← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Matt Higgins on How to Eliminate Plan B and Guarantee Success (Fan Fav)
01:40:56
Loading summary
Transcript262 lines
- [00:01]
Matt Higgins
You know what they say. Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home.
- [00:06]
Commercial Announcer
Book early and save over $120 with
- [00:09]
Matt Higgins
VRBO because early gets you closer to
- [00:11]
Tom Bilyeu
the action, whether it's waves lapping at
- [00:14]
Commercial Announcer
the shore or snoozing in a hammock that overlooks, well, whatever you want it
- [00:19]
Tom Bilyeu
to so you can all enjoy the
- [00:21]
Matt Higgins
payoff come summer with VRBO's early booking deals.
- [00:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Rise and shine.
- [00:26]
Commercial Announcer
Average savings $141 select homes only when you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [01:00]
Tom Bilyeu
What's up, guys? I'm super excited for this episode because joining us today is Matt Higgins, a wildly successful entrepreneur, Shark Tank guest star, former vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins, and CEO of RSE Ventures. Matt's latest book, Burn the Boats, is a must read for anyone feeling stuck in neutral, and he's here to share his secrets to success with with all of us. From ditching your plan B to committing fully to your goals, we'll explore the best ways to achieve your dreams and become the person you want to be. Do not miss out on this incredible opportunity to learn from one of the best. If you like this episode, be sure you're following the podcast and share this episode with a friend. Really is the best way to support people that you love on their journey to becoming legendary. All right, guys, let's do this. What are the principles that you've lived by that allowed you to go from dropping out of high school, broke, selling flowers by the side of the road to a net worth of $150 million?
- [02:01]
Matt Higgins
For me, it all comes down to this single decision I made to drop out of high school when I was 16 years old. I grew up in Queens, New York, very poor, living on government cheese and taking care of my mother, who was obese, which I don't talk a ton a lot, but was very heavy, and the byproduct of dysfunction and abuse, which only became clear later on. So just born into dysfunction. And everything was about concealment. Everything in my early days was about making sure that nobody knew just how poor I was, just how desperate I was. So there's all this concealment was what I was born into. It takes a long time to sort of shed that shame, but. And then after years and years of realizing the cavalry wasn't coming, I had an epiphany. And it was actually born of watching my mother. She took her GED as an adult and went from having no education to enrolling in Queens College. And she had a really fierce mind. And for her, education was about dignity. But as a kid who was around 13, 14, I'm like, wait a second. I saw an ad in a local Penny Saver newspaper, and it said, deliver flyers for congressmen, college students only, but you'd make eight bucks an hour. The time I was scraping gum at McDonald's, making 375, or working in a deli overnight, and I was like, what is it about this mythical college student thing that makes make twice as much income? I was like, I want to be a college student. And I had a thought. Why don't I do what my mother did by accident, but do it on purpose? Why don't I drop out of high school? And when I excitedly told my guidance counselor this plan, like, I gotta figure it out, Mr. Barkin. I'm gonna drop out of high school, get my GD, and enroll in Queens College at 16.
- [03:38]
Tom Bilyeu
And he thought you were a moron, I assume.
- [03:39]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, I thought, a moron.
- [03:41]
Tom Bilyeu
Why weren't you, though? Because that, like, if somebody came to me and said, hey, Tom, I'm thinking about dropping out of high school, getting my ged, even knowing your story, I'd be like, that's a bad move.
- [03:50]
Matt Higgins
Right?
- [03:50]
Tom Bilyeu
So what's the principle? What made that a good move for you? Is it the burn the boats idea, or is it something.
- [03:55]
Matt Higgins
I think the burn the boats is the way I stayed the course. The principle is that conventional thinking is built for the average story, the regression to the mean, Right? Whatever works for most people. Our education system works for most people. When you have maybe two parents, or at least one functioning parent, right? But the world is set up for the average situation. And when you are in an outlier situation, you need to take matters into your own hands. That was number one. And the second principle is, trust your instincts. Don't outsource your judgment. Mr. Barkin and everybody else thought it was absolutely crazy, and they were right to think it was crazy. But they didn't have the full context of my life because I was concealing everything. When I presented to Mr. Barkin and the other people at school, they saw a kid who was pretty well polished, wearing Jordache jeans back then. But they didn't have the full context. So the principle that I am the greatest undisputed expert there'll ever be about myself holds true to this day. And we tend look for confirmation from experts, confirmation from books on Barnes and Noble or TED Talks instead of first consulting yourself. And my instincts told me that if your mother's dying in the room next door and you are thinking about crashing your car into a tree half the time, you know, as time went on that this decision makes perfect sense. But no one will ever understand because they don't have the context I think
- [05:18]
Tom Bilyeu
instincts are trained in. Most people agree and if you train them poorly, you're in real trouble. If I had steered by my instincts, I think I would have really led myself astray a lot of times in my life. And so I, I am curious why at 16 had you developed self awareness? Were you processing through it the way that you just explained it or like how do you think about that? Because I've seen more people go wrong on their instincts than I've seen go.
- [05:45]
Matt Higgins
Right. And I think we could debate is there a difference between the word instinct and intuition? Intuition is probably more of a proxy for pattern recognition, I would think at the end of the day. But whether we call it instincts or intuition, I do think there's a difference between what our instincts are telling us in a non crisis situation and what our instincts tell us in a crisis situation. I think we are all hardwired to survive. And when survival is on the line, which at that time survival really was on the line, not just myself, but my mother. I think our instincts, our intuition are a strong guide. Now normally agreed, is instinct a word for impulse? Very different thing. If I relied on my impulses, which sometimes I do, they lead me astray.
- [06:24]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting how tease those two apart.
- [06:26]
Matt Higgins
You know you're relying on instincts when you're in a crisis situation. But two, when they're. When no other option makes any sense. Like when you have that clarity. I had such clarity that one, my intuition or instincts told me my mother was going to die eventually. She was going to succumb both to her depression, but her obesity. Right. My instincts also told me that I was going to spend the rest of my life resenting her if I didn't take matters into my own hands, that there was no institution that was going to help us. And at the four years I had to spend at high school was too much time to waste. Right. I have to ascribe those to instincts because it wasn't on the Internet. It wasn't from counseling or experts. It was bubbling up, but it all bubbled up from the crisis situation of recognizing that it's either do or it's a do or die moment. Harder to replicate that clarity when we're not in a crisis.
- [07:13]
Tom Bilyeu
As an entrepreneur, as an investor, that vets entrepreneurs. Talk to me about the moment where you realize nobody's coming to save you. That's a principle for me that if I were going to say, okay, there's a small handful of things that led to my success. One of them is, I take responsibility for everything. It's all my fault if I never point one finger at anybody without pointing all 10 at myself first. What, What, How. What do you look for in people? How do you get them to take responsibility? Why should they take responsibility? We're in a moment now where that's very unfashionable.
