The Person Behind The Work
Matt Lawley
Senior developer, digital strategist, track coach, and father of three. Based in Woodstock, GA.
The Pattern
Every major career move of my adult life started the same way.
People I'd shown up for showed up for me.
Not a recruiter. Not a LinkedIn message. Not an application. Every door that opened in my career opened because someone who knew me, really knew me, not just my resume, trusted me enough to put their name behind mine. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of generosity my entire adult life, and it's shaped how I think about business, relationships, and what it actually means to build something worth having.
Before I tell you what I do, I want to tell you how I got here. The pattern is the point.
The Timeline
From HVAC to the warehouse floor
Graduated high school on a Saturday. Started work that Monday at an HVAC company. A year later, a new relationship led to a brief obsession with golf, and a quick lesson that you can't raise a family on eight dollars an hour and unlimited tee times. My best friend and bandmate since we were twelve helped me get a warehouse job in Cartersville. Four years later I was traveling the world running sales.
Recession. Laid off on a Thursday.
I went to church band practice that night, same as I had done for the last eleven years. I mentioned what happened before we started playing. After practice, our drummer pulled me aside. He owned a small cleaning company and needed help. I was hired within a week as a quality control manager.
VP of Operations: 20 million square feet a night
I stayed nine years. Quality control became operations management, which became launching their landscaping division, which became building their Florida division from scratch. By the end we were cleaning twenty million square feet every single night.
All the way in, or all the way out.
My daughter's track club needed coaches. I wanted to do it. My CEO and COO told me I had to choose: be at the dinner table, or be the one making sure there was food on it. I looked around that room and realized they were not the role models I wanted. I chose all the way out. I've been coaching ever since: all three of my kids, 100+ athletes per season, competing across the country. I wouldn't trade that decision for anything.
Fortune 500: Mohawk Industries
The guitar player in my church band was the Director of Digital Marketing at Mohawk. He vouched for me. I had zero experience in digital marketing on paper. I got the job anyway, and spent three years learning from some of the best designers, developers, and digital marketing minds in the world. By the end I was leading their commercial digital marketing team: SEO, content, design, photography, and video. When I asked for a raise that reflected that scope, they offered me about ten percent of what I asked for.
Done waiting for someone else to recognize what I'm worth.
I've worked with two startups, shipped VoteCast2Go, a full canvassing CRM and mobile app with a database built to support hundreds of millions of records, and spent the last few years building the business I actually wanted to build all along. Matchlight Marketing Solutions is that business.
Why It Matters For You
I didn't come out of a computer science program. I came out of a warehouse.
Then operations. Then the C-suite of a company cleaning twenty million square feet every night. Then corporate digital marketing at a Fortune 500. Then startup software.
When I build something for your business, I'm not just thinking about the code. I'm thinking about your P&L. Your operations. Your team. What the website is actually supposed to do for the company. Most developers can't say that. I can.
Warehouse to C-Suite
Operations, P&L, and team management before I ever wrote a line of production code.
Fortune 500 depth
Three years learning from the best designers, developers, and marketers in the industry at Mohawk.
Startup speed
Built and shipped a full canvassing CRM and mobile app with a database designed for hundreds of millions of records.
The Name
A single match can light a blacksmith's kiln or burn down a forest.
Matchlight Marketing Solutions is named for my initials (ML), but also for an idea I've carried through every chapter of this career: the power inside a small spark is enormous.
A solo developer with the right experience, the right tools, and the right approach can do what a whole agency team used to do. Sometimes a small operation is all you need to change somebody's world. That's the business I'm trying to build.
AI alone won't cut it.
An agency will gut it.
A solo dev will ship it.
You get agency-quality output, save sixty to ninety percent of what an agency charges, and talk to the person doing the work, not an account manager playing telephone.
Outside The Work
Woodstock, GA. Wife. Three kids. Track coach.
In 2017 I was told I had to choose between being at the dinner table and being the one putting food on it. I chose the table. That decision cost me a VP salary and gave me back everything that mattered.
I've coached all three of my kids in track and field, traveling with them across the country for competitions. I currently coach more than a hundred athletes per season, and I wouldn't trade that time for any title.
That choice, and the clarity it brought, is also why Matchlight Marketing Solutions exists. I wasn't willing to keep building someone else's business at the expense of my own. So I built mine.
Work Together
Ready to talk about your project?
I take on a limited number of clients at a time so I can do the work properly. If your timing is right, let's talk.