Shores of 2025

[0:19] Matt: right, all right, all right. Went to Top Notch Burger a couple days ago.

[0:24] Michael: Oh, wow. I've been there in ages.

[0:26] Matt: I know. Hadn't either.

[0:27] Michael: How was it?

[0:28] Matt: It was the same as it always is.

[0:30] Michael: Yeah. Which is great about that place.

[0:33] Matt: For those who don't know, Matthew McConaughey's first words ever on screen were, all right, all right, all right. And I think they were at Top Notch Burger.

[0:43] Michael: Totally. Yeah.

[0:45] Matt: So that was very cool.

[0:48] Michael: Totally. Well, also cool. Fun fact is that that whole Dazed and Confused was about Alison's high school.

[0:56] Matt: Oh, really?

[0:56] Michael: Huntsville. Yeah.

[0:57] Matt: Crazy.

[0:59] Michael: I guess he had gone to Huntsville High School. Oh, Richard Linklater.

[1:04] Matt: Linklater. Yeah.

[1:05] Michael: So

[1:06] Matt: nice.

[1:06] Michael: Yeah. Alison actually went through all those hazing.

[1:09] Matt: That's funny

[1:10] Michael: things. Yeah.

[1:11] Matt: Well. Hey.

[1:12] Michael: Yeah. Cheers.

[1:13] Matt: Cheers.

[1:13] Michael: Yeah. We're here. We're doing

[1:14] Matt: it. Shores. The last shores of ignorance in 2025, I might add.

[1:21] Michael: Yeah. That's crazy.

[1:23] Matt: Next Wednesday is New Year's Eve, and then. Or no, Christmas Eve, and the Wednesday after that is New Year's Eve.

[1:28] Michael: Yeah.

[1:29] Matt: 2026.

[1:31] Michael: So crazy.

[1:31] Matt: Yeah. I know. It's pretty crazy to imagine we started doing this eight years ago.

[1:38] Michael: Yeah. August of 2018 or something like that. Yeah.

[1:41] Matt: And then started going weekly in 2020.

[1:45] Michael: Yeah.

[1:46] Matt: It's been a fun ride.

[1:47] Michael: It has been a fun ride. It's. We talked about last episode, just how much we've kind of learned from. From all this and it's been such a. A valuable tool or

[1:59] Matt: endeavor.

[2:00] Michael: Endeavor. Yeah.

[2:00] Matt: Ritual. Yeah.

[2:03] Michael: Yeah.

[2:04] Matt: Well, what's on your mind tonight? What's on your mind here at the end of this year into 2025?

[2:09] Michael: Oh, wow. Yeah. December is always a. A funky month for us because it's just business wise. It's chaotic because everything slows down, but not in a way that's predictable. And it's all over the place. It's like kids are going all over the place in the school stuff and just seems like from November till January 1st is just insane. So it's hard sometimes stop and think, but I feel like 2025 to like, what is. This year has been a really good year as far as. So I feel like I kind of got my feet underneath me and I feel good about moving forward, which is kind of nice. Just

[2:56] Matt: jealous.

[2:57] Michael: Business wise. And I'm not there. I'm just feeling good about it. Doesn't mean I'm excelling. Yeah. So I don't know. I think there's so many things that you and I have talked about that are just making more and more sense. And I think as those things make more sense, it just gives me if I feel like I have like more solid ground to stand on and more accountability and responsibility. It's like if I really believe these certain things about the future, it's like, well, that's great to believe that, but what are you doing about it? Are you being active and moving forward? Are you laying the foundation to build whatever that is?

[3:49] Matt: I was kind of trying to reflect this week on the year and what it has meant. And I think that was one of my big takeaways is I am not actively laying the foundation. I mean, I am in some ways, but not like really intentionally. I went from last year, I left my full time job and I've been doing mostly freelance work this year. And freelance work is always. Entrepreneurship in general is always kind of feast or famine. And so I've had a lot of time, a lot of free time that I didn't the year before. And I was kind of just reflecting on how I used that time. Whether or not I liked the way that I used my time. Was I proud of the way that I used my time? Did I have anything to show for the way that I used my time? And the answers to those questions were not as pleasing to me as I had hoped. I was like, I really think I can do better. I've got a lot of good habits established in my life, I think, but there's a lot of periods of time in my days where I'm not actively pushing something forward or sowing seeds or weeding the garden, so to speak. And I'd really like to be more intentional about that moving into the next year, because I've got a lot of things that I want to see come to fruition. And I have my varying limitations on all the things that I want to do. And it's easy sometimes to say, well, I don't have the money for this, or I don't have access to the way that I want to do it, so you just kind of like let it sit or go on the back burner. And I was just thinking, you know, I think there's something to be done every day for each of the things that I want to see happen. I could do something. And I think I've let my limitations discourage me rather than coming at it creatively with a creative energy that says I want to see this happen and I'm going to keep even if it's just like Sit for five minutes and try to think of a way around your limitation. I'd like to do more of that.

[5:54] Michael: Yeah.

[6:01] Matt: Stunned you,

[6:02] Michael: you did. Silenced you. I went in quite a few different directions. Like one I'm kind of curious about, like that time that you have had over the last year, even with freelance work, like, like if you could go back, which sometimes I hate this question, so. But I'm asking you, you're not asking me, like, what would you, what would you have done differently?

