I've interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs on this show. Matt Cathell's story might be the most purely entrepreneurial of them all.
Matt started Gunnison Tree Services in 1999 when he was 17 years old. By the time he sold a majority stake to a private equity firm in 2020, he had built it into a multi-state vegetation management powerhouse serving major utilities like Georgia Power and Dominion Energy. He went on to acquire and integrate 12 companies in 18 months, and in 2022, Ernst & Young recognized him as EY Entrepreneur of the Year.
But the story of how he got there — starting from a curb in an Atlanta neighborhood when he was four years old — is what makes this episode special. It's a story about passion, resilience, dyslexia as a superpower, and the relentless refusal to fail.
When Matt was four years old, his parents hired a local tree company to do some work at their house in Atlanta. The moment the crew showed up, Matt went outside, sat on the curb, and watched them work all day. His mom called him in for lunch. He declined. He stayed until dusk, until the last crew member left.
From that day forward, he was hooked. Every time a tree crew showed up in his parents' neighborhood, Matt was glued to the operation. Every Christmas, while other kids were asking for toys, Matt was asking for a climbing harness and a fake chainsaw. He'd go into the backyard, scale trees, and pretend to cut limbs.
Most little boys go through a phase of being fascinated by heavy equipment. Matt never grew out of it. He just turned it into a career.
On the day he turned 15, Matt called Eddie Thomas, the owner of Odd Job Tree — the dominant tree company in Atlanta and the same one his parents had hired years earlier. He told Eddie he wanted to come work for him every summer and learn every aspect of the business: estimating, climbing, equipment, customer interaction, all of it.
But technically, the business started even earlier. By 14, Matt was taking on tree projects from his parents' neighbors, hiring his neighborhood buddies as ground crew. He was selling Christmas trees, mistletoes, and firewood on the side — always something connected to trees.
Then came a pivotal moment. Matt transferred to Ben Franklin Academy, a work-study school on the Emory campus in Atlanta where students attended class from 8 to noon and were required to work 30 hours a week. He started at a car wash making $5 an hour, knew instantly it wasn't for him, and went to the headmaster with a pitch: he wanted to start his own tree company. The headmaster said he'd support it — as long as Matt's parents signed a liability waiver. His dad didn't hesitate for three seconds.
One of the most powerful moments in our conversation came when Matt shared something deeply personal: he has dyslexia. School was a constant struggle. He knew early on that he wasn't going to be a doctor or a lawyer, and he didn't need a fancy degree to succeed.
But here's what dyslexia gave him: resilience. An inability to quit. A wiring that says, "Things are hard, so I'll just work harder." He learned to adapt, to push through, and to never let obstacles define him. When he found his passion in trees, he went in a thousand percent.
I think every young person listening needs to hear this. You don't need an Ivy League degree to be wildly successful. What you need is a passion you're willing to go all in on and the resilience to push through when things get hard. Matt is living proof.
Matt went to Middle Tennessee State University for an entrepreneurship degree, following a girlfriend who got a soccer scholarship there. (His dad told him not to do it. He didn't listen. The relationship didn't last. The degree did.)
While at Middle Tennessee, Matt continued running Gunnison remotely. He'd come home on weekends, sell work for the week ahead, and manage his one crew from the classroom — sometimes literally taking estimate calls during lectures. His main crew member, Troy, had to pick up the climber at the bus stop every morning because the guy didn't have a driver's license. It was chaos.
But the business was doing $800,000 a year in revenue. Matt graduated debt-free. For every kid wondering how to pay for college, that's a data point worth sitting with.
The business didn't grow much during the college years — it's hard to scale when you're not physically present — but it held steady, and the moment Matt graduated and came back to Atlanta full-time in 2003, Gunnison went into high gear.
Back in Atlanta with no school to distract him, Matt poured fuel on the business. Gunnison started growing 30% organically every single year, driven almost entirely by referrals. His secret was simple: do exceptional work, take care of your people, and let your customers be your salesforce.
The company became known for something specific — the most technical, most hazardous tree work in Atlanta. While competitors were doing routine, cookie-cutter removals, Gunnison was the company you called when an 80-inch Southern Red Oak was half-uprooted and hanging over a $2 million house in Buckhead. Matt would bring in a crane and handle what nobody else could.