- [07:45]
Matt Higgins
It's such a great point. Oh, I'll take you back in time to a conversation I had sitting at the table with my mother. Right again. Dealing with all these different health. And our relationship dynamic was upside down. I was parentified as a young child, and anyone out there who's a caregiver knows what I'm talking about. And when you're a caregiver, you're both anointed the caregiver in a way you didn't want. But you're also led to believe that you are a savior. Right? That you were born to do that. That was my situation. That, yeah, that I was groomed is the wrong word because it sounds negative, but that I was anointed as the caregiver and the savior, and that became a lot of my identity. But my poor mother at the time was always grappling with depression and her weight, and she wouldn't take matters into her own hands. She would. I never talked about this before, So she would. She would never get surgery for her knees. And I would say, if you don't get surgery, like, you're going to die. You can't. You know, you can't. You can't move. And I remember this conversation where I would say, what's a better way to approach this life? Because she would say, you don't know what it's like to be dying. I'm like, well, I don't know if. I don't think you have to be dying. I think you can get your. Your knees replaced and do something. And then I remember saying to her, I had this epiphany. I'm no longer going to view the world as things happen. To me, I would rather see the world as I happen to things. But I also had enough awareness and defiance and oppositional behavior to say, this is unnatural and it's going to lead to bad things if I don't speak up right. It's going to take decades of therapy instead of just years to unravel this. So it was in the context of me trying to reframe her thinking of saying, what's better? Should I see myself as a victim or should I see myself as an agent in my own rescue? So there's a point of saying that don't mean to get emotional, but it's all still very raw, is that that is the actual truth of the universe, that we happen to things, that we get the last word until our last breath. It's like man's search for meaning. Right? That. And so when I say to you, instincts, I agree. I normally roll my eyes when people say, trust your instincts without nuance. But, like, where did that come from? That was instinctive. And it's only because the situation was so desperate that I instinctively realized the relationship is upside down. It's going to leave me with lots of scars. But two, you're viewing the world as if you. Agency and no power. And that does not ring true to me deep down, you know, in my DNA.
- [10:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I think that's one of the most important principles for anybody watching this, hoping to understand how to move forward. If they disregard that moment, they're never going to make it. And this is the thing that drives me crazy. We were also talking about this before we started rolling. So long before I had a show, I had a thousand employees that grew up hard as hell in the inner cities. And I had this, like, moment of, oh, my God, I can help you. This is crazy. Like, I was meant for this moment. I'm like, I have cobbled together like you. So I took myself from scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car to selling a company for a billion dollars. Like, even I. Like, I get the chills now when I think that's not a story that actually happened.
- [10:59]
Matt Higgins
You feel that way, brother? Sometimes I'm like, I think I'm making it up. Do you feel disassociated?
- [11:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes.
- [11:05]
Matt Higgins
Yes.
- [11:05]
Tom Bilyeu
Because I've said it so many times that I'll forget it's not a catchy phrase. I actually was like, fuck, I don't have enough money to go for a job interview. I don't have enough money to put gas in my car to go to this job interview. What am I going to do? I was like, oh, shit. Like, there might be change. Now, admittedly, gas prices were a lot lower than they are now, so I could actually get enough gas money. But when I look back and I go, okay, wait. I've never felt special. I've never thought like, oh, I'm better than other people. In fact, my story is the exact opposite. I always felt like Solieri from Amadeus, the movie. So real, real guy. And he was a contemporary of Mozart, and he, in the movie, anyway, he laments to God, God, why did you make me just good enough to realize I'll never be as good as Mozart? And I heard that at 16 and was like, oh, my God, that sums up my whole life. Why did you make me just smart enough to realize I'll never be as smart as my friends or I'll never be as smart as the next business guy, whatever. And so when I end up overcoming that and I realize, oh, it's just skill acquisition, I start just going crazy, gobbling up skills, spending an obscene amount of time pushing myself, reading, researching, all that. So anyway, I end up getting good. I'm in front of these employees and I'm like, oh, my God, like, these ideas that I've cobbled together, they will work for you. But what I didn't realize at the time is 98%, obviously, that's a rough number. Just, they're never going to point all ten fingers at themselves. They're never going to do the work. Like they, they, they don't have what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is if you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will actually get better. And if that is true, to your mom, to you, to me, to everybody, it's like, oh, I can address my knees and I can actually get moving and I could lose weight. My life could be different. Oh, I could go to college and end up teaching at Harvard, which is crazy. If people don't know that part of your story. My question is, like, you have lived the thing that wounds me the deepest, which is that there are people that I love an unimaginable amount, and they won't do anything with the ideas. And I'm watching them do a slower version of what you watched your mom do. How do you deal with that? Because that really messes with me.
- [13:18]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, that's hard. I mean, this book is my attempt to make the case that it is possible that, like you just said, I'm not Extraordinary. I was in extraordinary circumstances and was able to open a portal to another world about what happens when you go all in with complete surrender. But I have the same feelings you do. The ideas are there. Why don't you do it? Why won't you just implement it? I think I wrote a book to try to achieve it. You should write a book too.
- [13:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, we'll see. So Burn the Boats. Giving yourself over to your plan A.
- [13:51]
Commercial Announcer
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [14:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Talk to me about that because it so I often tell people I'm not a burn the boats guy. Now I've read your book, so I actually do completely subscribe to the way that you talk about it. But give us the nuanced make the case. The nuanced case in a nutshell that you make in the books is pretty compelling.
- [14:38]
Matt Higgins
Okay, good. All right. I love it. The Burn the Boats is a bit of a Trojan horse. Right. So you know, some people who get frustrated, they pick it up, they expect a certain thing and it's totally another. As you pointed out, it's not the bombastic. It's not called Burn the Boats with you in it or it's not called Burn the Boats to hell with everyone else. This book is written for the 48% of people. If you went on a trained platform, this is actually true from a study and said, do you have a plan a 48% would say yes. The other 40% are lying. Most people do. Right. This book is written for the angst ridden, anxiety laden, risk adverse people who I believe need it more than anyone else. Not the self possessed. So the nuance of Burn the boats and we all. I don't have to revisit the ancient theory of we perform best when we have no escape. Right. But the boat in my book is meant to be a child's boat floating in a bathtub that you set fire to. Because the metaphorical boats that many of us have to burn begin with childhood and legacy issues. Right.
- [15:33]
Tom Bilyeu
I think it is worth telling people where that ancient idea comes from.