[6:28] Matt: Yeah. Had a really interesting conversation with a guy this week about that. It's a younger guy. And we got to talking and he lives in Dallas. I told him that I briefly lived in Dallas. And he was like, oh. And I was like, this was 20 years ago. And he was like, why did you move to Dallas? I was like, I had to see about a girl. And he said later on, he was like, so how did that work out? And I said, well, kind of depends on where you choose to stop telling the story. You know, it worked out really well. We got married and we had three kids who are a blessing in my life. But that marriage also ended in a really painful and dramatic fashion. And I just said, I think I've learned that trying to evaluate the counterfactuals or trying to look down the roads that you didn't walk is not a productive exercise because you don't know the way things would have gone on that other road. My life has gone the way that it has gone and I can, I can identify mistakes that I've made, but I can't go back and take the other road. I just have to say, well, I made a mistake and some things are the way they are because of that mistake. And this reminded of this CS Lewis quote that says, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the ending. And I was reminded of Viktor Frankl that the space between stimulus and response is your freedom. And what was your question? Do I

[7:59] Michael: like

[7:59] Matt: what you go back

[8:00] Michael: differently

[8:01] Matt: with this, with, with my time this year? Yeah, see, that's, that's a good question. But I'm not sure that judging myself too harshly is, is good for me to move forward because, for instance, when I left my full time job, I was laid off along with a bunch of other people. And this is not the first time this has happened. It's common in the tech industry, but I felt jaded and a little burned and I felt like I think I need some time away from the corporate thing. And I Think that was true. You know, part of me wants to say, well, I should have, like, really gotten at it at the entrepreneur thing and the freelance thing and. But really I just needed some time, I think. And the reasons why I needed that time aren't exactly clear to me. And I could have gone against myself and said, you know, well, no, you need to deny that part of yourself and, you know, get at it. Maybe that would have been better, I don't know. But I also kind of have to honor the space that I was in, the place my heart was, the place my head was. So I don't know if I would have done anything differently. I think the thing that I wish I would have done differently is what I was saying earlier is to not take discouragement from limitation, but to meet each day with creative energy that says, I'm going to attend to what I can. And that includes my capacity to attend to things. My, you know, I'm going to use a word that I don't love using. It was like my mental well being. My. My capacity includes those kinds of things. It also includes my ability just based on what I know, and my skills. But I think every day we have the opportunity to push things forward, to grow, to get better at things, to discover new possibilities, to solve problems in ways that we didn't previously think were possible. And I think that's a position of attitude and a position of attention. And I wish I would have had a better attitude at times, and I wish I would have chose to attend to things despite them feeling discouraging or impossible. And I want to do that. I want to bring that intention into the next year.

[10:40] Michael: Yeah, I think you definitely define, like, why I actually don't like asking that question. Yeah, you know, because of those very things. It's like, what would you do for. With Medici? I think I didn't know any better, honestly.

[10:56] Matt: Well, it's kind of like the thought experiment, you know, if you kind of take the multiverse idea in that mood, you see that movie, everything everywhere, all at once. Yeah.

[11:05] Michael: Yeah.

[11:05] Matt: It's actually pretty good. It's kind of like you're living in this universe and you're like, which alternate universe would you pick? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know anything about what's going on in the alternate universes. I don't believe the multiverse theory. But how can you say that you would have picked something different when you don't have access to the knowledge of what that different thing is?

[11:28] Michael: Well, I think it's also hard to know where, especially depending on your temperament. So I think you and I share a similar temperament in that we, we push pretty hard on things and, and for us to step away and rest is kind of antithetical a little bit.

[11:51] Matt: Yeah.

[11:52] Michael: And whereas somebody else might, you know, like where they have no problem not pushing into things and they need to push more. And so I think that's, that's something that I, I think I would have a real hard time with. Like not even if it's superfluous, the things I'm working on, it's like as long as I'm working on something, it's like. But to like actually just step away and just let things be. That seems really. I think Alison's really good at that. Like she, she can. So you can step away in a healthy way. Like I feel like I need to be doing something and sometimes that leads to me doing nothing because I can't figure out what I'm doing.

[12:39] Matt: What do you do? This is a question I've had on my mind last couple of weeks. What do you do when you don't know what to do

[12:51] Michael: besides maybe like the scrolling thing

[12:54] Matt: on your phone? Yeah,

[12:55] Michael: yeah, I think that's, that's kind of an easy thing. But sometimes I'll just let myself go down these. Like, like I'll. I'll start reading a book or something like that or, or like playing with like today I played with an idea and is this idea like helpful to anything? It's like not necessarily, but then also found like sometimes just allowing myself to just go down, just give myself the freedom to go down an alley that is maybe not pertinent to anything of today. It actually helps later on because it have freed my mind. It's like one thing I. There's two different areas that over time I've kind of learned that this is helpful way to think about things. Is one is I picture myself as a 72 year old man. It's like who is that guy? And I try to picture him and try to understand who he is, like what's his motives, what is he thinking? And this is me at 72 and then just kind of working backwards from there and to where I am now. And it's like, well, what about that old man that I like? Or I don't like and I want to be the guy that I like and just kind of think about that. Or

[14:14] Matt: that's like scary kind of thought experiment.

[14:19] Michael: How's it?

[14:20] Matt: Well, because it kind of takes a radical level of honesty with yourself to, like, imagine what am I going to be like in 30 years and do I like that guy?

[14:34] Michael: Yeah.

[14:35] Matt: And how if. If things continue the way that they are going right now, who will I be? If things change, who will I be? And what would have to change for me to like, the guy I am at 70, 73? I think often we don't want to look at that kind of stuff. I mean, I like your answer to the question better than the one I was going to give, which is that if I don't know what to do, like, and I mean, like, I don't know what I'm like, I wake up in the morning, I don't know what to do today. That doesn't mean I don't have things to do. Just a feeling, sort of position or a mood. And I think, well, what would be good to do? And my mind will automatically come up with some things. And then oftentimes I'll feel this hesitation or pushback in me. Like, well, I don't, like, I don't really want to do those things. And then my brain or my other self or whatever is like, why would you not want to do good things? I'm like, that's a great question. I don't want to look at that. I just want to avoid those things right now. So, okay, what would you like to do? Well, I'd like to go to the pub and drink a beer and read a book. Well, it's noon. It's probably not the best time to be doing that on a Wednesday or whatever. Okay, I'm just going to go for a walk until I can kind of walk myself into a different state of mind. But those answers are sort of different levels of avoidant. And I think yours is more productive.

[16:15] Michael: It is and it isn't. I mean, because sometimes it comes out of, like, there's all these things I need to do or that would be good to do, and I just cannot get myself to

[16:26] Matt: do

[16:26] Michael: it. And so I'm like, okay,

[16:28] Matt: what do you think that is? You can't get yourself to do something that's good to do or that's. That needs to get done?

