Paul Fioroni
“It’s okay to ask for help. As leaders we have to do that.” – Paul Fioroni
Paul Fioroni is a Mississauga native, a former pro-hockey player and is currently the CEO of Matador Medical Management LLC. Matador currently works with the best air tech in the market- partnering with IVP, Aerobiotix, UV Angel and Kontrol Technologies who have brought the BioCloud to market. Paul is now working on launching his first 2 IP’s with Matador which will revolutionize the personal and real-time air we live in.
Some of the things we discuss in this episode:
More about Paul:
Paul Fioroni was born in Mississauga, Ontario Canada in August. 7th of 1976. He is a first-generation child of a former professional Italian soccer player Ed Fioroni who is from Verona, Italy who immigrated from Italy to live in Canada. His mother Georgina McLean came from a Scotch-Irish family that settled in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. He has 5 brothers who live now in both Canada and the US. He played AAA Peewee and Bantam hockey in Guelph, Ontario, also playing for the Ontario South Selects team. Paul then moved to Calgary, Alberta where he was able to become a part of the 1st ever NW Calgary Flames Midget AAA Macs Midget Championship team. He then went on to play with the storied Old’s Grizzly’s powerhouse AJHL Junior A team before finishing his junior career in Chilliwack with the Chiefs of the BCHL. Paul attended Sir Winston Churchill High School in Calgary, Alberta- and also attended Olds College in Alberta.
Paul Fioroni made a name for himself early as he was a highly touted, true power forward leaving the Chilliwack Chiefs of the BCHL. He was a rare member of the 30/30 Club in Junior hockey play where the player amasses 30 goals and 30 fighting majors in a single season. Fioroni was able to take his power forward skills to the professional ranks where he continued to build up his resume. Fioroni began his professional career in 1997 playing in the Western Professional Hockey League (WPHL) with both the Lake Charles Ice Pirates and the Odessa Jackalopes during the 1997-98 season. His rookie season he led the league in not only fighting majors, but also penalty minutes. He went on to play ten seasons of professional hockey, including his final five years with the Lubbock Cotton Kings of the Central Hockey League (CHL). He had multiple NHL camp assignments with both IHL and AHL pre-season game involvement. Fioroni won a World Championship with the St. Louis Vipers of the RHI. Fioroni retired as the Cotton King’s player assistant coach and captain following the 2005–06 CHL season to become the head coach of the Texas Tech University ice hockey team.
In 2003, while playing with the Lubbock Cotton Kings, Fioroni founded the 24 Foundation, a charitable organization which raises money for underprivileged children with both sporting needs and dire medical needs. In recognition of his “strong leadership qualities on and off the ice, while making significant and noteworthy humanitarian contributions to his community”, Fioroni was named the CHL Man of the Year for both the 2004–05 and 2005–06 seasons, becoming the only two-time winner of this award in the history of the CHL. Paul then went on to help establish the Texas Tech Hockey Program, bringing them from club status to SGA level and further more tried to get the program to D1 status. Due to Title 9 issues, the program was unable to move forward. Fioroni was able to bring the first ever Big XII Hockey Championship to Texas Tech and also the first ever American Airlines Cup victory- which was played in front of thousands prior to a Dallas Stars game. He was tabbed as an assistant coach for the first ever ACHA USA Division II Hockey team- which went 7-0 in 9 days in 7 countries in Europe playing professional European hockey clubs.
From there he started his sales career from hockey getting involved into home healthcare sales with one of the largest and most successful companies in the industry- Interim Healthcare. Cutting his teeth at a high level with Interim, Paul was able to move onto the spinal implant world with Stryker Spine. He was able to garnish much experience at Stryker as he embellished in the world of spinal implants becoming a Presidents club member every year he was employed by them. He was selected as one of the top 30 sales reps in the country and made the presidents circle his 4th year as a sales representative. Stryker’s world for him would come to a close as a new opportunity with an upcoming and very innovative company K2M Spine came into the picture. Paul would go one to become Salesman of the Year his first year as a sales rep and jump right into management from there. He would be a Presidents Council member for 4 years with K2M getting many awards for his territory and also taking over the GM position for Canada for K2M and tripling their revenue in 1 year. Stryker purchased K2M and Fioroni decided to get into the distribution game and locking on with Spineart USA. From there he would get into management again and is now the acting Area Sales Director for all of Texas and Louisiana.
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