- [15:36]
Matt Higgins
All right, let's start. Okay, so this is actually fascinating. Cortez in 1519. A lot of people know the Cortez story. Very bad man burned the boats while taking on the Aztecs and was able to win that battle by literally eliminating the boats, the escape route, and eliminating food provisions. I'm more fascinated by, as I started researching this book, that if you go back to the beginning of recorded history, every culture in every century has a fabled military general. And the way they were to overcome insurmountable odds was to literally eliminate their escape boats, in a lot of cases, bridges sometimes, and destroy their food provisions. There's a story in 207 BC China, same exact thing. They even have a word for it in Chinese for burn the boats. And Alexander the Great, Caesar, ancient Israelites. So I was like, why is it that military leaders intuitively understand that we in peacetime, in modern day, don't accept that the idea, the way to be successful is to actually eliminate choice? So I started looking at the science and said, well, maybe this doesn't hold true in peacetime. Maybe this is an outdated concept. We're too evolved and we don't need to burn the boats anymore. We need to mend the bridges or something or whatever it is. And as a study in 2014 at a Wharton, which is fascinating, they tried to identify what is the insidious impact of not having a Plan B, but actually contemplating a Plan B. And what they found in this study, the methodology, you don't have one, but
- [16:57]
Tom Bilyeu
you're just going to think it, right?
- [16:58]
Matt Higgins
Yeah. They gave permission to the students and said, by the way, if you just want to think of another way to get a snack or whatever the hell it was, right? Like, you can think about it. And what they found were two interesting things. One, the group that was allowed to just contemplate a Plan B was statistically much less likely to be successful. But more importantly, the second part is what I was most interested in. They were less interested in Plan A anymore. They had. They had lost intrinsic motivation to achieve it. So my book is an attempt to make the case. With that data and going back in time, it is 1000% true that the only way to achieve extraordinary things is if you don't have a Plan B. But now we have to get into definitions because this is where the objections come. But, Matt, I have to pay the bills. I can't afford risk. You're a rich white guy, you know, like, you don't understand what it's like, Plan A. And this is why I say I'm the most paranoid risk taker you ever meet plan a 1000% contemplates your mitigation strategy for when it might not work out. The difference is you contemplate it at the beginning of the journey. Whenever I do anything hard, I'm sure you do the same thing. I ask myself, what's the worst thing that could happen? Because I catastrophize going back to my childhood trauma. I, I absolutely, I embrace it. What's the worst thing that could happen? What would I do if the worst thing could happen? Back to that crisis mentality that we're all wired with. I 100% have within me at this moment the ability to mitigate any big decision I try to make without even a moment's thought. If I ask the question, get the other job, go back to working for Bill, whatever I got to do. Right? Three, what's the statistical. What's the likelihood that I could forecast that the catastrophizing that I've just thought about is likely to materialize? Usually the answer is infinitesimally small at the end of the day. And then four, and I'll talk about this in the context of Harvard. What wouldn't I do to walk into that classroom as a kid from Queens who had dropped out of high school and teach? It takes my breath away when I think about what I wouldn't do to make this book successful and help people. And the answer is I would come within an inch of my life for most of my. Literally. I got Covid double pneumonia when I did my IPO. 30 days with OSIMETERS on both fingers. I would almost die to achieve the things I really care about. Compare that against the low probability that the bad thing is going to happen if plan A doesn't work out. It's so small. So point of saying this is my book is nuanced. It's going to disappoint anybody who wants life to be about, you know, to hell with everybody else. It talks about empathy, self awareness and. But the most important point, my boat is a metaphor for the internal and external things that prevent us from. From fully committing.
- [19:28]
Tom Bilyeu
You were talking about that. It's a child's boat.
- [19:31]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [19:32]
Tom Bilyeu
Why?
- [19:32]
Matt Higgins
I find the greatest arbitrage entirely within our control is self awareness. Right. And when I'm assessing a leader that I believe under indexes on self awareness, when I try to identify why, why are they afraid to look within? Why are they. Why one, are they blaming others? Or worse, why do they believe they don't have the power to make change? Or worse, why do they feel not accountable there's something blocking their willingness to look at themselves. And I find more than not this could be confirmation bias, that the answer is a legacy issue. I'll tell you one fact. Packer and I find a lot with founders, they're living someone else's life to seek the approval that they can never get. The father who always wanted them to be an entrepreneur or this like this, this elusive approval that they're seeking that they can ever get. Maybe they have a partner of the foxhole who is their frenemy who's pulling them down to earth when they should be releasing them. Right. There are all these issues. So it's either legacy issues or psychological issues I find are the reasons that hold people back from being self aware. And. And the hardest ones are those childhood
- [20:35]
Tom Bilyeu
legacy stop you from being self aware
- [20:38]
Matt Higgins
because like, let's look at mine. You're talking to me, my mother and within five minutes I'm, I'm like having. I'm getting emotional which I regret at this moment. If you're carrying something that, well, let's just call that overall thing shame because that's where shame prevents you from wanting to be seen. Disclosure. If you have shameful legacy issues or frustration with yourself, you don't want to face them. And so that makes you not want to be self aware. You want all the answers to be external and not to be internal.
- [21:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Man. So I know you've said I've debated getting a tattoo for 40 plus years of my life, but if I was going to get a tattoo, it would say face everything.
- [21:16]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [21:17]
Tom Bilyeu
What do you mean by that? That's. You just mentioned people don't want to face themselves.
- [21:21]
Matt Higgins
I wrote my book so I'd read my book. It's the number again. I asked to Rick the hell out of my life. Like everyone listening. I think I have a lot of insights. I don't always implement them which we don't acknowledge at our level. I feel like enough. But the number one answer to everything is face everything. And yet if I had a tattooed on my chest so I would see it in the mirror to remind myself. But it is the number one self talk that I give. The answer is to face everything. That most of the anxiety that we all carry is anticipation of what would happen if we face something. Whereas you can make that anxiety go away if you just faced it.
- [21:53]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. So I have an idea which I think is actually the same idea that I encapsulate as Action Cures all and what I'm trying to get people to understand all that anxiety, all that worry, it will go away if you start taking action. Now, hiding that is. Yeah, you have to face it so that you can take action. But the idea is to get busy solving the problem. And I don't know how much you know about Andrew Huberman and the. You can reprogram somebody's thinking by getting them to move their eyes laterally. And the reason he hypothesizes and this makes a ton of sense doing it
- [22:28]
Matt Higgins
now is that, yeah, feel better is
- [22:30]
Tom Bilyeu
that when you move forward, your eyes are constantly scanning to the sides to keep you moving on your path. So it is the thing that we do when we are moving forward. And so you're giving the brain the subtle signal that I'm moving towards this, I'm dealing with this. And so there's a sense of like lowering of the anxiety, which 100% I experience every time I'm like really concerned about something. Like if I just start building out a plan and going and attacking this, I'm going to change my neurochemistry, guaranteed 100%. And it's the one thing to your point that people don't end up doing like they never turn and face it because it there is, there's the most friction right before you break through and are like, oh, now I'm dealing with it. And everything's going down because you don't want to look at it, you don't want to deal with it.
- [23:15]
Matt Higgins
But we're also not taught that principle. Right. Like, I love the way you just framed it. It is right on the precipice, is when it's most painful and then you cross the threshold and then you feel the relief. And I think there's a sub point. Why it brings such peace is because anything that you could do that could zoom you into the present is going to make you happier, full stop. Right. So for some people that could be meditating might be a walk in a park, nature play with my kids. And then anticipation of the thing, that which we haven't faced takes you out of the present, brings you into the future where it's not a happy place to be. So I think it's both the piece of just relieving of the anxiety, but it's also one less thing that's taking you out of the present.