[16:35] Michael: Yeah. It just feels like there's so many things that need to get done. Just like one more thing. And sometimes it does. I mean, it just depends on what the thing is. But sometimes it just means that you're having to acknowledge something that you've put off and there's probably consequences to you having put it off. And by doing it, you're acknowledging that you have Put it off for as long as you have, like, just a couple emails. Oh, shit. I have an email. So I just remember the one thing I need to do, you know, and. And, yeah, I think that would. But I think that's the part, too, is, like, where, like, I think those are things I need to do. And it's like, I have no excuse not to do them. But sometimes I. Well, like, what would you do that you could do? Or I don't know if I forgot how it says, is it. What could you do that you would do? And that always comes into my head, and I was like, you know what? Right now, I would. I would read a little bit in this book. Like, I would do that.

[17:35] Matt: That's the Peterson phrase, right? Jordan Peterson, what could you do that you would do? Which I think is such a great phrasing because there's so many things that we could do that we won't do. And there seems to be something really deeply revealing about human nature in that, and it's even, I think, fleshed out and echoed in the story of Christ. Like, why don't we do things that are obviously good to do? Because that's human nature. We turn away from what is good, and we need to repent and turn back toward it. But the process of repenting is leaving a part of us behind, the part of us that didn't want to face the goodness. There is that part inside of us that doesn't want to face goodness.

[18:21] Michael: Yeah. Sometimes it's those little things that get you back on the road. It's like that whole thing is like, what could you do that you would do is, okay, I would do this. It's like, what is it? What purpose is it serving? It's like, I don't really know, but I can do this,

[18:39] Matt: and I will do this, and I

[18:41] Michael: will do this.

[18:41] Matt: I'm willing to.

[18:42] Michael: Yeah. And so it kind of keeps you from a spiral of kind of worthlessness, you know, of all the things that you won't do. But I do find, like, a lot of those things that might seem pointless or superfluous are actually kind of helpful and build something bigger and things I don't see right now.

[19:06] Matt: It's so crazy. I think about this all the time. It's like your brain is capable with coming up with more sets of instructions for things to do than you could possibly ever do. So if you ever find yourself floundering or aimless, you could just ask yourself what to do, and you will get an answer. The problem is not a lack of ideas or a lack of recognition of what's worthwhile. The problem is your own refusal. And it seems to me like there's so much on the other side of what is it? Accepting the invitation to participate in those sets of instructions that you can generate. Like, I was working on one of my side businesses, this Sovereign Goods apparel thing, and I was. I was in this mood months ago where I was like, okay, I'm just going to write down instructions for myself for what to do with these things. And so under the Sovereign Goods bucket, I wrote down like five or six things. It's like, what could I do to push this forward? And I wrote the things down and then I looked at the list and I was like, shit, I don't want to do any of these. One of them was cold message, follow and then send a message to five influential people. And I was like, yeah, that's an obvious idea. I do not want to do that. It makes me feel so vulnerable and ashamed in some weird way. And also it just feels like, you know, no one's going to reply to me. And it honestly took me most of the day to muster up the courage to do it, and I did it. And two of them responded to me, and all I told myself to do was message five.

[20:55] Michael: Yeah, and that's a good response. It's

[20:56] Matt: an incredible response. And then I think, well, why don't I write. It's like, I. Okay, I wrote down the instruction for myself and went. And did it. It went better than I expected. How many times have I done that since that day?

[21:08] Michael: Yeah, totally.

[21:09] Matt: Zero. Why? What is wrong with me? And how many, you know, how many things aren't happening in our lives because we fail to take even that first step of just imagining what could be done? Not even the second step of going and doing it, having the courage to do it, or the third step of figuring out what worked and didn't and repeating the process and refining it. I mean, there are some people who seem to come by that naturally, you know, like Gary Vee, for example, seems to be a guy that has just no shame, just endless creativity and just going to go do everything and figure out what works and do more of that. You know, us sort of lesser mortals don't come by that so easily.

[21:59] Michael: Yeah, so like when you were talking about earlier, earlier, this was like, I was thinking about Jocko and. And what's. Stay hard. That guy

[22:11] Matt: Goggins.

[22:11] Michael: Goggins, yeah. And like, man, that's exhausting. Like, I don't know, but I don't necessarily know, like how they see life is actually great. I think they have a certain flair to life that's also, that's helpful. But there is something that, you know, just acting, because it comes back to, I think what you're, you were talking about last, last week where, you know, the guy who had $5 and, or $500 and started a new business. It's like,

[22:43] Matt: oh, yeah,

[22:44] Michael: it's like, well, you know, Jocko and Doc Dobbins,

[22:50] Matt: David Goggins.

[22:51] Michael: Goggins,

[22:52] Matt: yeah.

[22:52] Michael: You know, it's like they weren't, they didn't, they weren't those people overnight. You know, they became those people too. And

[22:58] Matt: totally,

[22:59] Michael: I think too, like when I think of like whenever you and I are doing this podcast, it's like we didn't just start doing this. We don't do it the way that we're doing it right now. Overnight. It's like this has been like a building process for us to have these conversations and to carry on for. I mean, we stopped this as like at an hour and a half, but we could easily do two or three hours on this thing. It's like, and even talking about them, the bitcoin talk last week is like, is like this. There's a lot of things that you don't, you don't see how people have gone through a process to get where they are and they're still facing those same issues. Like we all wear a mask.

[23:39] Matt: Well, and it goes back to your, you know, Talking to your 72 year old self kind of thing. It's like, yeah, they, those people, you know, and just expand the category and say those people that you look up to or that you like or admire or maybe envious of or jealous of, they became those people and through a process. And you are becoming someone through a process and maybe you need to take a look at who it is that you're becoming and figure out if you like that person and who has it said. I feel like Carl Jung said something like. Every story has a villain and you should take a look at yourself and make sure it's not you. Something like that.

[24:26] Michael: Yeah. Sounds fair.

[24:30] Matt: I think so often when we think we're stagnating or not progressing the way we'd like, maybe it's that we're becoming someone else than we intended and we ought to take a look at that.

[24:47] Michael: Yeah. It's so hard to evaluate yourself. I think, I think that's why just relationships are so important, is that people reflect back to you.

