I had never met anyone who had gone to Monmouth University. I had never met anyone who had been an on-air deejay for a rock station on the Jersey Shore. I had never met anyone who knew how to both play guitar and work a lathe. I had never met anyone who had a hedgehog as a family pet. I had never met anyone who belonged to a Mason’s lodge.
Then again, I had never met anyone quite like Matt Link.
I started Nucleus as a one-man (plus one dog) show in 2005 and for the first several years, it really was often a solo act. Certainly I had help from time to time and some of them were fairly consistent but still weren’t “on the books” as it were. My good friend Phil Goldberg joined me in 2014 but by 2017, we needed more help. I felt compelled to act more like a “real company” so we went looking for our first real hire. We thought of Matt Link.
Matt had been our client at PetSmart and we liked him a lot. So I asked him to meet me for lunch. It was at a Scottsdale Chili’s (yes, of all the incredible restaurants in Scottsdale, we chose a Chili’s for this important meeting of minds and breaking of bread) where I broached the topic of him joining us. He was interested so we discussed it further. I figured out how to write an offer letter and we met again—this time at that legendary business breakfast establishment frequented by so many power brokers since the dawn of capitalism—Denny’s.
Why our restaurant choices were what they were is beyond me but, in a way, that was fitting of Matt. He didn’t really need anything fancy.
He joined us in 2017. I remember noting that Matt had worked at the headquarters of places like Century Link, Meritage Homes and PetSmart stores and here he was joining Nucleus Marketing Lab—just a slightly smaller operation.
He fit in right away. Laughing was something that happened a lot. In fact, in a world where companies keep all sorts of KPIs on their work and workforce, an informal metric I always liked about NML during “the Matt years” was that we laughed every day, without fail, especially when we were all in the office all the time. We just always found a reason to chuckle at something. So-called “Dad jokes” were by no means out of bounds. In fact, they were encouraged. After all, with both of us being dads, the term “Dad jokes” was technically a catch-all for any joke we had, right?
When you work with people in a small office setting like ours, you get to know their idiosyncrasies. One of Matt’s quirks was using the phrase, “As it turns out.” He’d use it in conversation about a project and we’d call him on it. We’d laugh; it added a little levity to the work day. Another quirk was his tidiness. A good word for Matt’s desk area was austere. He had a picture of each of his kids taped to the wall, a small clock and basically zero other personal effects. Except there was always a spiral notebook within reach. Matt took notes longhand and his spiral notebooks were a constant presence. We’d be talking about a project and he’d furiously flip through the pages to get to his notes. It never took him long. He had a system and it worked just fine for him.
Matt passed away in January 2025. While he was no longer part of the squad when he left this earth, he was—and will always be—part of the Nucleus story. We grew the company together and we got through COVID together. He made Nucleus better. He made me better. And from the stories I heard at his funeral service, he did the same for a whole lot of folks.
I picture Matt at peace, gently strumming his guitar somewhere up there, probably to lyrics jotted down in one of his trusty spiral notebooks. If he’s taking requests when I get there, I hope he’ll do me and his native New Jersey proud with an acoustic version of Thunder Road. Then I imagine we’ll head out for lunch. Nothing fancy, keeping with our tradition. I would think in heaven, there’s always an empty booth at Applebee’s. We’ll order burgers and fries. After all, as it turns out, there will be a lot to ketchup on.