- [23:52]
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. I don't think about it as being about the present, though. Meditation for me is really profound. Why do you think so? Here's when people talk about being in the present, when you're meditating here is how I've used that to work for me. And. Is this what you mean? So when I focus on my breathing, it just occupies my mind, and so it doesn't let my mind drift. Like, for me, even listening to the sound of rain will help, which I do a lot of will help ground me to just. There's a thing happening in my brain, so my brain isn't wandering as much. It's very interesting.
- [24:28]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, same point. The only. The only difference here is that there's a negative which is preventing the ability to hear the rain or listen to the breath, which is the preoccupation with that which we haven't faced. So it's just. To me, it becomes an impediment to zooming you into the moment. But same exact point. You know, it's. I just think it's not just about facing the thing that you haven't faced. It's about the obstacle to bringing you back to the moment.
- [24:50]
Tom Bilyeu
So what is the value in being present? Is it so that you can deal with it? Or is it a neurochemical shift that just stops your mind from spiraling out of control?
- [24:59]
Matt Higgins
I just think present is the only truth. And so when you reconnect intellectually, neurochemically, with the only truth, the only thing we're given and granted, there's a lot of peace. I mean, I have an app on my phone since my kids think I'm crazy. But after I had cancer, actually, let me tell you a little bit of backstory. I had testicular cancer when I was 32 years old. And what I found after going through the fear that I might die connected with this idea of zero time that all I would sit in my car because I didn't know where to go, and I hadn't gotten the full diagnosis. They thought it was a later stage cancer. And I was like, okay, I don't. The New York Times real estate section doesn't resonate anymore because I'll be dead before I can buy the brownstone. Like, all my thoughts don't hold up to the prospect of imminent death, and yet we walk around all day with that prospect. And once I knew that I wouldn't die, I had to go through surgery and lots of. And I still carry a lot of the consequences of being a survivor, But I wasn't going to die. I began to savor the experience, to be honest, I began to enjoy the fact that something brought me into this moment to such an extent. And I've tried to hold on to that my entire life.
- [26:09]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so I want to differentiate between being in the moment during meditation, which is like, literally I'm here with my breath, and being in the moment that I don't have years. And so now I'm thinking very differently. These feel like two very different ideas.
- [26:22]
Matt Higgins
They do, they do, but similar outcome. And they're sort of corollary cousins, maybe that the. The awareness. Let's talk about face everything. We are afraid to face our own mortality. We don't know why we're here. We don't know where we're going. A lot of people are, at least, and I think our relationship with it is inverted, which I didn't realize until I thought I might die, that actually contemplating our mortality a lot relieved me of caring about the future anticipation, the things that were taking me away from the moment. From the. From the. From the. From the. And I started going deeper into like, why is that? And then you read the happiest people on Earth are in Bhutan. They contemplate their mortality five times a day. And so I have an app on my phone called Wecroak that throughout the course of the day is reminding me in very lyrical, beautiful ways, Descartes, Socrates, that Matt, you are in fact going to die. And what it does, it zooms me back in to the moment. So slightly different, but similar that I think that the happiest place that you could spend your time is here now with you.
- [27:21]
Tom Bilyeu
It's really interesting. I'm going to make a hypothesis and tell me if you think this is true. So I tried for a long time. The thing that was most beneficial to me was to think about living forever. And that got me really motivated. There's a book called Einstein's Dreams and every. It's a bunch of short stories. And all the short stories are about time. And one of them is a world where you live forever. And in that story, everybody bifurcates into one of two kinds of people. People that do nothing because there's always time to do it later. And people that do everything because now the statement that haunts my dreams is no longer true, which is that you can be anything you want, but not everything. And so I very much fall into that second camp of if I could live forever, I would do everything. I'm like, oh, my God, these skills are going to stack and stack and stack and stack and stack. It's. Living forever is as close as you could get to a superpower just because you could get good at so many things. And so for a long time, that was my meditation. No, you might Live forever, go as fast as you can, acquire as many skills as you can. You could do it all. And it was really motivating. And then somewhere in my mid-40s, that started to feel like it wasn't the right way to think about it. And so then I started to think about, okay, as of today, you're not going to live forever. But it. It's interesting. I get why you're calling it putting me in the moment, but here's what it did. This is my hypothesis. The reason that dying is so cathartic for so many people, the. Especially if you come out the other side and you don't actually die, that thinking you're about to die is so cathartic. Jim Carrey has a whole story about being in Hawaii when the. The missiles are coming in, nuclear missile strike on its way. This is not a drill, that whole thing. And he was like, well, I guess this is it. And he said he's been able to carry that idea with him forward. The reason I think that that is so effective for people is you no longer have to give a shit about what other people think. Now, every theory is autobiographical, so that clearly is the thing for me. But the idea of, like, because I think we're all. The shout and the echo. I don't think there is a way, like the shout is the things you do and the echoes, what people tell you about the thing that you did, I don't think there's a way to get away from that. I doubt even monks are completely abstracted from that. I'm sure they care about what other monks think, whether they want to say they do or not.
- [29:34]
Matt Higgins
It'd be off brand, though. Yeah.
- [29:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, very true. But nonetheless, probably true. What do you think about that?
- [29:41]
Matt Higgins
Oh, it's a lot to unpack. I. I think for me, why it brings relief and peace is exactly what you said about you stop caring what other people think, which is similar to also stop worrying about outcomes and to the extent to which they judge.
- [29:56]
Tom Bilyeu
I wondered if that's what we meant about legacy.
- [29:58]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, yeah, I think. I think back to death for half a second. Like when you. When you. Well, number one, it's technically true. We're facing the prospect of imminent death. Right. We don't know when. So it's actually true. Right. No conjecture about that. Could be when I walk out this do. Right. And the second thing is I know that if I were to. To take. Go back into that moment with a reasonable degree of certainty, I'll probably regret all the things I cared about. That just did not matter. And so reminding myself tries to make me not. Not tries to make me ameliorate that future regret. Right. Or to mitigate that future regret in the very. In the moment. So it's, you know, very convoluted. But that's why I think it brings me at least peace.
- [30:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Have you been able to hang onto that? Because that was.
- [30:41]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, no, unfortunately, because here's why. When I went through cancer and I had these wonderful epiphanies that's completely impractical to implement, but. But theoretically true, I was like, wait a second though I like you, I'm motivated by the pursuit of excellence. And if I eliminate. If I'm no longer vested in the system because it turns out I may die in 15 minutes, what's going to motivate me to do what you were. I'm going to accumulate skills, I'm going to learn everything. Like if theoretically, it could be over very soon. You know, that's a very nihilistic view, right? Like, how will I be great? And then. But then I did realize there is another motivational system, which is the attempt to figure out not only is what my purpose here on earth, but what is the total capacity I was granted. Let me touch the ceiling of my capacity of my potential. And that motivates me just as much as this vesting in the system. Right. I gotta get a better job, prestige, money. I can achieve the same degree of success by wanting to touch the ceiling of my potential or my capacity at that moment.