[25:00] Matt: I've been meaning to do this. This is another thing. One of those things like, what should I do? Write an instruction for yourself. So this goes all the way back to probably 2022, and it was my first introduction to Chamath Palihapitiya on the Lex Fridman podcast. And I really liked Chamath. And one of the things that I took away from that is there's no such thing as failure. There's only information. Failure is no different than learning something. Every time you fail, you learned something. And I thought, especially at that time, I was feeling like a pretty big failure. I think it was actually after another tech layoff.

[25:42] Michael: Totally.

[25:42] Matt: And I was like, gosh, I mean, how many companies have I started that don't exist anymore? How many jobs have

[25:51] Michael: restructured,

[25:52] Matt: ended up. Ended up as sinking ships?

[25:55] Michael: Yeah.

[25:56] Matt: You know that I kind of could tell, but I held on. What if I go back and I write down every way that I failed just in business and what I learned from it? I was like, that would be a really good thing to do, and I never did. It

[26:15] Michael: sounds like a good book, too.

[26:17] Matt: That could be interesting.

[26:19] Michael: I think that's something that's really been. It's fun for me to talk with new business owners is just tell me about all the ways that I failed with Medici. And I really enjoy that. I really enjoy talking about my failures. Yeah.

[26:37] Matt: Well, probably because they're not failures. They're things that you learned.

[26:42] Michael: Yeah. It's like. And at the time thinking, like, how am I going to bounce back from this? At the time, it seemed hopeless. Whatever period you want to talk about, you know,

[26:55] Matt: can we put some meat on this, on the bones? Because we've about failure and success. We've made this point before, but I want to follow some curiosity in it, because you can learn something from failure. You can't learn very much from success. If you succeed at something, especially something hard, it's really hard for you to be able to discern why you succeeded, especially in business. Maybe it's a little easier with something like, hey, you succeeded in running that marathon. How'd you do it? It's like, well, I got up at 5 and ran. This was my thing. But with big, complex things like a company that succeeds, it's really hard to say why a company. It's a lot easier. It might still be hard, but it's easier to figure out, here's where I went wrong. And maybe this is a. Maybe this is a broader spiritual point. It's like, I can account for my sins in terms of myself, but I cannot account for my blessings in terms of myself. And so I don't know why I am blessed in the ways that I am. I know why I'm fucked up in the ways that I am. Or at least that is, if maybe I don't know all the ways that I'm fucked up, but those are ascertainable in terms of myself, whereas success is not

[28:19] Michael: that sound. That does sound kind of true.

[28:22] Matt: Do you agree with

[28:23] Michael: that? I do and I don't. But I think I more agree than I don't agree. But I'll just go with where I don't agree with. Because, like, you know, like, how do you know that because of those actions is why you didn't succeed? You know, there's that part. Like, I think last week we talked about. It's like, there's a lot of geniuses who are not rich, and there's a lot of rich people that are not geniuses.

[28:46] Matt: Yeah.

[28:47] Michael: And it's like, so is it being smart that makes you successful? Not necessarily. Is it charismatic? Not necessarily. So it's like, how do you. What makes. I think we're. Right now we're talking about financially successful, but when I think of, like, being successful in your marriage or with your kids, like, those things make more sense to me.

[29:11] Matt: That you can explain where the success came from.

[29:15] Michael: Well, I would. It can't. But it also just can't originate in the person because that's like a negotiation. You know, there's this part where you have a successful marriage not because you're a great person or a great dad. It's that there's something that you're negotiating with other people. And, you know, if, you know, if, if, if you're not, then there's going to be problems. And some of it is. Is like, you know, whether asking for forgiveness or addressing an issue or saying thank you, and there's like this sort of progression towards healthiness that you can kind of see where there's an openness, but you can also see where that progression to annihilation of a relationship is. Like, you stop communicating, you're no longer interested in the other person.

[30:15] Matt: Well, maybe this goes back to the core fundamental building block of reality, which is relationship. I think maybe the thing I'm trying to tease out is that if I fail at something, there's many reasons. If something fails that I'm involved in, there might be many more reasons for that failure than I have access to. There might be a lot of things that were outside of my control. Like new legislation just passed that Is affecting the THC beverage industry, which just happens to be something that I've worked on over the past several months. And so the company that I was working with, you know, now they're like, we might be out of business just because this regular. They have no control over that. So there's things that you can't control, but when something fails, I think that you can identify things that you did have control over that you did that if you had done them differently, there's a possibility that the failure wouldn't have occurred. So you can find. I think that's why I said defining the reason for failure in terms of myself. I can figure out something that I either did or didn't do which would have changed that situation. I think the relational part of that, when it comes to success, Is that I might be able to identify some things that I could do to make a relationship more successful. I also might be able to easily identify some things I could do that would make it less likely to be successful, but its success is dependent upon something I don't have any control over, dependent on the other person. And so that's why I say that I can't fully explain my blessings because I cannot fully explain another person, But I can fully satisfactorily explain my failures because I can control myself.

[32:18] Michael: Oh, okay. That's good. Because I was kind of starting to kind of waffle on this a little bit, but that makes sense. It's sort of like, hey, there's a lot of things that probably went wrong here, But I need to be. I need to hold myself accountable to my contribution to how this did not succeed

[32:42] Matt: totally. And admit that if I had held myself accountable, then those things that were outside of my control could have been overcome.

[32:50] Michael: Yeah. It would open up the possibility, Even though you still don't have control over those things because it's dependent on something else.

[32:57] Matt: Yeah,

[32:58] Michael: because the part that was kind of bothering me a little bit is, you know, and I found myself do this, and I'm kind of like, oh, shoot, don't do that. It's like how. How all these other external circumstances caused me to fail. And I just. I don't find any helpfulness in that. Like, oh, well, Covid. Oh, this staff, this person, that thing. That. Whatever. And it's like, okay, well, those are things I don't have control over. But what did I have control over? Oh, Michael, you didn't really respond very well during that.

[33:35] Matt: Right.

[33:37] Michael: So you need to own that or, you know, you need to have. You should have restructured something in this area or whatever. And it's like, okay, yeah, I can own that. I didn't.

[33:49] Matt: Well. And I think it's just kind of wussing out to say, oh well, things were outside of my control, there's nothing I could have done. And I think that I find it really interesting that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn came to the conclusion that every single person is responsible for everything that happens in the world. Individually responsible because, and I think I said this on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. It's like you have no idea what the ripple effects of your actions are. And so you have a responsibility to make things as good as they could be. And the consequences of that are that things can be much better than you can imagine.

