Powered by a pillow (local paper in Osceola, Wisc)
A spate of back pain 32 years ago turned Phil Mattison's life completely around.
The former truck driver's visit to an area chiropractor in 1981 launched an interest in an orthopedic pillow that turned into an entire business. These days, the Forest Lake entrepreneur, 56, owns a multimillion-dollar business called Core Products that manufactures some 450 orthopedic products for medical service practitioners worldwide.
The Osceola, Wis.-based firm employs 125 and expects to grow sales 40 percent over the next five years. Mattison offers motivational speeches on how all that happened.
“Life's not about what you deal yourself —it's about the opportunities you create for other people,” he said of his personal and business philosophy. “You do something that's unique for you only once, (but) introduce somebody else to a brand new experience and it's unique many, many times. And if you can find ways in business to create opportunities for others, everybody wins.”
Mattison started as an Air Force brat who attended 12 different schools in the U.S. and Germany before graduating from Edina West High School. He studied business at the Univer...