- [31:37]
Tom Bilyeu
So I don't understand. So if time is now super finite.
- [31:41]
Matt Higgins
Yes. And let's say you're like, oh, what do I care? What does it matter? Well, it's my. It's my answer to my mind saying, well, if mortality is. Or death is imminent or could be, then what makes me vested in showing up today or caring or giving a great presentation? But I think for me at least, I'm just as easy.
- [31:57]
Tom Bilyeu
You want to perform like an athlete on the field. I want to see how well I can perform.
- [32:02]
Matt Higgins
I think that brings me close to God. Like, oh, what? I mean, if we're all made in his or her image, whatever that may be. I'm not particularly religious, but I'm spiritual. That knowing what, What I'm capable of feels like I'm closer to the origin or wherever whoever put me on this earth, right? So it's. That to me is just as motivating. Let me see what I. Let me see if I could write this book. Let me see if I could touch People, If I can move people, let me see what happens.
- [32:26]
Tom Bilyeu
What do you think? Now that you have kids, is it a different game for you?
- [32:30]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:31]
Tom Bilyeu
I assume you did not have kids at that point.
- [32:33]
Matt Higgins
I just had had a kid. It was, he was, yeah, it was three months old. Oh, yeah, that is, that did require that, that, that made a quick reframing instantly. That's all I desperately want to do was be there for the handoff, whatever the handoff is.
- [32:47]
Tom Bilyeu
Did you like end up writing letters or anything to.
- [32:50]
Matt Higgins
I, I, I didn't because fortunately it was a relatively short period of time when I thought like I could die to like statistically improv a big statistics person. I was like, ah, in this cohort, probably a waste of ink. And also didn't want to put them in me in the group that writes a letter to their kid because then I thought maybe then I'll be in that death corps. Yeah, it's my plan B.
- [33:09]
Tom Bilyeu
But, but, but plan A, live plan B document.
- [33:13]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, it did do one thing which I would encourage everyone to do. It did clarify me saying, what do I want my epitaph to read and work backwards and ask what did you
- [33:21]
Tom Bilyeu
want it to read?
- [33:22]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, that was the, that was the.
- [33:24]
Tom Bilyeu
I want to know.
- [33:24]
Matt Higgins
Oh, so herein lies a great dad who did the best he could. I really. And again, you don't get a lot of words on epitaph, so it's kind of effective. I wish I could have sub subhiles and he also changed the world. But like it really, I think, and I think everyone feels that way. But for me, it was partly to break the pattern. I wanted to break the pattern. Like, like I felt like if I could just. It wasn't just a good me, it was, it was a pleading with God or the universe, like, let me get this right, please, so that I don't, you know, carry on. Because all the patterns that we're subjected to were either repeating them or were we doing the opposite of them creating their own new bad patterns. So it was sort of a bargaining with the universe. Like, please, like let me get this right. But when it's all said and done, and that was only because I had obviously had kids, if you don't have kids, you know, you don't understand how powerful that is.
- [34:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I can only imagine. But, but even, even though I don't have kids, I get like that sense of what that would be like to want to leave something for them to want to do well for somebody else. In fact, that is the thing I Understand so well that I get how that would be dialed.
- [34:31]
Matt Higgins
Well, you have that with your wife, right? Your amazing relationship with your wife. I love reading about what you talk about with your relationship with your wife. And not a lot of people talk about the importance of partnership and as a force multiplier. And this book doesn't exist without my wife. My show doesn't exist without my wife,
- [34:46]
Tom Bilyeu
which you make very clear in the book, by the way, which is definitely one of the things that I want to talk to you about. But the. The idea of wanting to do well for somebody else, I'm wired for that. Whether I should be or not is a different story. But again, going back to the idea of every theory is autobiographical. I always tell people, you. Whatever you're going to pursue, if you want to get through it, you're going to have to find a way to connect it to serving other people. Like, if you don't, I think it's as close to universal as you're going to get. But saying that I'm doing the same for me can be very motivating. But saying that I'm doing the same for somebody else, like, is. For me anyway, is just unbelievably powerful. It's interesting. I'd never thought about. Why do I feel so. Like, I get it so much when parents are like, yo, for my kid, I would do anything. That's.
- [35:34]
Matt Higgins
Why do you think? Were you always that way? Were you that way in your 20s?
- [35:37]
Tom Bilyeu
I've been that way since I was a little kid. One of my earliest memories is throwing a Easter egg hunt. So my sister, who's four years older than me, could win. And I was five or six, and I was like, I know how much this will mean to her. And so I'm going to not. I'm going to pretend I don't see that egg and make sure that she finds it. So, yeah, I have been. I'm wired for that. I think we're 50% hardwired and 50% malleable.
- [36:00]
Matt Higgins
I was going to say. I actually don't think that everyone is wired that way.
- [36:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Definitely not.
- [36:04]
Matt Higgins
I think there's a certain percentage that are sociopaths. There's a. There's a cousin named Narcissist. You know what I mean? Like, and that's been a hard thing, is to retain my empathy, which I think is my gift.
- [36:15]
Tom Bilyeu
It's been hard to.
- [36:16]
Matt Higgins
No, not hard. Wrong word. It's not hard. I'm defense. I'm protective of it. It's to operate in a world where you allow your empathy to flow freely, but also protect yourself and be committed to self defense. But at the same time, I, like, I never hold grudges, for example, because I don't want to let somebody be able to take away my empathy. But I am capable of making sure I beat you to a draw, and then I'll let the empathy flow again.
- [36:40]
Tom Bilyeu
It's really interesting. So we're gonna have to give people a little bit more of your backstory. So you are an extraordinarily accomplished investor and entrepreneur. Been on Shark Tank as a shark, Invested in a lot of amazing things, including VaynerMedia. For people that know Gary Vee, you were his first client. Essentially own a piece of the company. So some really big wins that is normally associated with somebody who's a little sinister. They're not afraid to step on people. How have you been able to be successful? Be a shark? I mean, it's literally called shark. To be a shark and maintain that sense of not only integrity, but empathy.
- [37:23]
Matt Higgins
Yeah. Great question. The answer is I'd probably be more successful if I had less of it. Maybe that's the honest answer. Right? Like, I am not a sociopath, and I do care. I think if you marry empathy with intellect and pattern recognition, I think you can go pretty damn far in life. And the empathy unlocks a ton of value. I always say when I look back at this crazy story of me post cancer, I don't think I told you this story. When I had cancer and I was 32 years old, my number one concern was not dying. Not right away, at least, was not having one testicle. Was not even whether I would be infertile. It was whether I would be picked apart by the villains who were waiting for me to finally show my weakness.
- [38:06]
Tom Bilyeu
I get it.