[34:33] Michael: What about things that are out of your, I mean, that are really out of your control? I mean natural disasters are probably like the easiest. But I kind of want to think there are things that happen to you in business, business and in relationships that are out of your control. But it's, it's, it's what you, it's what you do. It's your like your response to some of those things that is the important part.

[34:55] Matt: Right.

[34:56] Michael: I don't know if you have any more on that because that's kind of what's kind of was stuck in my, stuck in my head.

[35:04] Matt: Well, I think we could probably learn something from COVID in that sense. I mean, Covid was in a way maybe a natural disaster.

[35:14] Michael: It's definitely more man made and it's a lot more than.

[35:16] Matt: Yeah, but if we just think about it in those, you know, March, April time period of 2020, before we knew anything, before we knew anything, we didn't know anything. And businesses had all kinds of different responses. And I remember specifically being really impressed with H-E-B and the way that they pivoted to make sure that people could continue shopping for groceries, especially when like stuff was coming off the shelves. They were out of stock on a lot of were really scared and nervous. There was these stay at home orders. The way that they responded to that was really, at the time I was very impressed. Whereas some other businesses did not respond well to that. And a lot of those businesses went under. They either voluntarily closed or they put crazy fear based response draconian measures in place and people just stopped wanting to go into those places when people weren't really going into anywhere already in the first place. And so I think there's a major difference to be seen that can really only be attributed to the attitude of the response to the thing that the business can't control.

[36:28] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. It's such a hard one because you do have to kind of put those in different time frames. Like, the. The April, May time was like, there was so much confusion what was going on. And, like, your response to that is really, I think as. As leaders and owners of businesses, I think that was really difficult to sort of. Because you're dealing with people's reactions and. And their mo. It's more of an emotional thing that you're dealing with, and that's really difficult. Difficult to maneuver with. Yeah, that's. Yeah. Because I can look back at that time, and I can definitely see areas that I need to have grow, should have done better, and need to have grown in and hopefully have learned from that now.

[37:23] Matt: Yeah. Well, and I'll admit, you know, maybe one of my failures from the COVID era was, you know, my kids got sent home. Everybody's kids got sent home, and they were, you know, all trying to do online school via Zoom in their rooms while I was doing online work via Zoom from my room, and they just basically didn't do it. Yeah. You know, and I think my kids lost at least a year of education. And my response was, well, I at least need to make sure that my job keeps going so that I can pay the bills and I can't really control their education. I just kind of have to let it be, whatever it is.

[38:08] Michael: It's also harder for you because you're a single parent too.

[38:10] Matt: Right.

[38:10] Michael: So that's different.

[38:11] Matt: Yeah. But I think I was sort of pretending I didn't have any control over that, when really I was just denying to take responsibility for the additional work that it would have required me to try to make their education as best as it could be during that terrible time. And I regret that. I think it's important to have some amount of forgiveness for yourself or cut yourself a little bit of slack. That was a crazy time. None of us knew what we were doing, but in hindsight, I wish I would have been more engaged in what they were doing and in their education. I tried to. At first. I wrote them all out schedules and put up sticky notes next to their computers and with passwords and times and all of this. But it was mostly unsupervised, and they just stopped doing it, and I just kind of let it go.

[39:02] Michael: Yeah.

[39:04] Matt: But maybe I could have been like, I couldn't control whether or not they were going to actually join the Zooms, but maybe I could have been like, you know what? We're going to do because we're spending all this time in the house together already is like we're going to do a book club.

[39:15] Michael: Yeah, totally.

[39:16] Matt: And I'm going to pick some books. They're going to touch on things like philosophy, history, things that I think you should know and learn and we're going to talk about them like that. That would have been something great to have done.

[39:30] Michael: Yeah,

[39:30] Matt: it's probably something great to do still.

[39:33] Michael: Totally. Yeah.

[39:36] Matt: But I think that's in our model that we're putting together here. That's me identifying something that I didn't do that could have changed the failures that were at hand.

[39:48] Michael: Well, also just kind of in the way that you were talking about that is that maybe the book club didn't work, but as you tried that, you found something else. Yeah. So there's like it's a progression into maybe finding a solution that's totally. I think that's the.

[40:04] Matt: Or like we're gonna watch, you know, five World War II movies and talk about them.

[40:11] Michael: Yeah, you can just, you start playing around with it, you start getting creative. But if you don't start that process, it's hard to maneuver into. So maybe something that is, that would have worked,

[40:21] Matt: right?

[40:22] Michael: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, it's just really hard kind of talking, talking around all these ideas of. The one thing that does stick out to me is like it's good to acknowledge the things that you. That were in your control and because there is so much that's out of our control.

[40:50] Matt: Yeah. Way more than within our control

[40:54] Michael: and probably some of the things that are in our control that are actually not in our control. But there's something about when we start pushing into that that it either reveals to us how much not in control we are, but maybe opens up new possibilities that we didn't see prior. Yeah, I definitely, because I remember like early on I would spend days on these spreadsheets before accounting software was very good. It sucked so bad. And I got it to this point where it was like super helpful. But maintaining those stupid ass spreadsheets was horrible. I mean it was so time consuming, but it was super helpful. But by just doing that, that whole process that was months and months and months of creating this whole system of looking at all my coffee shops and stuff and getting the information that I actually needed that my accounting software didn't give me to make helpful decisions on cogs and stuff like that. It helped me learn about my business. Even though I probably wasted air quotes, wasted time doing it. Just the process helped me better understand my business and understand what PNLs are, COGS and all that kind of stuff. Even though I probably spent

[42:13] Matt: wisdom is hard won man doesn't come at a discount price. I think often we're so miscategorizing things when we imagine that we wasted a bunch of time on something.

[42:29] Michael: Well, I don't want to pivot to this, but it does kind of remind me a lot of this, like, longevity and optimizing stuff that we're doing nowadays. I feel like we keep trying to skip that process. That is. That's just kind of hard earned.

