"A Day in the Life" is a feature examining the daily habits of interesting personalities in sports business. This week, PGA Superstore CMO MATT COREY talks dinner spots in suburban Atlanta, planning the next adventure and when not to schedule a meeting.
5:45am: The first thing I try to do, at least four out of five mornings a week, is some type of cardio. I’ll run on the treadmill to wake my body up. I’m the type of guy who can’t sit still. I have a standing desk and am constantly moving. I also play tennis a few times a week on evenings and weekends. I will probably look at emails on the treadmill, which is a bad idea, but what I tend to do is check it just to make sure there are no emergencies.
6:30-7:30am: After a 45-minute workout, then change, I head into our office in Roswell, north of Atlanta. I’m a little bit north of our office. It’s about a half-hour drive, which is not so bad. It sort of centers you.
8:00am: Even the night before or on the treadmill, I look at the calendar and find out exactly what’s going on, what discussions have to happen, what key decisions have to be made. I’ll do the same thing in the morning. Five or 10 minutes getting prepared and organized for the day, then I dive right in.
9:00am: The good news is, I am not in meetings all day. That would drive me absolutely crazy. I try to have meetings that are really short, where I can pull my team together, we can discuss something, make a decision and move, then let people do their work. We’re in this high-growth phase, adding stores left and right, launching a brand new e-commerce platform in five weeks. We always have executive meetings in the mornings. If you have strategic meetings at 4:00pm, nobody’s going to remember it the next day. It’s going to be harder to get people with all their neurons firing in the afternoon.
Corey (r) said to coordinate campaigns with Jason Day, you’d better be four to six months out with planningMATT COREY
10:00am: Part of my time is spent on these big initiatives -- new store openings, how we are going to grand open our new website, etc. Then there’s more tactical things like product launches or how we are going to collaborate with Callaway or TaylorMade on a campaign. With the Father’s Day spots having run, now we’re thinking about the fall and holidays already. To coordinate campaigns with JASON DAY or SERGIO GARCIA, you’d better be four to six months out with planning.
12:00pm: Half the time, I don’t break for lunch. I’ll work through. But sometimes we do go grab food. Rarely do we take the full hour. There’s a great little taco place near our office, and a good smoothie place, and sushi. Something quick. If you need to have a real formal meeting with a client or a brand, you take them to a nicer sit-down restaurant. Otherwise, it’s more about efficiency.
1:00pm: There’s the long-term strategic thinking, but there’s also short-term stuff. For example, a particular store isn’t doing as well as we’d like; what can we do starting now or next week to drive traffic? Then 10-15% of my time will be spent on something we didn’t expect. So I try to block time in my calendar to get surprise work done.
5:30pm: I try to get out of the office before 6:00pm, but you’re never completely off the clock. I run marketing, e-commerce and partnerships and corporate sponsorships. There’s always something going on in one of those three areas. Strategy discussions with a partner on the West Coast, or a quick phone call at 10:00pm. But I wouldn’t do those things if I didn’t love my job. My wife will ask, “Are you working?” I’ve got the laptop up at 9:30, and technically, yes I am. But I like it. I’m solving a problem, or coming up with a fun idea. And if you love your job, it’s less work and more an adventure.
7:00pm: I have two kids -- one in college, one heading off to college. We eat at home a lot, but we’ll go out occasionally. We try to go somewhere different each time. Midtown Atlanta just has a ton of great restaurants. You can just walk around and go, “Let’s pop in there.” Downtown Roswell is another great spot for a bunch of great little eateries.
8:00pm: I’ll hang out with my family, spend time with my son before he heads off to college in a few months. I try to shut it down by 10:00pm, so I can get seven to eight hours of sleep. I always try to spend a little time every week planning the next adventure, whether that’s a weekend with one of my kids, or our upcoming family cruise to Alaska with my 80-year-old Dad. I’m trying to instill in my kids that while your day-to-day life continues to move, and that engine continues to turn, have fun figuring out what your next adventure is. It makes the day go by a lot faster.
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