What Does Success Look Like to You? – Matthew V. Blackwell
Matthew V. Blackwell is a Connecticut business owner based in Woodbridge. He grew up in Fairfield and Monroe as the oldest of four. Business was part of daily life early on. His father earned a Harvard MBA. His mother earned a Master’s in Chemistry and later built Aurora Products, a company that grew to a large scale.
Matthew graduated high school with honors in 1999. He earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from Union College in 2003, graduating cum laude. That training shaped how he works. He focuses on systems, flow, and the small details that keep an operation steady.
He started his career at ACNielsen BASES. After two years, he joined the family business, Aurora Products. From 2005 to 2016, he worked his way up from Assistant to the General Manager to Vice President. He learned how to lead teams, fix problems fast, and keep performance consistent.
In 2016, Matthew stepped out on his own and founded CyclElectric, an electric bike company selling conversion kits and pre-built bikes. The company later closed due to inconsistent sales and tough competition from China. He returned to operations leadership at Industrial Flow Solutions before leaving in 2022.
In 2023, he launched two new ventures: Woodbridge Farms, an ecommerce business, and SeaSide Properties, which builds and manages real estate. Outside of work, he is a father of four kids. He volunteers with the American Red Cross as a Duty Officer, is an active member of his local church, and has donated time to Habitat for Humanity and the United Way.
When you think about success, what does it actually mean to you now?
Success is mostly about my family being okay. I am married with four kids, so life is busy in a real way. If the home stuff is stable, everything else works better. I also think success changes over time. I have had highs and lows. I try to enjoy the high moments, but not get distracted by them. I see career success as a tool. It helps create stability, choices, and a future where I can travel with my wife and feel like we built something solid.
You have moved between corporate work, a family company, and entrepreneurship. What did that teach you?
It taught me that momentum matters more than a perfect plan. At Aurora Products, I learned how to run systems that have to work every day. Over time, I moved up to VP of Operations. That happened because I kept improving process and staying accountable. Starting CyclElectric taught me the other side. When you build a product business, the market can change fast. Competition from China and inconsistent sales made it hard to keep things steady. I learned to respect reality, adjust quickly, and not confuse effort with traction.
What role did education and engineering thinking play in your career progress?
Industrial engineering trained me to look for the real constraint. Where is the bottleneck. What step causes delays. What breaks when demand changes. That thinking helped at every stage, from early corporate work to running operations. Even now, I use it in daily decisions. With an ecommerce business, you still have flow. Orders, inventory, customer expectations, and shipping all connect.
Outside of work, I like building things with my hands. I have built my kids a tree fort and a new chicken coop for our dozen or so chickens. I installed solar panels and a battery management system so I can run my washer and dryer off the grid. I garden too. I built some raised beds and grow different vegetables and fruits. Recently, we got interested in the idea of a food forest so we started that as well. Those projects are still a process. You plan, measure, test, adjust, and repeat until it works.
How did you handle a major setback without letting it define you?
I had to accept that the world does not pause when I feel insecure or doubtful. I still had kids to take care of and responsibilities that did not go away. So I kept moving. For me, rebuilding is not one giant comeback moment. It is a steady set of actions that stack up over time. I lean on routine and standards. I hold myself to what I think is right, even when no one is watching. That mindset helped me shift from a closed startup into operations leadership, then into building again with Woodbridge Farms and SeaSide Properties.
What does success look like day to day, not in big goals?
It looks like doing the boring work with care. Answering the tough email. Fixing the process that keeps breaking. Showing up for school activities. I spend a lot of time doing kid stuff – Cub Scouts, dance recitals, swim meets, or MMA competitions. It also looks like service. I volunteer with the American Red Cross as a Duty Officer and regularly give time to Habitat for Humanity and the United Way. That work keeps me grounded.
If you had to share one practical “success rule” from your own life, what would it be?
Build standards you can live with, then follow them when it is inconvenient. I am very self-driven, but motivation is not reliable. Standards are. When CyclElectric struggled, I learned that effort alone does not win. You need a plan that matches the market. In operations leadership, I learned that consistency beats intensity. Now, with Woodbridge Farms, I focus on steady improvement. Small changes in fulfilment, customer experience, and process add up. Success comes from stacking the right steps for a long time.