Project Person // Profile #12

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Meet Matt Tanner // Project Person #12

What project are you currently working on? Building Same Page HR 

What did it take to get started? Getting shoved into it by the pandemic (fear is not an ideal motivator, but it does work in short bursts). Also $100 to file an LLC.

What’s your favorite or most memorable stat? When we crossed the 50 active client mark.

What’s something that never would have happened for you without this project? I believe the greatest definition of career success is getting to choose what you work on each day. For the most part, I get to do that.

What keeps you up at night? Ginger, our new lab puppy.

What are some of your other projects? Writing a weekly newsletter, raising kids, and training for a trail race in July that I'm only 50% certain I will be able to finish.

“Good luck making this article interesting,” he joked with me after we wrapped our interview. “I’m just the HR guy.” 

That’s what the little bio on our website calls him, too—the HR guy—which I suppose is an accurate narrative if you look backwards. 

After all, Matt Tanner founded and now runs Same Page HR, a fractional HR company supporting small businesses. Before Same Page, he was in HR at three iconic Atlanta companies. He has a Masters in Humans Resources, some HR-ish certifications, and he even has a “Cool HR” oxford pennant hanging on his bookshelf in the background of his Zooms. 

He’s clearly the HR guy, but he also has an undergrad degree in a different field, a string of epic career pivots, and a COVID layoff story that pushed him into entrepreneurship. His career genesis is not one of sitting with the high school guidance counselor plotting how to be the next Toby Flenderson*. 

(*Is anyone’s?!) 

Matt graduated from UGA with an undergrad in marketing and a dream to be a sportswriter. His first job was at a newspaper in middle Georgia making just $19,500 a year, but he loved the experience. (I share this part of his career mostly so I can share this vintage photo): 

He eventually moved to a corporate gig to make more money, where he got involved in training and pursued his Masters in HR and Organizational Development. When that company shut down during the recession, Matt took a gig in software sales.

That job was … not his favorite. He remembers sitting at a janitorial trade show booth talking to people who cleaned toilets for a living—but were seemingly much more fulfilled in their jobs—and he decided it was time to make another change. 

He pulled out his iPad and created a powerpoint presentation to send to his only friend who seemed to really love what he did for a living: his college buddy Nick Carse. 

At that time, Nick and his brother Steve were selling popsicles on street corners. 

The powerpoint shared all the ways Matt could use his experience and new degree to help his friend’s business. 

Nick gave him a call. “We don’t need any of that, but we could find a place for you somewhere.”

Thus Matt became the Head of Catering at King of Pops.

Matt basically made “half the pay and worked twice the hours” at this new job, but he loved it. It was scrappy and hands on, and he got to build something that seemed to matter to people. From the people they hired to the customers they delighted with Unexpected Moments of Happiness, Matt felt like his work was contributing to something important. 

“I don’t want to act like popsicles are heroic,” he clarified with me as he told this story. “We weren’t out there changing the planet. But it also wasn’t just popsicles. It was special.” 

He remembered pulling up to a corporate event once in “the oldest truck you’ve ever seen” and running into a few friends from college. They were sliding Matt their business cards in a “You okay, man?!” kinda way. But as they told Matt that getting a popsicle was the best part of their week, Matt wanted to ask, “Are YOU okay?!” 

He was fulfilled in his work, even if it didn’t make a ton of sense on a resume. 

Plus, he eventually did get to do what was in his original powerpoint pitch to Nick. When he started at King of Pops, he was one of the first non-family W2s; as Head of HR years later though, Matt was training over 200 employees. 

Matt spent seven years there, building something he really felt was worthwhile. 

But, he was also building a family, and with the birth of his second child, he knew he needed a job that was maybe a little less hands-on. He was starting to get approached by recruiters for jobs like “running an Arby’s franchise”, and he knew that the food industry was not where he wanted to be forever. 

Meanwhile, he had become enamored with *~Tech~* and had been swapping stories and experiences with MailChimp’s Head of Learning and Development. One day, she told him she needed to hire someone to build and execute a manager training program at MailChimp, and she encouraged him to apply. 

MailChimp’s hiring process was much more intense than just texting a friend a powerpoint, but Matt eventually got the job. “It was incredible to work with these brilliant people in one of the coolest offices in America,” he said of his time there.

He enjoyed so much about the experience—from the people to the environment to the 401k—but it was all so comfortable. “I felt like if I was there for three or four years, it’d quickly become thirty or forty.”

After two years in his position, he did an intense interview process for a different internal role—and got it!—but quickly realized it was moving him even further from that feeling of fulfillment. 

This prompted him to apply and network elsewhere, and he ended up joining a tech unicorn called FullStory as their Director of People Ops. After another intense interview process, he was hired in January of 2020—(unbeknownst to Matt) a particularly terrible time to take a new job. When the COVID shutdown happened just two months later, Matt helped draw up and enact the layoff plan, which included his role. 

Now unemployed just four months after the interview gamut, which was just a few months after his internal interview at MailChimp, Matt was exhausted. “This is the honest reason Same Page HR exists,” he told me with a laugh. “I just didn’t have another interview process in me.” 

So he decided to try to build his own job, and he emailed just about everyone he knew asking if they might need contract HR work. 

Ironically, FullStory, MailChimp, and King of Pops all became his first clients. 

He eventually moved from HR projects to this idea of a “Fractional Head of HR”, helping small businesses for just 8-10 hours a week each. 

Just a month or two post-layoff, he had created himself a job.