[42:53] Matt: Well, even the longevity thing, I think we're really misguided about that. Like that Bryan Johnson guy who wants to live, like, never die. I was having a conversation with my friend about like all the women who do Botox and injectables and how that's just like everyone now. And I was just thinking and saying, I think it's a really misguided to do that to yourself because you need the lines on your face. Those are information.

[43:25] Michael: Yes.

[43:26] Matt: Those tell who you are and where you've been. And you want people to know that because what are you going to hide and project a false image of yourself and think that that's going to be successful for you? No. We need to age and we need to die, to be honest. But being obsessed with not aging, I think is really misguided.

[43:50] Michael: I saw Michael Dell. I guess they just gave some money away and his wife was on there. And obviously you can't see my face right now, but she was just like. I was like, oh, my gosh, what is wrong with your face? It's just like completely paralyzed.

[44:04] Matt: The other day I was out somewhere and this woman walked by me. It was like in a clothing store. And she walked by me and she had the most lip filler that I've ever seen in a human being. And I had this almost irresistible urge because she kind of glanced over at me and I wanted to say, you look crazy. You need to know that. But I held my tongue.

[44:29] Michael: It was probably smart. Yeah. Oh, there's so many places to go with that. I mean, just like. Yeah, it's like our faces do tell a story. And it's like it's helpful to be able to present that to people.

[44:47] Matt: Yeah, It's not only that it's helpful. It's just the truth. And hiding from the truth is not a successful endeavor. You know, it's another thing Peterson says. No one gets away with anything ever. Reality always wins. Reality always Snaps back to use our old formulation kind of thing.

[45:19] Michael: Yeah. I think that's one thing I have. I. I really do think there's a lot to. A lot of the. The. Some of the drug stuff as far as, like, helping people unlock aspects of themselves. And then there's other. There's this other part that I'm. I just. It's. It's. It's. Sometimes it's spoken about as a sort of. And it. It's more of like a way of life. And I'm like, no, I just. I just cannot get on board with that. It's the same thing with the Bryan Johnson or people that are super into, like. I've learned a lot from these people, too. So it's not that I'm. I kind of. I don't want to sound like I'm criticizing, but there's almost like. It's almost becoming a substitute to life, to engagement, to relationship.

[46:07] Matt: Yeah. And it's. And it isn't that I don't want to be healthy or that I don't want to live a long time. I mean, I kind of don't want to live a long time. It sounds terrible, but

[46:18] Michael: I'll ask you when you're 80, I'm like, hey, Matt, you live a long time. I've already lived a long time.

[46:25] Matt: I would highly recommend. I know you haven't read this yet. The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. It's a really incredible book. I highly recommend everybody read it because it makes the case against transhumanism and these sort of what we would in modern times describe as, like, CRISPR and gene editing and, you know, even, like, you're seeing modern manifestations of it with IVF and being able to have, like, a designer baby, choosing the color of the eyes or choosing this or that or protecting against diseases. And what you end up with, if you take all of that to its logical conclusion, is, as Lewis says, the abolition of man. You abolish mankind by essentially, by trying to become a God yourself. And what is the, you know, the very first warning to mankind ever given? Do not eat of the tree of knowledge, of good and evil. Do not try to become a God. And that's what the serpent says. To eat. You can be like God, and that's what destroys us. And I think also, however you sort of conceptualize spirituality or religion or I think conceptually this works, it's like, what is mankind? Definitionally? It is life that is not God. And so in the end, it is a failed state. That is why we die. Because we're not God. We are the. In a sense, like the failure condition. But also, you know, doesn't it say that the angels are jealous of man because we have will.

[48:20] Michael: Yeah, Limitation.

[48:21] Matt: We have limitation. In a sense. We have the one thing God doesn't have, and the price of that is death. The price of that is we expire. The good news is that the part of us that expires leaves behind the part that is eternal. And so we get to go through this experiment. We get to live in time. Angels don't get to live in time. They don't get to go through the experiment of experiencing the world, which means experiencing the failure of it, experiencing the danger of it, experiencing the awful, you know, the awful gift that it is to be given a will. And. Yeah, embrace your lines. The angels don't have them.

[49:13] Michael: Yeah, yeah. There's something about that. Just even kind of going back to the relational part of that is that, you know, you were here on Earth, you know, like, what is it? What is. What's most valuable is that. Is pretty much that. Is that your relationships with people and that sort of tension of who you are, who you think you are and who they are and who they think they are, and you telling them who they are and then disagreeing with you.

[49:48] Matt: Yeah, sometimes you. You're right, and they're upset about that, and sometimes you're wrong and they're upset about that. And.

[49:54] Michael: Yeah, but you're negotiating the future and. And you're hopefully negotiating to a more intense and real reality. And I think that's the part that. Because, I mean, you can get. If you get into a place where you're not being challenged by somebody, it can just. You just. You do just flatline, you know, you don't. You don't actually grow. You just kind of deteriorate. And I think that's the kind of. Like we were talking about when we got back from dinner tonight or as we were coming back from dinner is like. It's like we're here to serve people, like to put ourselves in a place to help. And I'm trying to think of different ways than saying just to serve people, because sometimes there's some connotation to that I'm not sure people get, but it's like, there's nothing more rewarding to have, you know, in the business world delivers a product that somebody enjoys. Like, that's serving somebody that's so rewarding. Like, hey, this changed my life.

[50:57] Matt: Yeah.

[50:58] Michael: Hey, that talk you gave really impacted me. I mean, what else is There is, like, you just. You put out. If you put out products that nobody likes, is that helpful? It's like, well, no, you're not serving anybody, so you're not. You're not going to really hear any feedback, you know, or, you know, with your wife or with your kids. Whenever you serve them, you know, maybe you don't get a thank you, but you see the results in their life and there's something that's. There's that, that feedback that's really valuable.

[51:26] Matt: Well, I feel like you made this point a couple of weeks ago. Whether it was just to me in private or on the podcast, I don't remember, but I feel like you said something like, to serve someone is the only way. The only way to be to address who they truly are. Something like that. Like, if I'm not serving someone and I'm interacting with them, what am I doing? I'm using them instrumentally for my own means, my own purpose. And whoever it is that they are is irrelevant in that scenario. They either are beneficial to me or they're not.

