This is my journey from a 13 year professional baseball career to a co-founder of a company designed to develop and place ex athletes into the medical device industry

entrepreneur, start-up, inspiring, journey, success, challenges, perseverance, innovation, motivation, lessons, passion, failure, growth, advice, mentorship

Hey everyone, my name is Matt Wisler. This is kind of my journey from being a professional athlete into a co-founder of a company designed on taking athletes into med device space. So a little background on myself, I was drafted in 2011 to San Diego Padres out of a small town in northwest Ohio. I went to the minor leagues just like everyone else, had a couple good years in the minor leagues, put myself on the map, was traded for by the Atlanta Braves and ended up debuting in 2015 with them. My journey I was seeing baseball, I was very blessed in terms of how long I played and how many years I got in the big leagues. I would say that most athletes are not as lucky as I was in terms of that, but my career wasn't as easy, I was still a journeyman. I played in nine organizations, eight different teams in the big leagues, so it was a lot of travel, a lot of ups and downs in my career, but very thankful for the blessings that I had in that. But this year I was still trying to play, I knew that my career was kind of on the back burner, I was getting a little bit nervous about that, but I thought I could reestablish myself. So I went into this past off season just focused on baseball and as most athletes your career is kind of over a lot of times before you realize it and I didn't really have a total backup plan in place. Like I said, I was blessed to have a little bit of time in the big leagues to provide myself a little bit of time financially to wait and figure it out. But throughout the off season when I could not get a job that was very unmotivating in terms of baseball, but also very daunting in terms of the question always for every athlete they have to ask themselves is what next. For me I was extremely fortunate as well in my life, I was basically praying for a sign whether to continue playing or not. I could not get a job in baseball and I've always thought about the med device space, I've always enjoyed sales and the aspect of talking and meeting with people and not being behind a desk. I had a friend of mine that I grew up with from Northwest Ohio reach out to me in regards to an investment deal and we ended up talking about the medical device space that he's been very successful in. And I think that was my God sent he basically offered me a job to help co found this company and I thought about it for two or three days and the next day after that I text my agent told him I was done and that was kind of the beginning into my journey into this field. And we got to work right away, just kind of trying to find my own footing trying to find what life was like after sports, you know what it takes to be successful outside of a sports arena is something that I've known my entire life. It's the only thing that I've known and you know really I'm gonna learn my my way around you know talking to different people outside of that industry and a new new industry that's very fast paced very intelligent. Most people there obviously know a lot more than I do so I was obviously very scary at first but I feel a lot more confident and now and you know trying to help a lot of other people do the same thing we offer a training course out there for guys and girls to you know whether they're done with college or professional sports to get into this into this field. We kind of want to be those people that can be the support system that you know athletes lose when they're with it done with a sport we want to be that support group in that community around them to support them. We know how important that is for for athletes to be around people and kind of given a blueprint once you give an athlete a blueprint they're usually pretty good about it but you know I was very fortunate that the day I retired the day I found something else in my life very purposeful most athletes are not so lucky a lot of them. You know it takes months to years to really figure it out and some people they they lose their identity they get very depressed. It's a very hard time you kind of go from knowing something and thinking you're going to play forever all of a sudden you're done and you know it's an immediate thing and the day that I've always told myself when I was playing the day that you retired the day the game forgets about you and there's no looking back now so. You know it's it's been a wild ride but I've enjoyed every second of it I've I've really enjoyed the process of you know trying to become successful in something other than sports and I continue to look forward to helping those around me and hopefully making a lot of success tours in this industry.

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