That differentiation was deliberate. In a saturated market with thousands of tree companies, Matt knew he had to stand out. Being the most technical, most capable operator was his moat.
His approach to talent was equally intentional. He paid above industry standards — not as a luxury, but as a strategy. He knew that if he compensated people well and genuinely cared about their families and their lives, they would stay, they would perform, and they would attract other top talent. It worked. Competitors' best climbers literally walked across the street to ask for jobs at Gunnison.
The pivot that transformed Gunnison from a residential tree company into a utility vegetation management firm came through a single phone call.
Trudy Brandow, a forester at Georgia Power, had gotten to know Matt through the Atlanta tree community. She called one day and explained that a local tree company they'd been partnering with was falling apart — the two co-owners couldn't get along. She knew Gunnison's reputation for technical crane work and asked if Matt would be interested in doing some one-off hazardous tree removals around distribution lines.
Matt said yes. He always said yes.
The first year was about $150,000 in work. The second year doubled to $300,000. Then it doubled again. And again. Georgia Power was testing Gunnison, and Gunnison kept passing every test — safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
What made the relationship work was that Gunnison wasn't just a tree removal company. They understood the Atlanta canopy. They had a preservation-first approach that balanced tree care with reliability. For a utility that's constantly navigating the tension between trimming trees and keeping communities happy, having a partner who understood both sides was invaluable.
As Georgia Power's work grew, Matt also expanded into DOT highway clearing projects through Georgia Power's unregulated division, Power Services Group. He invested $2.5 million in heavy forestry equipment — feller bunchers, excavators, whole tree chippers — and the DOT work was generating millions at 50% margins.
Then the market collapsed overnight. Competitors flooded in, lowballed every project, and margins evaporated. It's a lesson every entrepreneur needs to internalize: high-margin niches attract competition, and when the barrier to entry is low, saturation can happen fast.
But Matt had built relationships. Dan Bure at Georgia Power called and offered something bigger: routine utility maintenance contracts in Savannah and Atlanta — Georgia Power's two most critical service areas.
Matt said yes. Again.
What happened next is one of the most important leadership moments in the episode. Matt won the utility contracts and started the work using his residential tree crews. Within about a day, he realized it was wrong. Utility line clearance is fundamentally different from residential tree work. The safety requirements, the protocols, the skill sets — everything is different.
Instead of pushing through and hoping for the best, Matt called timeout. He pulled his crews back and committed to finding the right people for the job. That decision — the willingness to stop, acknowledge what he didn't know, and go find the expertise — probably saved Gunnison.
He got a lead on a group of 55 utility line clearance professionals at Davey Tree who were unhappy and looking for a change. He met with their leader, Ray, confirmed the cultural fit, and hired them all. His payroll skyrocketed overnight, but now he had qualified crews doing the work safely.
The project went seamlessly. Georgia Power was thrilled. And the utility side of Gunnison was officially in business.
Matt kept saying yes. He landed Dominion Energy in South Carolina — a $9 million contract that required another massive investment in people and equipment. The company grew to over 200 employees and $25 million in revenue.
Then came the private equity conversation. An investment banker reached out through a family connection. Matt blew off the first email for two weeks. He didn't think his business was worth anything. He barely knew what EBITDA was.
After a lunch meeting and some education on multiples and market processes, Matt decided to pursue a minority recapitalization — sell a piece of the company while retaining majority control. He went under LOI with a group in Atlanta. Due diligence progressed. They were 30 days from closing.
And then the DOT market collapsed — the same work that had been generating millions at high margins disappeared as competitors flooded in. The buyer got spooked. The deal fell apart.
Deal fatigue is real, and Matt felt it. His advisor David told him to take a breath, keep proving out the utility business, and they'd try again.
Two years later, Matt went back to market — this time for a majority transaction. He interviewed several private equity firms and chose Warren Equity out of Jacksonville, Florida. The deal closed in May 2020. There was no corporate team in place — it was still all Matt.