[52:07] Michael: Yeah.

[52:07] Matt: If I serve them, then I actually acknowledge and position myself toward who that person truly is, whether it's my children or my romantic partner or the customers of my business, my family members.

[52:29] Michael: Yeah,

[52:32] Matt: I think that's worth thinking about.

[52:34] Michael: Yeah, I'd like to unpack that a little bit more because I think that's.

[52:37] Matt: Because I think it's more than. I think there's sort of an issue of almost like an issue of perception there, because I think naively, maybe it would be easy to understand the call to serve other people that you hear come from religion, specifically Christianity, as some sort of like, well, it's just good to do good things for other people. And I think it is much more profound than that. I think it's. That if I'm going to know who you truly are, the way to do that is to serve you.

[53:14] Michael: Oh, good point.

[53:16] Matt: If I want to know you, I must serve you. I can't know you if I don't serve you.

[53:22] Michael: Well, because that's also because you're looking. Not just because there's a manipulative aspect to this too, of like, I'm just trying to get something out of you. So I'm trying to put you in a place that I receive whatever that is, but when you, when you serve somebody, you're actually looking at, looking at what's, what's. How can I move this person into the next for them, put them in a better place? And that's such a Because I even think of, like, in sales, like, sometimes it's like, I'm just trying to sell these things to you and, you know, buy these things. It's like, well, is this going to really help this person?

[54:00] Matt: Yeah,

[54:01] Michael: maybe this person does need new doors and you actually have a solution for them. And it would be really helpful for them to have new doors and helps with, like, you know, AC or whatever.

[54:11] Matt: Well, and I think you see this with. In business in general. I can think of a couple examples in my own career where a good leader is a leader who serves the people who work in his company. And there's that great quote from Steve Jobs when he says, Steve Jobs says, you don't hire people to tell them what to do. You hire people to tell so they can tell you what to do. Which is a position of humility to say, I'm hiring you because you have something I don't have. You have insight, you have experience, you have skills that I don't have. So I need you to give to tell me those things. It's a position of humility, which is a position of honesty. And then the leader who serves his people gets to know his people, and the organization can thrive. I have been in an organization where the leader did not serve the people. And the chaotic entropy is what I would call the internal workings of that company. And, you know, ultimately, that endeavor failed.

[55:27] Michael: So funny. Like, just this conversation, I'm like, damn, I fail so much. It's like, I really do. I think that's, like, I really do value those things really highly, and I think I'm a lot more sensitive to this. But, like, as you're saying, it's like, man, like, thinking all the ways I fail at Medici in this area. It's like, oh, you know, there's definitely seasons of times where I feel like I've really done that well, and then seasons of time where I feel like I've done that very well. I think that's something that. It's definitely an area that even after this conversation, I think I'm have to go and kind of look at is like, what's my attitude towards this right now?

[56:06] Matt: Yeah.

[56:07] Michael: Because as you're talking about, I'm like, I don't know if I like my attitude about things that you're talking about.

[56:16] Matt: Yeah. When we were young, we'd had our parents to be like, I don't like your attitude. Now we have to do that to ourselves.

[56:24] Michael: Michael, I don't like your attitude. Get your shit together.

[56:26] Matt: Yeah,

[56:27] Michael: yeah, Nuts.

[56:29] Matt: But I don't think, you know, you kind of winced when you were talking about, you know, your failures as a leader. I don't know. I kind of. I feel differently about that. I feel like, hallelujah, we can see them. That means we can do something about them.

[56:42] Michael: Totally. There's that, too. You

[56:43] Matt: know, it's when you can't see them that the real problems occur. I mean, taken to an extreme, either a refusal or an inability to see your failures, it's like, don't we call that psychopathy or malignant narcissism?

[57:02] Michael: Well, I think one area I've had a problem with and I've had to kind of correct towards is that. Because I feel like I've had that sort of servant mentality towards my staff. But then I started seeing that if I. If I did that, then in this. In this certain way, then I actually didn't allow people to grow because I was sort of doing it for them.

[57:27] Matt: Yeah.

[57:28] Michael: And so there's this place where I had to learn how to not do that

[57:31] Matt: well, and that's why I'm.

[57:32] Michael: And that's also serving. But it's like, it's. It's interesting because it's like. I feel like I have more of, like, oh, I'm actually not. Like, today there's a grinder that was not working. And I went,

[57:42] Matt: is that, like, a role?

[57:44] Michael: What's that?

[57:45] Matt: You. You have, like, a position called the grinder?

[57:47] Michael: No, there was an actual grinder, a coffee grinder that wasn't working.

[57:50] Matt: Yeah.

[57:51] Michael: And I was like, I could probably spend the next two or three hours working on this and probably get it working, most likely.

[57:57] Matt: Yeah.

[57:57] Michael: And that would have served them. And I remember just sitting there, like, I know I can probably figure it out, or at least figure it out to the point like, hey, when you call somebody in, but if I do that, then they will not have the ability to have gone through the process of learning how to do that on their own. And so I think that sometimes I struggle with those two different things, and I err on both sides, I think, in that area.

[58:22] Matt: Well, I think that's why I'm trying to deepen the definition of what it means to serve and pull us away from the naive version, which is to do good things for other people. I don't think that's what it is to serve. I think what it is to serve is to actually see other people. And so to see your employee and say, well, I could do a bunch of good things for you, but maybe the best thing I can do for you, I mean, it's another kind of cheesy cliche, but it's like, teach a man to fish or fish for him. Totally. I can also give you the gift of learning what this is, and part of that's going to be uncomfortable, and part of that's going to feel like failure, and it's going to be frustrating because you don't know what you don't know. But I think you know this with your kids as they get older. Part of. I think the. One of the many great joys of being a parent is. Is watching your children become competent and confident. And I think it's the. It's the. It's the selfish, potentially kind of almost like resentful parent. And we are all that in some. In some way. But, you know, that rejoices when we get to stop changing diapers or we get to stop wiping bums or we get to stop driving our kids around or whatever. So finally, you know, you can do something for yourself. But that's like the. Really. That's the cynical part of us. And cynicism doesn't serve us very well in any part of our life. I mean, I think we have to have it in some ways, but it's so much better to say, oh, my gosh, you learned how to do this, and you can do this now on your own. And that's so good for you.

