By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
A Dowagiac graduate graces the cover of the March issue of AutoSuccess magazine, "the No.-1 sales-improvement magazine for the automotive professional."
The monthly is published in Louisville, Ky.
Mathews, a 1976 Union High School graduate, is the older brother of Southwestern Michigan College President Dr. David Mathews and the son of Dr. Fred L. and Thelda Mathews of Dowagiac.
His father chairs the SMC Board of Trustees.
The cover story, "Behind Every Great Product – a Great Partnership," tells how The Cobalt Group's Mathews and co-founder John Holt "harnessed the power of Internet search marketing for dealers."
Cobalt "is widely acknowledged as the leading provider of online marketing products and services to the automotive industry."
Mathews, based in Seattle, is executive vice president and chief operating officer of The Cobalt Group.
"We founded the company in 1995," Holt tells the magazine, "based on the belief that newspaper advertising would move to the Internet. We were wrong about the timing, but 100 percent correct about the predicted transformation – one that has now gained momentum. Of course, we didn't know how companies like Yahoo! and Google would drive this revolution. Google didn't even exist at that time, and Yahoo! was still an infant."
"I couldn't have done it without Scott Mathews," Holt tells AutoSuccess. "We set out to find a guy like Scott, who has done far more than simply run a tight ship. He has been instrumental in transforming Cobalt into a company that backs up its big ideas with successful products and services … that provide enormous value to thousands of dealers across the country."
Holt says Mathews "is the most talented operating executive I've encountered in the 30 years I've been working."
Mathews "has a special gift for keeping 'big idea' people from falling on their faces … he's able to get at the heart of a strategy and motivate the troops to enhance that vision, so that the product improves over time."
Cobalt's 100-percent commitment to its customers' success convinced Mathews to join the company.
"What I'm good at," Mathews said, "and what I really love doing, is managing the complex set of interactions that, when perfectly balanced, become something greater than the sum of their parts."
"The more I can give to Scott, the better Cobalt will perform," Holt says in their interview with Brian Ankney. "One of the ways I've grown as a CEO is to realize the importance of surrounding myself with people who are smarter and more capable than I am … it's what makes my partnership with Scott so strong … If you view your job primarily as serving the people around you and helping them to be successful, you will create extraordinary value and inspire significant commitment and loyalty. If you're lucky enough to have a partner like Scott, who's got broad shoulders and lots of stamina, you can even have breakfast with your kids every once in a while – something that was unimaginable for me during Cobalt's early years."
Previously Mathews, profiled by the Daily News in 2000, was president of a fast-growing Florida company that sold cattle online.
Its involvement in turning a technology that tests for deadly bacteria in raw meat into an actual product won it an award the Chicago Tribune dubbed the "Oscars of Invention."
The R&D 100 Awards, given out by Chicago-based R&D Magazine each September for the 100 most technologically significant new products and processes, put Mathews in some pretty heady company.
Previous winners included fax machines, automated teller machines (ATMs), antilock brakes and digital wristwatches.
Mathews was in Melbourne, Fla., when he was president of eMerge in Sebastian, which was selected from 80 companies to commercialize technology developed and patented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Services and Iowa State University.