Matt immediately started acquiring. The first deal closed in December 2020 — a $30 million utility-focused company. Two more followed in April and May of 2021. Then they kept going. In total, Gunnison completed 12 acquisitions in about 18 months, spanning the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and South Central regions.
I'll be transparent: Matt and I met during this period. When I was going through my own majority recapitalization at Think Power, I was calling references, and Matt and I connected instantly. His experience and perspective were genuinely one of the reasons I went through with my own deal.
When I asked Matt how on earth he managed all of that without a corporate team for the first year, his answer was simple: "It baffles me too. I don't even know how I wore that many hats." It wasn't healthy, he admitted, but the same resilience that carried him through dyslexia, through making payroll by driving around collecting checks, through pulling residential crews off a utility job — that resilience carried him through the integration of 12 companies.
I want to pause on something Matt shared that I think every entrepreneur will recognize. There were times, especially during the high-growth years, when Matt wasn't sure he could make payroll. He had receivables on the books and work completed, but cash hadn't come in yet. His response wasn't to panic or give up. He'd get in his truck, drive around to clients' houses, and personally collect checks so his people would get paid.
That's entrepreneurship. Not the glamorous version you see on social media. The real version — where you're scrappy, resourceful, and willing to do whatever it takes because your reputation and your people's livelihoods depend on it. Miss one payroll, Matt said, and it's over. Word travels fast in a skilled trade. So he never missed one.
In 2022, a friend encouraged Matt to put his name in the hat for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. It's not his personality — he's more of a behind-the-scenes operator. But he did it, and he won.
It's hard to think of a more deserving recipient. From a kid with dyslexia sitting on a curb watching tree crews, to building a multi-state vegetation management platform through pure grit, calculated risk-taking, and an almost supernatural ability to say yes to the right opportunities at the right time — Matt's journey is the American entrepreneurial story at its finest.
Matt's take on AI in his industry is practical. He doesn't see AI replacing the hard hat tree trimmer anytime soon — someone still has to climb the tree. But he sees enormous value in AI-powered planning tools: using LIDAR data and analytics to identify hazardous trees, predict which fuses will fail during storms, and deploy veg management crews proactively rather than reactively.
It's the same pattern we've seen across the utility industry — AI makes the planning smarter and the execution more focused, but the skilled trades professionals doing the work remain essential and irreplaceable.
If I had to distill this conversation into lessons for entrepreneurs, especially those in the hard hat industries, here's what stands out.
Matt knew at four years old. He never wavered. That kind of conviction creates a compounding advantage over decades.
Dyslexia, cash flow crises, deal fatigue, market collapses — Matt faced them all and never once considered quitting. The ability to absorb hits and keep moving forward is what separates entrepreneurs who make it from those who don't.
In a market with thousands of tree companies, Matt became the one you called for the impossible job. That reputation attracted both customers and talent.
It's simple, but most companies don't actually do it. Matt paid above market, genuinely cared about his employees' lives and families, and the loyalty he earned in return was the foundation of everything he built.
Georgia Power, Dominion Energy, the DOT work — Matt said yes to every opportunity and then scrambled to build the capability. That's not recklessness; it's entrepreneurial instinct paired with the work ethic to back it up.
The smartest thing Matt did during the entire utility transition was pulling his residential crews off the job after one day. Knowing when you're in over your head — and having the humility to pause and get the right people — is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Matt's 30% annual growth was almost entirely referral-driven. Do exceptional work, and the sales take care of themselves.
Matt, thank you for sharing your journey so openly. I know we'll do a round two — there's more to this story. For every kid out there with a passion and a challenge they're trying to overcome: pursue it relentlessly. Be resilient. Don't let your shortcomings define you. If a kid with dyslexia and a fake chainsaw can build an empire, so can you.
Listen to the full episode on From Boots to Boardroom.
From Boots to Boardroom is presented by KYRO AI — Digitize work and maximize profits.
I've interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs on this show. Matt Cathell's story might be the most purely entrepreneurial of them all.