- [38:07]
Matt Higgins
I mean, I was nuts. Looking back, so nuts that after I was diagnosed, you. You go real fast. They want that tumor out of your body because they think it's spread to your. To your lymph nodes and whatnot. I had it within 24 hours surgery. It's like, well, can I. Can I say goodbye to diagnosis? From diagnosis to removing my right testicle. That's not a long time to say goodbye to, like, a pretty important. I mean, it's not a particularly attractive body part, but I was still like, can I sit with this decision for half a minute? And then 48 hours later, within 48 hours, I was like, how do I show everybody that I'm not defeated? And there was a dinner for all the coaches at the Jazz Eric Mangini was at the time.
- [38:42]
Tom Bilyeu
You and I have a very different reaction to this story. Very eager for you to tell people.
- [38:45]
Matt Higgins
Okay. All right, so I'm curious to hear your reaction. So I show up at this dinner and everyone's having wine and I sit at the table. I have an ice bag in between my groin. Right. Like clear. That I have just been operating on. And I'm like showing them how tough I am. And I have a little toast to everybody. Let me tell you what my new motto is. That I'm soon to put on dog tags. And it says half the balls twice. The man, the 32 year old version of me thinks that that's cool and tough. But before I say my interpretation of that story, I want to hear your interpretation of my story.
- [39:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Well, so I know your punchline.
- [39:19]
Matt Higgins
Okay? But act like you don't and feel free to judge. I don't mind.
- [39:23]
Tom Bilyeu
No, no, no, no judgment. It's, it may say something more about me than it says about you. So I'll give people your idea because I think it's better that they hear that first. So you realize, hey, this is cringy. And when I show up moments after surgery, it sends a message to everybody else, I don't give a fuck what you're going through. You better show up and you better do your thing. And I get that. And I try to be very protective that my team feels like, like, hey, if you need time, take that time. We're here to protect you. We use that language here. It's sacred.
- [39:58]
Matt Higgins
You're.
- [39:59]
Tom Bilyeu
We just had somebody, their mom fell, broke their hip in the hospital. They had to fly back to their home country. Deal with it. I was like, we got you. Like, do not worry about a thing. We are on it. We will take care of you. Could be any one of our moms the next time. And I want you to protect me. But I love that hardcore so much. Like, I love that you showed up. Now if you expected other people to do that, I would be grossed out. But the fact that you want to do it for yourself, the fact that you were like, I'm not going to let this beat me. All of that resonates with me still. And I'm, I can't, you know, claim youth.
- [40:35]
Matt Higgins
No, but I like, but I, I, I. So I think let's meet in the middle because I don't disagree with you. Let's talk about behavior that's changed and behavior that's not changed. So for Those listening, my 30 year old version of me thought that that was like, you know, so tough, right? But the. With a little bit more perspective. And this only occurred to me when I went to my own divorce, right. I realized not only was I expecting me to show up with one testicle on an ice pack the next day, I was not understanding why everyone wouldn't want to show up, right? Like surrender to the mission. The, the. When I went through my own trauma that was much more significant than, than cancer, I realized I have been ignoring or overlooking or, you know, basically deciding that it's not that big a deal, everyone's trauma and expecting generally the same that I, that the behavior that I was modeling. And that's not reasonable, it's not fair, and it's not good leadership. However, what I haven't changed is I still put myself through tremendous duress to achieve great things when I teach. When I taught at Harvard Business School, you know, three weeks ago, I was going through something really tough on the home front, right? And had a choice to make. Do I succumb to that? Do I not teach this class that I've worked on for almost a year? Do I. But I have to show up for the family situation. Do I not do that? And then I was like, oh, there's a third choice. I will stay up for four days straight. Like, literally, I'm going to try to sit an hour here, hour there. I will put myself to the brink. And that's my choice. And so I don't deny myself the right to make that choice when I'm trying to do really hard, extraordinary things. But I make sure that I, that I do the best I can not to model that behavior, not to. So the way you just said about one of your employees that was going through loss of a family member, right? Like, and you went out of your way to say it's okay. Like, I try to do that to the best of my ability. And I wouldn't have done that at 32. That's the difference.
- [42:25]
Tom Bilyeu
It's very interesting.
- [42:26]
Matt Higgins
So the only difference I would say too, is the last point. I think anybody objectively watching me go ahead and show up at that dinner two days later would understand that that behavior is born out of dysfunction that has unregulated behavior. It's such an outlier. I don't think that there's anything proud about, you know, I don't know what
- [42:41]
Tom Bilyeu
to do with that.
- [42:42]
Matt Higgins
I'm sorry, I don't mean to challenge your whole identity. I love it because I'm. I work non stop on this book. Like, it's not that I'm not crazy about my work effort. It's just some things just don't really make sense.
- [42:53]
Tom Bilyeu
No, I love it. And I. I love encountering people that don't think the way that I think. So I will keep exploring the edges of this. So I think it's very important to make other people feel like the choice that they need to make is 100%, like, make it. So my wife taught me this in that she just. Her body cannot handle the amount of stress that my body can. And so for her, she'll start getting sick. If she tried to match me hour for hour, she'd get sick.
- [43:20]
Matt Higgins
And my wife said one time she started crying. She's like, I can't get up at 4, because I'd be like, come on, babe. Like, let's go. Let's do math. She's like, please, Yeah, I can't do it.
- [43:31]
Tom Bilyeu
And so at that moment, you're a dick if you're like, come on.
- [43:34]
Matt Higgins
Come on already. Everyone, you know, right?
- [43:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Not fun, not cool. No respect for that whatsoever. But at the same time, I want to see if he's here. He is here. So that guy right there came to me one day and he said, I want to be the CEO of Impact Theory one day. And I was like, don't say that if you don't mean it. And he's like, no, for real. And I was like, okay, so let me tell you, I'll treat you the way I treat myself. And I'm not going to hold anybody else that standard because they did not come to me and say that they want to be the CEO one day. And I love it. I love talking to him more than anybody else because I can just be like, yo, motherfucker, what are you doing? Like, you need to get going. And he has a phrase that he took from Goggins, who we were talking about before this, and Goggins is carry the boats right now. I've said many. I love Goggins. I'm inspired by Goggins. I don't want to be Goggins, but I want to have that gear. And so being able to talk to him and push him in that way and see him like, yeah, yeah, I do love it. But I am very aware that the. It was Alex Hormozi. I don't know where he got it, so I always credit him. But he said there are three qualities that make somebody successful. An undying belief that you can do something great.
- [44:49]
Matt Higgins
Agreed.
- [44:49]
Tom Bilyeu
A terrifying fear that you're not worthy.
- [44:51]
Matt Higgins
Agreed.
- [44:52]
Tom Bilyeu
And the ability to delay gratification.
- [44:54]
Matt Higgins
I totally agree.
- [44:55]
Tom Bilyeu
I was like, oh, my God.
- [44:56]
Matt Higgins
I always say, what do you say? Because I always say, like, when I was going through something really bad on the personal front and I was overweight, whatever. I trained for a marathon in my basement, and I would only train on a treadmill in the dark and I would stare at a red light on the wall for months. That's how I trained.
