can we make technology for that? And yeah, it’s great, we’ve got some, we’ve got products, now we’re starting to sell things, we’ve got some strategic deals lined up, and it’s super exciting, lots of balls in the air. And it’s, but it’s, it’s great, and I’ve got a good team. That’s just, you know, continuing to get better as I bring in more world-class talent, and yeah, I’m going to make this into something hopefully pretty awesome.

That is awesome. You also wrote a book about Doctor Matt… You authored The Radar for Fully Autonomous Driving. Could you tell the audience a little bit more about something like that? And what’s it about?

So sure, that’s. I wrote that back. I started thinking in 2020, and at that point, I was with Waymo, the Google self-driving car company, and I was good friends with the series editor for this one, this one publisher, and for our tech house, and he and they reached out and said, hey, why don’t you know they reached me a couple of years ago? Like when you write a book about radar for self-driving cars and say, Nope, not interested. There’s, too. Much work and. And it’s not going to, you know, you don’t make a whole lot unless you’re like. You know. Grisham or something like that. You don’t make a lot of money writing books, so it’s just that the ROI on this will not work out. 

So, they came back later, and this is it. Kind of funny. Story: They said it was funny. We’ve got this deal for you so you’d be the book’s editor, and you get all your friends to write chapters. All right. And what you’ll do is, since you’re the only one of us who pays. So, we’ll pay you, and they’ll do all the work. And. And so I was. Like, alright, well.

Wow.

Is that going? Is it going to play out like that? But anyway, at the time, like I said, I was working for Waymo. And what I did was what we decided to do, and I pitched. I had to pitch it to my company. So, like, I’m going to do this. It’s like if I can put the technology, the insight, and the information out there So somebody can make a radar, that’s better. That helps keep maybe, maybe even a competitor, a self-driving car company, but it keeps them from having an accident. It saves a life. It’s also better for the industry because accidents will slow down the adoption rate of the public and the adoption rate of regulatory officials. 

So, it’ll be good for the industry if I do this, and it might save some lives along the way, too. OK. So, they, the company, said yes, do it. And I started talking to friends of mine all over the globe. I’m pretty well connected in the radar space. 

And we just have an awesome who’s who lists the authors there. I wrote some of the chapters. I co-wrote some of the chapters I had with folks from academia, writing folks from several big companies—Boehm, NXP, and Waymo. Another startup, Under, was writing things; Schwartz is huge in the test community. They make many of them as a young double. You probably remember things like riding shorts, test equipment, etc. 

So, it’s just awesome who’s who of things Folks from writing safety stuff, too, but they’re like they’ll do all the work, and you’ll be the only one who gets paid. It didn’t play out, not at all, because basically, it was like, you know, 12 books that you have to be in charge of because each chapter was different. It turned out it was Awesome. 

And because not only do we make a fantastic product that is good for the industry, Also, it helped me develop better relationships with a lot of different people and really take our relationships to, you know, a new level by working, you know, hand in hand with them on that and just so to come back to the money before you think I’m some kind of complete Search story—that’s, you know, making a lot of coin off of the hard work of these other folks. I donate 100% of the proceeds. I do not make a dime from this book. 100% of the proceeds go to an organization. And here in Dallas, where I live, supports STEM science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, supports STEM education efforts. So basically, I donate 100% of the money to pass it on to the next generation.

Doctor, that is amazing, and we appreciate that a lot. So, doctor, how can our audience connect with you and learn more about you, your work, and everything else?

Absolutely. You can go to a couple of different websites. You can go to mattmarkel.com, which will have links to my media page and a little about me. If you’re interested in Spartan Radar, you can also visit spartanradar.com and see some of our products and interesting things. I write About once a quarter or so; I write a letter. It could be a letter from the CEO talking about things I see in the industry and providing some information; it’s not just like a sales pitch or anything. It’s trying to provide some useful insight for readers on that. If you go to mattmarkel.com, that’s got links to take you to my LinkedIn page and so forth; you can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. So yeah, there are lots of ways to get in touch with me.

That is also Dr. Matt and Dr. Matt. I’m so grateful you took the time to come on this show and share your wisdom about what it takes to succeed as a CEO with me and the audience. I hope you return to the show later because I enjoyed having you here.

It’s been my pleasure. This is it, you know. Thank you for putting this whole project together. I think highlighting what you’re doing is fantastic. You know, highlighting all the different facets of what makes our land great and the entrepreneurial spirit so strong. Keep it up. Great work.

Thank you so much, Doctor Matt. And yes, I will. I will continue to do this because I believe in it, like the spirit of America. And I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s something extraordinary about every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.