[60:12] Michael: Yeah.

[60:12] Matt: You know, it's so good for our children to grow up, to get. Get good at things, to go do things in the world. And I think it's, you know, we are serving them by, you know, the good mother fails. You know, the good mother is the mother Mary, holding the broken body of Jesus. She was a good mother because she let him go into the world and the world broke him. And that's, I think, kind of the model of parenting. And we. So we have to serve our children both by doing good things for them, but also by recognizing when the good of them becoming competent outweighs the good of our good offerings.

[61:03] Michael: Yeah.

[61:05] Matt: And we actually get to know our kids through that process, too.

[61:11] Michael: Yeah. It's such a good thing to learn how to let people fail. I think that's something that it's so costly, too, because there's tons of things at Medici that I'm like, I know how to do that. I could do that. But I also can't do all of these things. And it's like, I have to allow people to, you know, even for when, like, a new person comes on, you know, it takes them A whole year to really learn the seasons. Like, I might say, like, hey, it's Thanksgiving. Let's watch our cogs. Everyone look at their cogs. And

[61:45] Matt: cost of goods. Cost of goods.

[61:48] Michael: And then after the week, I'm like, hey, y' all did not look at your cogs. It's like, this is what happens when we don't look at our cog. It's like, yeah, we lost money on those products because. And then also I'll tell them, like, hey, we have to remember, my mind staff is like, not everybody can get off for November, Christmas and New Year's. Like, we're still open during these times. And people have to trade off, and it's all trade offs. And usually it takes a season before them to experience that. Like, hey, nobody's coming to work. It's like, I know you've got to tell people ahead of time, like, like, this is really important if you spend time on it.

[62:28] Matt: Yeah. I mean, back to my. What I was saying about, like, documenting all my failures in business and writing down what I learned from them. I. I know for a fact that one of my biggest failures as an early entrepreneur was trying to do everything myself. And I literally couldn't do it, and I failed because of it. But I thought, you know, individually, I could have done all the things, but I couldn't do them all at the same time. And I wanted to, because there's a part of me, you know, that's very arrogant. There's a part of me that you kind of believes, like, you want something done right, do it yourself.

[63:00] Michael: Yeah. Well, you also have a high standard. You're good at all. You're also good at those things, too.

[63:05] Matt: But I think you have to die to that. You have to give that up. You have to admit that. Well, I might be good at a lot of things, but there's a lot of people that are better at some of those things than I am. And I have to admit that and say that if this thing is going to be successful, I need to have the best person in doing that thing. Not only because I can't give all my time to that one thing, but also because I want the best for that one thing that requires that I admit that I'm arrogant, that I admit that I want to do everything myself and I can't. Mm. And I relinquish some amount of control over the way things go.

[63:48] Michael: Yeah.

[63:49] Matt: And allow that somebody else might have a better idea than me,

[63:53] Michael: or they might do it a little bit. Not as good as you, but if you don't give them that experience the next time, they won't have learned in order to do even better

[64:02] Matt: next time.

[64:02] Michael: It's like,

[64:03] Matt: yeah, because, like, yeah, I'm good at some things

[64:06] Michael: because I felt,

[64:07] Matt: but I got good at those things because I was bad at them at one point.

[64:10] Michael: Totally. Yeah,

[64:12] Matt: yeah, yeah. I don't know. I feel like modern culture, it's like,

[64:20] Michael: oh, we're old men now.

[64:21] Matt: Yeah. Well, I wonder if this idea has always kind of been around. But I think we, like, we look around, we were talking last week about social media. We look around and we see people that seem to have come out of nowhere, just, you know, naturally talented, just great at what they do. And we imagine that we ourselves aren't that way, you know, and we get down on ourselves. There was a saying that used to go around when I lived in Nashville that for every new artist that comes out of nowhere, there's a ten year dark history of that person grinding that you didn't see.

[65:06] Michael: Yeah.

[65:07] Matt: And I think that that's true. We just fall in love with the celebrity idea that these people just are naturals. And maybe there are one or two that happen to just be freakishly good at something. I don't know what point I'm trying to make here. Just that we have to go through periods of being bad at something in order to learn how to be good at it.

[65:37] Michael: I think that's a part of, like, even just being a boss or a dad or, you know, or husband or a wife is too, is allowing your partner or your staff or whatever to. To experience those things. And, you know, you put up your guard rails as far as, like, you know, little bump like bowler bumpers, you know, for people. And then. But you. You need to allow them to have like, the freedom to maybe not do it as good as you would have done it, but eventually they might even do it better than you could have ever done it, you know, kind of to your point.

[66:08] Matt: Yeah.

[66:08] Michael: And I think that's the relinquishing of control, but also, you know, giving them real responsibility, not fake responsibility. And I think that's. That's hard to do because there's actual consequences to real responsibility. Like, you know,

[66:24] Matt: yeah,

[66:24] Michael: I could have gone in and changed all the cost of goods for all of our shops and, you know, made sure it was. It worked great. But what they have learned.

[66:33] Matt: Yeah,

[66:34] Michael: probably not, because you did it for them. And.

[66:43] Matt: Maybe we should wrap it up there. I feel like the positive lesson that I'm taking from this conversation is that it's like we get to live. The price of life is death. We get to get good at things, which requires that we fail at things. You know, I think all of us imagine that we want a life of ease. We want natural ability and talents. That's just really not the way life is. But it's. It's a blessing to get to wrestle with life. It's a blessing to get to wrestle with relationships. It's a blessing to get to serve people not because it's good to. Good to do good things, but because it's by serving people that we actually get to know them. And the. Almost like the. The bonus side effect of that is that whether it's a marriage or a parent child relationship or an organization like a business, the side effect of serving people is that those relationships and organizations thrive or are far more likely to.

[67:57] Michael: Far more likely to. Yeah.

[67:59] Matt: So it's good to be alive. I

[68:02] Michael: agree. Cheers.

[68:04] Matt: Cheers.

[68:04] Michael: Yeah. Thanks for coming out, guys.

[68:06] Matt: Love you all out there. Love

[68:07] Michael: you. Sa.