- [45:13]
Tom Bilyeu
Because you didn't want people to see you?
- [45:14]
Matt Higgins
No, because I was trying to get a different muscle, which is the ability to persevere through something with repetitive motion. When I'm always manifesting through power through something you can't power through a marathon. You'll burn out. So it was like practicing that level of deferred gratification and that patience muscle. Muscle that maybe doesn't come totally naturally. But I like all three of those. I agree. Yeah.
- [45:34]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, I hate the second one, but when I think about the reality.
- [45:38]
Matt Higgins
Is that still true for you?
- [45:39]
Tom Bilyeu
The second 100%.
- [45:40]
Matt Higgins
Doesn't that annoying, don't you?
- [45:41]
Tom Bilyeu
It does. And you're the first person I've heard talk about it in the book where you said, I don't know about you guys, but I make progress and I regress.
- [45:47]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [45:48]
Tom Bilyeu
And so I talk about this in ITU a lot, which is, hey, everybody. I've never been able to get rid of the negative voice, so I've learned not to death loop on it. So I can't stop the first thought. It's going to arise whether I want it to or not. But I can stop myself from indulging in that. Like, you're never going to do what you want and all that.
- [46:08]
Matt Higgins
Just. I talk about that in the, in the book too. I bet you can relate to this. I think a lot of the packaging on Instagram, first of all, we're overweighting now anybody who's gone through, like, crisis and reemerge like a phoenix. But it actually reinforces a myth because if you are telegraphing to the world, I have figured it out and I went through a bad thing like you did. Now. I figured it out, but you don't share the regression. Most people can't relate to that, so they're appreciative of the answers to the test.
- [46:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Do you care about people being able to relate to it?
- [46:39]
Matt Higgins
I do. I really just care what's true. No, I, I, I care. I don't want to be robbed of my origin story. I don't want to manifest in the world as a guy on Shark Tank.
- [46:49]
Tom Bilyeu
What if it was all of that, your whole origin story? All but people can relate and they could only relate to natural talent. And they're like, oh, I don't, I don't even understand this guy.
- [46:57]
Matt Higgins
Like not being born with it, it was like, like a death sentence. It's like it feels, you know why it's useless. That would mean they can't relate. Yes, that would mean my whole thing, I think is objectively useless if people can't find a point of intersection and join me.
- [47:10]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, help me break through then. So here I, I don't think it's useful to me.
- [47:15]
Matt Higgins
It's just, I just think it's useless in terms of a higher order to things. Right. Like I can't do anything more with my story than other than self enrichment.
- [47:23]
Tom Bilyeu
It's interesting. So you have a base assumption that if people can't relate to you, they never going to take your advice.
- [47:29]
Matt Higgins
That's a great question. I do think authority matters. I think like these nice brands that I've collected, Shark Tank, right. I'm at hbs. Like they, they matter because they give me presumed authority. But to me that's the usefulness of those things, you know, writ large. Right. But I, I do think that people are looking for reasons to say yeah, but yeah, I can't. And so I won't ever really break through. Break through if they can't find a place to intercept. And it doesn't have to be factual intersection. It has to be emotional and spiritual like you. Maybe you can't relate to the idea that a guy drops out of high school at 16, self possessed enough to know to do that, ends up in these terrible situations. But you can relate to somebody who had to overcome imposter syndrome or you know what I mean? Or life brings them to those things anyone can relate to. And what I'm most proud with the book at the moment is the extent to which every socioeconomic demographic has reached out. To me that's hard to do when you're at where I'm at. So I think I got that right. But yeah, I just keep thinking in terms of utility of my life beyond myself. And if people can't connect and intersect, then it just doesn't have as much utility. And I don't want to manufacture it. But the stuff I put in a book, as you could say, it's not manufactured, it's painful. And people now joining me on the journey, it's interesting.
- [48:45]
Tom Bilyeu
I may just be blind to the fact that I respond more to being able to relate to people than I think. The reason I like your book isn't because I can relate to it, though I can. The reason that I respond to your book is my bullshit meter pegs so fast with people. So I used to only interview people like you, which I'll call in the empowering camp. It's tactics, principles to live by. It's going to make your life better, which I can vouch for 100%. Your book, you, everything, like, it's all that. And people should dive in if that's what they care about. But I stopped interviewing just that because so many people are full of shit. And so the reason that I like your book, I think, isn't because I found it relatable. It's because the advice is actually real. And if people take your advice, whether they can relate to you or not, it will make their life better. This is interesting. I'm discovering something about myself. I'm going to keep going for a second. So I have an allergic reaction to the moment that we're living in right now where people are like, yeah, like, it's okay. Blame the world. Like, this has happened to me. And that makes me so angry because it won't fucking help you.
- [49:55]
Matt Higgins
That's like a lie, even if it were true.
- [49:58]
Tom Bilyeu
So I was giving a talk at Google, of all places, and an African American in the front row said, tom, do you think things are going to be harder for me because I'm black? And I was like, yes, almost certainly. But now what? And so you can be angry, you can blame people, or I think there's only two options. You can go try to change the system, Martin Luther King, or you can get so good that no one can stop you. Kobe Bryant. And it's like, those are your choices. And I have an allergic reaction to people that aren't interested in doing one of those two things.
- [50:37]
Matt Higgins
Totally agree. My reaction is both allergic and a little bit empathetic. And the reason why, having been in politics before my early, like, Republicans and Democrats are like cousins, you know, like one. One genetic strand difference between the two. I think I have a cynical view of it all. But I think actually those people who've chosen to adopt the victim narrative through every spectrum of type of individual background, they're being sold something that won't help them. And I feel like you're actually being manipulated with that narrative because it's an attempt to change the subject, to make you look away and to make you not try to be honest with you generally. But at the same time, I Do think I tried hard in my book, back to connecting with different individuals. On a first pass of somebody reading it, a woman had read it, and she's from an immigrant family. And she said, I love your book, and I love so much about it. The only thing I kept finding when I was reading is like, like, but I don't quite see me in it. And I was like, really? Why? And then she's like, because at the end of the day, you were a white male in this society. And of course, I first react like, but wait. I was dropped in high school. I was poor. I went through all this stuff. And then as I sat with it, I thought, you know, what if I was from a different demographic, a minority group, Right. The act of dropping out and getting a GD might to a racist seem confirmatory. And the act of me, you know, growing up with a degree of privilege is aberrational.
- [52:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
- [52:02]
Matt Higgins
And that somebody would look harder at my story to find the why. And then I became obsessed with. I need to show whoever's reading this book from whatever demographic that I see you and I acknowledge you without whether or not this victim doesn't come into it. Right. It's just that I see you and I hear you, and I tell the story in the book, which I love. At the end of one of my classes at Harvard, I was talking to two black women, and they were talking about one of the speakers I had who used a lot of profanity in the class. And they said it was an amazing conversation. And she goes. Her name was Tracy. She goes, you know, I could never say that in this class. I was like, why? And she goes, because if I did, everybody would instantly judge me and conclude that I'm. I'm only here for whatever reason. But more importantly, I'm ruining it for everyone that comes. Comes after me. Every black woman who walks into this classroom now because Will be judged by my behavior. And I was like, that's unbelievable. And I chose to put that in the story because I thought that is undeniable proof that I had an advantage even eating government cheese being a poor kid. I had an undeniable advantage because I don't represent anybody but Matt Higgins. And if you come from a minority group, you carry the weight and the burden of everybody who comes after you.