Matt started Gunnison Tree Services in 1999 when he was 17 years old. By the time he sold a majority stake to a private equity firm in 2020, he had built it into a multi-state vegetation management powerhouse serving major utilities like Georgia Power and Dominion Energy. He went on to acquire and integrate 12 companies in 18 months, and in 2022, Ernst & Young recognized him as EY Entrepreneur of the Year.
But the story of how he got there — starting from a curb in an Atlanta neighborhood when he was four years old — is what makes this episode special. It's a story about passion, resilience, dyslexia as a superpower, and the relentless refusal to fail.
When Matt was four years old, his parents hired a local tree company to do some work at their house in Atlanta. The moment the crew showed up, Matt went outside, sat on the curb, and watched them work all day. His mom called him in for lunch. He declined. He stayed until dusk, until the last crew member left.
From that day forward, he was hooked. Every time a tree crew showed up in his parents' neighborhood, Matt was glued to the operation. Every Christmas, while other kids were asking for toys, Matt was asking for a climbing harness and a fake chainsaw. He'd go into the backyard, scale trees, and pretend to cut limbs.
Most little boys go through a phase of being fascinated by heavy equipment. Matt never grew out of it. He just turned it into a career.
On the day he turned 15, Matt called Eddie Thomas, the owner of Odd Job Tree — the dominant tree company in Atlanta and the same one his parents had hired years earlier. He told Eddie he wanted to come work for him every summer and learn every aspect of the business: estimating, climbing, equipment, customer interaction, all of it.
But technically, the business started even earlier. By 14, Matt was taking on tree projects from his parents' neighbors, hiring his neighborhood buddies as ground crew. He was selling Christmas trees, mistletoes, and firewood on the side — always something connected to trees.
Then came a pivotal moment. Matt transferred to Ben Franklin Academy, a work-study school on the Emory campus in Atlanta where students attended class from 8 to noon and were required to work 30 hours a week. He started at a car wash making $5 an hour, knew instantly it wasn't for him, and went to the headmaster with a pitch: he wanted to start his own tree company. The headmaster said he'd support it — as long as Matt's parents signed a liability waiver. His dad didn't hesitate for three seconds.
One of the most powerful moments in our conversation came when Matt shared something deeply personal: he has dyslexia. School was a constant struggle. He knew early on that he wasn't going to be a doctor or a lawyer, and he didn't need a fancy degree to succeed.
But here's what dyslexia gave him: resilience. An inability to quit. A wiring that says, "Things are hard, so I'll just work harder." He learned to adapt, to push through, and to never let obstacles define him. When he found his passion in trees, he went in a thousand percent.
I think every young person listening needs to hear this. You don't need an Ivy League degree to be wildly successful. What you need is a passion you're willing to go all in on and the resilience to push through when things get hard. Matt is living proof.
Matt went to Middle Tennessee State University for an entrepreneurship degree, following a girlfriend who got a soccer scholarship there. (His dad told him not to do it. He didn't listen. The relationship didn't last. The degree did.)
While at Middle Tennessee, Matt continued running Gunnison remotely. He'd come home on weekends, sell work for the week ahead, and manage his one crew from the classroom — sometimes literally taking estimate calls during lectures. His main crew member, Troy, had to pick up the climber at the bus stop every morning because the guy didn't have a driver's license. It was chaos.
But the business was doing $800,000 a year in revenue. Matt graduated debt-free. For every kid wondering how to pay for college, that's a data point worth sitting with.
The business didn't grow much during the college years — it's hard to scale when you're not physically present — but it held steady, and the moment Matt graduated and came back to Atlanta full-time in 2003, Gunnison went into high gear.
Back in Atlanta with no school to distract him, Matt poured fuel on the business. Gunnison started growing 30% organically every single year, driven almost entirely by referrals. His secret was simple: do exceptional work, take care of your people, and let your customers be your salesforce.
The company became known for something specific — the most technical, most hazardous tree work in Atlanta. While competitors were doing routine, cookie-cutter removals, Gunnison was the company you called when an 80-inch Southern Red Oak was half-uprooted and hanging over a $2 million house in Buckhead. Matt would bring in a crane and handle what nobody else could.
That differentiation was deliberate. In a saturated market with thousands of tree companies, Matt knew he had to stand out. Being the most technical, most capable operator was his moat.
