SE Michigan Small Business Mastermind

What would it be like to have a business that does well and does good?

Somewhere along the way most of us were handed a choice: make money, or make a difference. Run it like a business, or run it the way you believe in. You’ve felt the pull of both, and you don’t want to pick. Good. There’s another way to run it: a business that makes the world better as it makes money, where what you believe is an advantage in the market, not a cost, and where the more you make, the more good you get to do.

This is a room for Southeast Michigan owners who want that: a small, hand-picked group, six months, building businesses they’d stand behind. Together we work out what your business is for and how it runs that way, in the real decisions: who you hire, what you charge, who you buy from, how you treat customers, what you give back. You write it down, say it out loud, and have people who hold you to it.

Read on to see if it’s your room.

Apply for the room

Not ready to apply?

See where you stand →Five minutes
Why this room exists

In his 2026 book Incorruptible, Eric Ries names a force he calls financial gravity — the structural pull that bends a company away from what it was built for and toward whatever pays, a little more the bigger it gets. His answer is governance: trusts, boards, charters. Structures that outlast any one person’s willpower and hold the mission honest when the pressure comes.

Most owners reading this don’t have that. When you own and operate the thing, there’s no board to install and no trust holding the line. You are the governance. Which means the mission holds exactly as long as you do.

That’s what this room is for.

Who This Is For

This room is for owners who recognize themselves here:

The intention: a room where the thing you’ve been muting is the thing you lead with — where conviction is what earns you belonging, not what threatens it.

Questions you might be asking

“I built this to stand for something. Why do I feel like I’m the only one still fighting for that?”
“Everywhere else I say exactly what I think. Why do I go quiet in my own company?”
“I can win, or I can do it the way I believe in. Why do I have to choose?”
“I’ve gotten so good at not needing anyone that I don’t actually have anyone.”
Before you apply

If someone on your team had to make the call without you, would they know what this business stands for?

Start here if you’re not sure. Five minutes, fifteen questions, and you’ll see where your business stands across the five parties you’re responsible to.

See where you stand →

How We Show Up

Be Human.

You don’t have to perform “founder” in here. Bring the whole self — the win, the dread, the thing you can’t say out loud anywhere else.

Be Integrity.

Say the true thing, even when it’s awkward. We’d rather hear what’s actually going on than a tidy update that protects your image.

Be Leader.

Nobody’s coming to save your business but you — and that’s good news. You take ownership in here the way you do out there, and we hold you to it.

Be Ecological.

Your business doesn’t live in a vacuum. We look at the whole picture — your health, your relationships, your energy — because a win that wrecks the rest of your life isn’t a win.

Be Generous and Generative.

Share the playbook, the contact, the hard-won lesson. What you give to the room comes back to you, and the group gets smarter every time someone does.

Be an Artist.

Your business is a creative act, not a spreadsheet. We make room for the weird idea and the gut instinct, not just the safe move.

Be Fun.

This is a serious thing we take lightly. Brag without it being a brag, panic without shame, and laugh about it — because building something is too hard to do grim.

The focus

What We’ll Work On

Building something that stands for something has a cost, and it’s specific. This room works both sides of it: the outer work of making the stand real in how the business actually runs, and the inner work of the patterns that come bundled with being the kind of person who’d build this in the first place. Not flaws to fix. The predictable price of the identity.

Outer Game — building the stand into the business

  • Codifying what you believe into how the business runs. The anti-financial-gravity work: turning the values you carry in your head into decisions, hires, and standards that hold the line even when you’re not in the room.
  • Selling and asking for money without apology. Charging what the work is worth, naming the number, and letting the business be a business — no flinch, no quiet discount to stay liked.
  • Having the hard conversation instead of swallowing it. Saying the true thing to the employee, the partner, the client — out loud, in real time — rather than metabolizing it alone and calling that leadership.

We take the business one relationship at a time, a month each: the owners and funders behind it (you included), the people in it, the customers it serves, the vendors and partners it buys from, and the community it operates in. Each month you write down what you stand for in that one, specifically enough that someone on your team could decide with it when you’re not in the room. In six months, every part of the business has been looked at against what you actually believe, and you leave with the document.

Inner Game — the patterns that come with the identity

  • The caretaking reflex. Of course you caretake — you built a business on caring. But carrying everyone can quietly become the reason you can’t grow, can’t delegate, can’t rest.
  • Self-reliance that’s actually isolation. You do it alone because you’re good at it, and because it’s safer than needing someone who might let you down. The strength and the trap are the same move.
  • The fear that conviction costs belonging. The habit of softening what you believe when you’re not sure the room agrees. In here you practice the opposite — saying it at full strength, in a room that won’t punish you for it.
Matt Thieleman — warm close-crop portrait

Who I Am

I’m Matt. I live in Dexter, Michigan, just outside Ann Arbor, with my wife Kristen and our daughter Opal. My working life happens in one of two seats: across from a leader figuring out their next move, or inside the messy middle of building something myself.

Coaching came first. I started Golden Bristle in 2015, and over the last decade I’ve coached founders, executives, and hundreds of other coaches — and wrote a book about the craft. The work is helping people lead from who they actually are and build companies that don’t quietly cost them their lives.

Then I took the seat myself. In 2021, I became CEO of a small company, and that’s where the real education started. I grew the team and we beat our targets, I served clients I loved — and I made just about every mistake there is. I hired the wrong people, had no real sales engine, and chased too many goals at once while telling myself it served the mission. Eventually I burned out, broke down with the cofounder, and walked away from what our team had built together.

That chapter didn’t teach me how to coach. It taught me what it costs to hold the line when the pressure’s on — and it changed how I coach.

I’m still in it, not above it. I walked away from people I’d been actively courting for this very room, because I finally admitted I was chasing relevance, not people I was genuinely excited to build with. That’s the type of decision this room is for. It’s also why I’m among the builders gathering around Eric Ries’s Incorruptible — keeping a company true to what it’s for is the question I can’t put down.

Logistics

How Logistics Will Work

Investment

This group runs on trust. Here’s how I’ve set it up.

$500/month, on a sliding scale. Six-month commitment.

No proof required. You know your situation better than I do — I trust you to choose honestly. And no one is turned away for lack of funds. If $400 still isn’t workable and you’re meant to be in this room, talk to me.

I price it this way for the same reason you’re here: a thing can be a real business and still refuse to leave the right person out. That’s not a discount policy — it’s the stand, applied to the door.

Your investment covers everything listed above. If you have another request, please bring it to me.

What Clients Say

“Matt is the type of coach who practices with profound love and cutting clarity what he preaches. If he’s sharing a tool, it’s because he’s tried, tested, and refined it personally first.”
Jaclyn Vouthouris
Modern Day Mystic & Business Consultant
“Working with Matt was a life-changing experience. He has a gift for helping people listen to their inner voice — it gave me the confidence to start my own business.”
Kristen M.
Business Owner
“Matt brings a combination of unconditional acceptance and steady courage and willingness to challenge. The coaching experience was raw, fun, and life-changing.”
Gabe C.
Lawyer & Coach

Ready to get in the room?

The room is small by design — up to eight owners, so everyone’s known and no one hides. It’s for owners, or leaders with real authority to change how the business runs, within about an hour of Ann Arbor. If you’re building something that stands for something, and you’re tired of being the only one guarding what it’s for, this is where you stop doing that alone.

Fill out a quick application and I’ll be in touch within a few days about whether it’s a fit.

Apply for the room

Not sure yet?

Start with the quiz →

Or email me at matt@goldenbristle.com. I’d rather have a real conversation than have you guess.

Want to go deeper than the group experience? That’s 1:1 coaching.