Matt Summers bought his first business in 2005, when he was 21. Soon after, he took on a partner, who offered $10,000 for half of the business, which installs decorative concrete borders for landscapes.
Summers says he saw the partnership as a nice financial cushion. He hoped to quickly pay back his cousin, from whom he had bought the business.
“I saw the $10,000, and really all rational thought went out the window,” says Summers, now a 27-year-old business student at Boise State University.
But his business partner turned out to be a nightmare: According to Summers, he was a slacker who alienated employees and wasn’t good at lining up jobs.
“We started losing job after job,” says Summers, who used the $10,000 his partner brought to the table to keep the business afloat. “My cousin had to be paid off by a certain date. With the jobs being done, I wasn’t able to pay off the debt.”
So he relinquished his half of the business to his cousin.
“It soured me from doing business with a partner again,” Summers says.
He then went to work turning that setback into a comeback.
Summers wanted to be sure there was no area of business he didn’t have a firm grasp on, so he decided to study for a business degree. He’s got four majors: business management, business economics, international business and finance.
“I’d like to be the Coach Pete of business,” he joked, referring to Boise State football coach Chris Petersen.
Summers is a busy man, and not just because of his studies.
He’s going into his second year as business manager for the university’s student media group, which includes the student newspaper and radio station. That’s a 20- to 30-hour-a-week commitment during the school year, he says.
He’s president of the campus Entrepreneur Club. He deejays all of the radio station’s events on campus.
And that’s not all: Summers is back in business.
He got a loan for $7,000 and bought another curbing business a couple of years ago, Ada/Canyon Curbing. He says he spent an additional $6,000 on new equipment. The business has four employees.
How does he juggle so much? Carefully, with the help of four Google calendars that send him emails about meetings and appointments.
“Matt is probably one of the most driven people I’ve ever met,” says his brother, Mike Wright, 34, who has worked for Matt’s bordering business. “You cannot deter him from his goals.
“With everything he has going on at the same time, I’m impressed that he’s able to keep up with it all,” Wright says.
Summers says his grades have suffered at times. Before he started his most recent curbing business, he says he never got less than a B. He says his GPA is still above a 3.0, but he failed two classes.
He has pondered dropping out of school but believes in the value of education.
“The rewards of the business come faster, while the rewards of the education come slowly,” Summers says.
Ada/Canyon Curbing — a summer-only business — has annual revenue of about $12,000 to $20,000.
“I have been able to make a small but fairly steady profit,” Summers says.
He says he’s already been able to apply some of what he’s learned from his business classes in pricing, marketing and business-to-business communication.
One example, he says, was a letter he sent to 50 to 60 landscape businesses in the Treasure Valley. The letter explained how his business could make the landscape business more money. The letters led to 10 jobs.
“All 10 of them, I made a lot of money,” he says. “That was a big one.”
Summers says he’s learned a lot about advertising from working with the graphic designers who make ads for the student paper.
“Colors, design, how eyes flow on the paper,” he explained. “I created an ad for the phone books. ... I have got a huge response compared to the ad I had for my first company.”
In one of his classes, he learned that the contract he made with his first partner was one of the worst ever.
“It was short, vague,” Summers says. “It didn’t say we both had to come up with money to pay off debt. There was no contractual agreement to perform at a certain level.”
He says he also learned his personal finances had been placed at risk.
Summers hopes to start and run several businesses, including his own record label. He wants to retire when he’s 35.
Wright says he thinks it’s possible his brother will accomplish that.
“There are days when we talk about going out for a beer, but we don’t even get out of the car,” Wright says. “He’s on the phone dealing with business. He’s very focused. He will not let anything get in the way of moving forward.”