His approach to talent was equally intentional. He paid above industry standards — not as a luxury, but as a strategy. He knew that if he compensated people well and genuinely cared about their families and their lives, they would stay, they would perform, and they would attract other top talent. It worked. Competitors' best climbers literally walked across the street to ask for jobs at Gunnison.
The pivot that transformed Gunnison from a residential tree company into a utility vegetation management firm came through a single phone call.
Trudy Brandow, a forester at Georgia Power, had gotten to know Matt through the Atlanta tree community. She called one day and explained that a local tree company they'd been partnering with was falling apart — the two co-owners couldn't get along. She knew Gunnison's reputation for technical crane work and asked if Matt would be interested in doing some one-off hazardous tree removals around distribution lines.
Matt said yes. He always said yes.
The first year was about $150,000 in work. The second year doubled to $300,000. Then it doubled again. And again. Georgia Power was testing Gunnison, and Gunnison kept passing every test — safely, efficiently, and cost-effectively.
What made the relationship work was that Gunnison wasn't just a tree removal company. They understood the Atlanta canopy. They had a preservation-first approach that balanced tree care with reliability. For a utility that's constantly navigating the tension between trimming trees and keeping communities happy, having a partner who understood both sides was invaluable.
As Georgia Power's work grew, Matt also expanded into DOT highway clearing projects through Georgia Power's unregulated division, Power Services Group. He invested $2.5 million in heavy forestry equipment — feller bunchers, excavators, whole tree chippers — and the DOT work was generating millions at 50% margins.
Then the market collapsed overnight. Competitors flooded in, lowballed every project, and margins evaporated. It's a lesson every entrepreneur needs to internalize: high-margin niches attract competition, and when the barrier to entry is low, saturation can happen fast.
But Matt had built relationships. Dan Bure at Georgia Power called and offered something bigger: routine utility maintenance contracts in Savannah and Atlanta — Georgia Power's two most critical service areas.
Matt said yes. Again.
What happened next is one of the most important leadership moments in the episode. Matt won the utility contracts and started the work using his residential tree crews. Within about a day, he realized it was wrong. Utility line clearance is fundamentally different from residential tree work. The safety requirements, the protocols, the skill sets — everything is different.
Instead of pushing through and hoping for the best, Matt called timeout. He pulled his crews back and committed to finding the right people for the job. That decision — the willingness to stop, acknowledge what he didn't know, and go find the expertise — probably saved Gunnison.
He got a lead on a group of 55 utility line clearance professionals at Davey Tree who were unhappy and looking for a change. He met with their leader, Ray, confirmed the cultural fit, and hired them all. His payroll skyrocketed overnight, but now he had qualified crews doing the work safely.
The project went seamlessly. Georgia Power was thrilled. And the utility side of Gunnison was officially in business.
Matt kept saying yes. He landed Dominion Energy in South Carolina — a $9 million contract that required another massive investment in people and equipment. The company grew to over 200 employees and $25 million in revenue.
Then came the private equity conversation. An investment banker reached out through a family connection. Matt blew off the first email for two weeks. He didn't think his business was worth anything. He barely knew what EBITDA was.
After a lunch meeting and some education on multiples and market processes, Matt decided to pursue a minority recapitalization — sell a piece of the company while retaining majority control. He went under LOI with a group in Atlanta. Due diligence progressed. They were 30 days from closing.
And then the DOT market collapsed — the same work that had been generating millions at high margins disappeared as competitors flooded in. The buyer got spooked. The deal fell apart.
Deal fatigue is real, and Matt felt it. His advisor David told him to take a breath, keep proving out the utility business, and they'd try again.
Two years later, Matt went back to market — this time for a majority transaction. He interviewed several private equity firms and chose Warren Equity out of Jacksonville, Florida. The deal closed in May 2020. There was no corporate team in place — it was still all Matt.
Matt immediately started acquiring. The first deal closed in December 2020 — a $30 million utility-focused company. Two more followed in April and May of 2021. Then they kept going. In total, Gunnison completed 12 acquisitions in about 18 months, spanning the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and South Central regions.
