Matthew Colletti, CEO and Founder of TalentedHuman

"A Quick View of My Life

I want to start by introducing myself. My name is Matthew Colletti, I am a returning finance student at the University of Tampa, and the CEO/Founder of TalentedHuman™ with my good friend, brother, and classmate Jasem. I want to talk mostly about my business and how I came to think-up and start building talentedhuman.com, but I also want to touch on my life and why the place I’m currently at is so shocking. I grew up like many, in a middle class single-parent household, where my amazing mother worked an exorbitant amount of overtime as an RN, to take care of my two brothers and I all by herself. Because of this I was a less-than-reputable student, and never made it to school; when I did, it was only to socialize. Because of this and not making it to graduation, I came into the working world immediately, and bounced back and forth from my mother’s place to my father’s place.

Now that you have a picture of my earlier years, let’s lead into education, which ultimately led me to my company. I had no significant experience, and only a GED when I found my first job beyond the service/minimum-wage world. This was at a large corporate health club. Long story short, the first half of this employment was during an economic boom, and for 3 years I led the country as the top sales person in this company about 9 of 12 months every year. I made over six-figures, and learned a lot about professionalism, sales, and what money can do in your life. Not ever really having money, I loved this, and I wasted most of it on a monthly/weekly basis. From here I was granted the position as the General Manager. This was huge, because I was not only handed a 3+ million dollar facility, but its 70 employees and 4 intermediate managers. This was something I was undoubtedly not prepared for, but said yes anyway, and figured it out as I went. This was quite an ego-booster to follow my high-income successes.

As we all know, there was a major economic downturn in 2008-ish, and I ended up resigning in late 2011 as my failing company began to sell off stores in other states, and after about three or four pay-structure changes for the worse. During this time I had made my first international trip, began reading more books, and this all drastically transformed how I thought about and perceived life. I’m the guy who was told by a high school teacher that I was, “a low life piece of shit who would never amount to anything,” and at the ripe age of 23, had conquered six figure income, upper management, and my first international trip. Because of this hard work and the negative ending that subsequently followed, I decided to take off from work for a few months and begin school. I managed to visit another 7 countries which broadened my life views even further, which then expanded my thoughts on who I was. All-in-all, this made me a better man, which makes me better professionally and scholastically.

My time in college here at the University of Tampa has done even more for me. This is because I learned another major thing about myself- I am pretty good at this school thing! I didn’t use the word “smart,” not because I wish to downplay my successes, but because good grades and learning is more dependent on will, not intelligence. I can say that since I came back to school, and up until this very moment (I am 5 weeks from graduation whilst writing this, by the way), I have made straight A’s in every single class I have taken. This showed me that I can literally accomplish anything I really try for. I remember the first time someone came to me for help (I guess I stood out in class somehow), and I was completely shocked; I mean, you read about my high school experience. Luckily, I didn’t let that underpaid, underqualified, and overworked high school teacher get to me.

This educational notch, when combined with my past successes, losses, and world-travels have molded me into a decently rounded man, partner, business owner, and student. This is why, when I met a barista named Chris, who told me he “hated Facebook” because he cannot easily represent his band like he used to be able to on social media, “without paying a stupid amount of money,” I was instantly inspired to purchase the domain talentedhuman.com and begin building. That was October of 2014.

I’m writing this in November of 2015. To date, our company has been valued at over 2.25mil USD, we have nearly completed a mobile app for Android and iPhone, and have our 2.0 web app going live in less than a week. This is crazy for me. Mostly because Jasem and I were easily able to raise over 300,000.00 this year to fuel this thing, and we have worked incessantly to gain exposure. The idea has been repeatedly referred to as a “million-dollar” idea, and I have had many people refer to us as “the next Facebook,” which is purely a compliment intended to express the high-hopes users and friends have for our future. Our beta website gained traffic from over 110 countries in less than 4 months, and we think we really are on to something great. Please, make note that I have worked very hard for everything in my life and the journey to create TalentedHuman™ was no exception, and was considerably more of a learning experience than anything I’ve done up until this point in my life.Visit talentedhuman.com and become a part of my journey."- Matthew Colletti

Sincerely,

Matthew Colletti

CEO & Founder - TalentedHuman™

Please visit: www.talentedhuman.com