He was making good money and doing good work, but once he hit five clients, he realized that Same Page Consulting (the LLC he had created to make this gig feel a little more legitimate) had essentially hit its ceiling. He had maxed it all out, from email addresses to hours in the workday to just simple brain space. 

He reached out to me in the spring of 2021, and I remember wondering if he was looking for growth strategy or an excuse to quit. At the time, I was doing groundsweller—the marketing/growth equivalent of Matt’s fractional HR business—and I could relate. 

It’s funny now, four years later, to look back on that meeting, where neither of us knew what was about to transpire. As I was interviewing Matt about this the other day, he pulled up our old emails. “Did you really invoice me $1500 to essentially build you a business?!” he joked.

Eh, semantics.

Matt and I met a few times for some growth strategy work, and I saw a clear path forward for this business. He was obviously on to something (with five clients as proof), but he also had learned a ton in his first few months. Most notably, he found that businesses with <100 employees needed in-the-weeds, tactical HR help more than they needed high level HR strategy. 

What if Same Page wasn’t selling Matt’s time but was instead offering fractional HR Generalists?! 

It sounded like a real-deal business idea! We came up with a vision and a plan, and I followed up with a now-classic Callie bullet-point email of what he should do next.

Matt followed up with an already-classic Matt powerpoint pitch. 

This time, he wasn’t asking someone to hire him; he was asking me to join his business. 

Since selling/burning out on The Big Fake Wedding a few years prior, I had been itching to build something again, but I was nervous. It’s why I never truly built groundsweller into an agency. But here, I loved the concept of a fractional HR Generalist (I absolutely could have used that at The Big Fake Wedding!), the idea of having a business partner, and the fact that I couldn’t actually do the HR work myself. There was no risk of me jumping deep into the business—I’d be forced to work on it!

We drew up some plans, brought our spouses on a “Think this idea might really work?!” double date, and we started a new LLC partnership: Same Page HR. 

We each walked into the new business with quite a few hills-we’d-die-on. For me, I didn’t want any business debt, and I didn’t want to burn out. For Matt, he was committed to running our business on both Profit First and Traction/EOS, as well as building everything in Notion. 

It felt as if he had been planning this business his entire life, but really, he said he had just spent the last 20 years collecting the best and worst parts of his past jobs. When Same Page HR suddenly materialized, he knew exactly what he did (and didn’t) want it to be. 

We decided to keep some of our individual clients (my marketing ones and his HR leadership ones), viewing those as our “equity-less investors”; they would cover our individual income while we spent a few hours a week building Same Page HR. 

We each contributed $3,000 into a joint bank account, which paid for our legal paperwork, brand, and website. 

The first email I sent about Same Page HR was to Blake Howard, co-founder of a branding agency called Matchstic. I asked if he thought any of his clients might need fractional HR support, to which he responded, “Actually, I think we do.” 

This was going to be so easy!!

Unfortunately not every email yielded such results, but I am happy to say that Matchstic—our first client—is still with us, 3.5 years later.

Sam Hackney was our first experiment at a fractional HR Generalist; she now leads our team of 25 People Partners!

We slowly built this business, taking on less and less work on the side, until there was a point last year where Same Page HR could fully replace our salaries.

We currently support almost 60 clients across the country, ranging from super gen-z marketing agencies in California to third-generation real estate firms in Georgia. 

“This is definitely not a good cocktail party or career day job,” Matt said, to which I nodded, emphatically. The Big Fake Wedding or King of Pops were vocations that got people talking. Now, when we say we own an HR company, there are no follow-up questions. 

But it doesn’t mean we are not excited about the work. 

Perhaps because of his own trajectory—or maybe just because he loves and welcomes these kinds of conversations—Matt’s had the opportunity to do quite a bit of career coaching. He always asks, “What do you actually care about doing? What is work that matters to you?” 

You could work at a company that is curing cancer, he points out, but if you are not doing work you enjoy or are good at (or are not working with people you enjoy), you’ll feel stuck and frustrated. 

Alternately, you could be selling popsicles or HR, feeling like you are doing something pretty spectacular. 

Because of this, in those early meetings with Matt when we decided on our “hills”, he was quick to bring a company purpose to the table: “I want this business to create margin and meaning for everyone.” 

Everyone, meaning the HR Generalists who now have a remote, flexible work opportunity; the business owners now freed from the HR swamp, getting back to where their business needs them most; and the owners (him! me!) who get to build something we’re really proud of. 

Our team may just be running payroll or registering a state tax ID, but to that business owner, we are relieving a burden, offering a thought partner, helping them sleep better at night. 

“Thanks again for ALWAYS having my back,” one of our clients wrote to her People Partner this week. “It’s cool to have an HR partner who actually cares.” 

Nothing makes us happier than reading an email like that.

It’s why, looking back on Matt’s career, he actually isn’t just the HR guy.

He’s the work-that-matters guy.

He’s pursued that personally, he’s coached others to discover it for themselves, and he’s now created a company built on that very purpose. 

“You know, they say the most fulfilling utilization of talent is in the service of helping others,” Matt quoted (somewhat facetiously) from a list of guiding principles he keeps on his phone. 

“Ohh, send that list to me,” I told him as we wrapped up the interview. 

I smiled big when I read the quote—and bigger when I read the principle beneath it. 

“There is deep satisfaction in creating something worthwhile.”

Even if that something is just an HR business.

-Callie

 🪩 Meet Your Fellow Email Subscribers 🪩

Chris Toews, the founder of a neuro rehab protocol called brainvive. (I’ve heard incredible stories from clients of his!)

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Next time, I’ll share what Matt and I have learned about having a business partner. Stay tuned!