I'll be transparent: Matt and I met during this period. When I was going through my own majority recapitalization at Think Power, I was calling references, and Matt and I connected instantly. His experience and perspective were genuinely one of the reasons I went through with my own deal.
When I asked Matt how on earth he managed all of that without a corporate team for the first year, his answer was simple: "It baffles me too. I don't even know how I wore that many hats." It wasn't healthy, he admitted, but the same resilience that carried him through dyslexia, through making payroll by driving around collecting checks, through pulling residential crews off a utility job — that resilience carried him through the integration of 12 companies.
I want to pause on something Matt shared that I think every entrepreneur will recognize. There were times, especially during the high-growth years, when Matt wasn't sure he could make payroll. He had receivables on the books and work completed, but cash hadn't come in yet. His response wasn't to panic or give up. He'd get in his truck, drive around to clients' houses, and personally collect checks so his people would get paid.
That's entrepreneurship. Not the glamorous version you see on social media. The real version — where you're scrappy, resourceful, and willing to do whatever it takes because your reputation and your people's livelihoods depend on it. Miss one payroll, Matt said, and it's over. Word travels fast in a skilled trade. So he never missed one.
In 2022, a friend encouraged Matt to put his name in the hat for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. It's not his personality — he's more of a behind-the-scenes operator. But he did it, and he won.
It's hard to think of a more deserving recipient. From a kid with dyslexia sitting on a curb watching tree crews, to building a multi-state vegetation management platform through pure grit, calculated risk-taking, and an almost supernatural ability to say yes to the right opportunities at the right time — Matt's journey is the American entrepreneurial story at its finest.
Matt's take on AI in his industry is practical. He doesn't see AI replacing the hard hat tree trimmer anytime soon — someone still has to climb the tree. But he sees enormous value in AI-powered planning tools: using LIDAR data and analytics to identify hazardous trees, predict which fuses will fail during storms, and deploy veg management crews proactively rather than reactively.
It's the same pattern we've seen across the utility industry — AI makes the planning smarter and the execution more focused, but the skilled trades professionals doing the work remain essential and irreplaceable.
If I had to distill this conversation into lessons for entrepreneurs, especially those in the hard hat industries, here's what stands out.
Matt knew at four years old. He never wavered. That kind of conviction creates a compounding advantage over decades.
Dyslexia, cash flow crises, deal fatigue, market collapses — Matt faced them all and never once considered quitting. The ability to absorb hits and keep moving forward is what separates entrepreneurs who make it from those who don't.
In a market with thousands of tree companies, Matt became the one you called for the impossible job. That reputation attracted both customers and talent.
It's simple, but most companies don't actually do it. Matt paid above market, genuinely cared about his employees' lives and families, and the loyalty he earned in return was the foundation of everything he built.
Georgia Power, Dominion Energy, the DOT work — Matt said yes to every opportunity and then scrambled to build the capability. That's not recklessness; it's entrepreneurial instinct paired with the work ethic to back it up.
The smartest thing Matt did during the entire utility transition was pulling his residential crews off the job after one day. Knowing when you're in over your head — and having the humility to pause and get the right people — is a sign of strength, not weakness.
Matt's 30% annual growth was almost entirely referral-driven. Do exceptional work, and the sales take care of themselves.
Matt, thank you for sharing your journey so openly. I know we'll do a round two — there's more to this story. For every kid out there with a passion and a challenge they're trying to overcome: pursue it relentlessly. Be resilient. Don't let your shortcomings define you. If a kid with dyslexia and a fake chainsaw can build an empire, so can you.
Listen to the full episode on From Boots to Boardroom.
From Boots to Boardroom is presented by KYRO AI — Digitize work and maximize profits.
Hari Vasudevan, PE, is a serial entrepreneur and engineer focused on AI-driven solutions for utilities, construction, and storm response. As Founder and CEO of KYRO AI, he leads the development of AI-powered software that helps utility, vegetation, and field service teams digitize operations, improve storm response and restoration, and reduce operational risk. He also serves as Vice Chair and Strategic Advisor for the Edison Electric Institute’s Transmission Subject Area Committee and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering with professional engineering licensure in multiple states.