- [53:13]
Tom Bilyeu
But now what?
- [53:15]
Matt Higgins
Fair. I don't get into the now what because I think my book is exactly. I love talking to you, by the way. My book is. No, seriously, the reason why people take you is not because you sold a billion dollar company it's not anything. It's because you drill empathy and humanity. I don't know if it's a God complex or what, but honestly, I really hope not. No, but it is not in a positive way because I feel like somebody put you on this earth, but it exudes you. It's why I got emotional talking about my mother. You create this safe space and you only delivering the facts. The now what I think is the book is the burn the boats. But if people can't see themselves or can't join me, I'm saying this to you to say everybody can join you because of your empathy that. That radiates through all your content like you really give a shit.
- [53:59]
Tom Bilyeu
That is very true. The so I react very strongly. There's two. My wife will. She'll. She will vouch for this. There are two reactions when someone hurts themselves. Oh, my God, are you okay? And hey, be careful. What the fuck are you doing? I am very much that, hey, be careful. What the fuck are you doing? So when I see someone I love hurt themselves, I'm just like, yo, there is a solution. Stop smashing yourself in the hand with a hammer. And I, I, I. It upsets me so much to watch people struggle. Like, I hate that so much. I want to see everyone win. And I have wasted so much of my life trying to help people help you. And I say wasted because some aren't going to do it. But what I what I really want people to hear, I. It doesn't if, if you meet minimum requirements intellectually, which unfortunately exist, but if you're listening to this show and you've made it this far, I guarantee you meet minimum requirements intellectually. But once you meet that, the world is stacked against some people way more than others. Y 100%. I'm just begging you, take Kobe Bryant's advice. Boos. Don't block dunks. No matter how much people may have hated Kobe, no matter how the best scouts in the world were paid millions of dollars to go around the world and find people that could stop him from scoring baskets. They trained athletes, five of them, to be on a court at a time with their sole mission of stopping him from scoring points. And fans in the crowds booing like crazy, going nuts, that's despite all of that. That man scored 81 points in a single game. There are games that only score 80 some points. And so that is so inspiring to me that, oh, wait, there are a set of skills that I could acquire that would let me get so good at something people can't stop me from winning. They can't stop me. No matter how much they want to, they actually can't. And that to me is so inspiring. Like, that's all I want people to get. And dude, it's hard and it really sucks that it's going to be harder for some people than others. 100%. And trust me, when I look at Elon Musk, I am angry that I'm not that smart. And so he's just always and forever, it feels like he's always going to be able to out execute me just because he can process data faster than I can. It's really. He's a superhero living among us. You, you can hate him, that's fine.
- [56:44]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, no, I'm with. But he, we're living with Thomas Edison. I hate the way he uses his platform fair. I hate it like every day I hate it more. But you know, I don't take.
- [56:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Hard to deny what he's built, though.
- [56:55]
Matt Higgins
No, wait, back to you for half a second. When you were saying a second ago, when you respond to like the, you know, putting your hand in fire or whatever. And you know what?
- [57:03]
Tom Bilyeu
Stop smashing yourself in the head with a hammer.
- [57:05]
Matt Higgins
That one. Yeah. Stop. What the fuck are you doing? Even as you said it, though it didn't seem judgmental, it still, it seemed like an anxiety response. Yes. So I don't. I still think it's coming from the same place. Oh yeah, it's more just like, ah,
- [57:16]
Tom Bilyeu
like, yeah, but, but, but it manifests as I. Dude, look, I'm just so desperate for people to win. I want people to win. This is a thing where I could spin myself off emotionally. You have no idea. So first of all, in, in that way, I've earned my stripes. So at Quest, it was basically all minorities and I don't give a. Like, I don't care. I didn't care that they had criminal records, that they were drug dealers, former or current. I just wanted people to understand there is a set of ideas. You can totally change your life forever, but you have to put it to use.
- [57:53]
Matt Higgins
I think people don't fundamentally believe it's possible. As Leon. I think they just. I think they just don't believe it's possible. And I think it's not going to happen with a bunch of empty Instagram, you know, platitudes about, like, just do it. I think it takes more nuance than that. And we're not a world built on nuance. They just don't believe it's possible. They think the deck is stacked. I Think we're sold a lot a bill of goods to believe that, you know, it can't happen or conspiracy theories and whatnot. We've just, we've lost our way from the celebration of the individual.
- [58:21]
Tom Bilyeu
You know, you just gave me the chills. Say that again.
- [58:24]
Matt Higgins
We've lost our way from the celebration of the individual. Like, like we, we do like, it's like lost in society for some reason. And we experience the world first individually and we need to experience it together. But obviously the individuals at the center of the journey and yet we want to dilute the individual experience and we want to remove the individual from causation. We want to like, it's like this vast conspiracy to take the individual out of the equation. And you look at somebody like Emerson's incredible writing. Favorite piece of writing I ever. If I had one piece of writing on an island, it would be self reliance. That one essay I would read over and over and over again.
- [58:57]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't know it, I've never.
- [58:58]
Matt Higgins
Oh really? Oh, I'm so excited to share this with you.
- [59:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Please.
- [59:01]
Matt Higgins
Oh great. Yeah. Self reliance. I just really. All is incredible. One of the, one of the most central premises of it is one, don't outsource your judgment. It starts with a phrase in Latin which is this, do not seek outside thyself. And it talks about the indignity of having an incredible idea, like an epiphany. But you refused to accept it because it was your own. And then later on you're forced to accept it from another and the indignity of being force fed your own insights from others. Yeah, it's an incredible piece. But the individual has lost its place in society and it's almost become like a Republican thought or an Anne Randian thought. Whereas to me it's just facts. But when you say things in a bombastic like just do it, it's very hard for people to implement. It's too simplistic.
- [59:44]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I agree with the too simplistic thing.
- [59:46]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [59:46]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. So getting out of the simplicity and into the nuance, I wrote down a bunch of the things that I took away from your book.
- [59:54]
Matt Higgins
I'm emotionally drained now though. I don't know if I can do it.
- [59:58]
Tom Bilyeu
We're just warming up. One of the things that I like is so you're telling people to burn the boats. Don't have the plan B. Because I mean there's just a psychological principle at play that if you have it, you're not going to fight as hard. Then on top of that you tell people to aim high. So this is one of the things that allowed me to be successful was I had the audacity. Going back to those three things, I had the audacity to believe that I could. That there was nothing that I couldn't accomplish. Now, actually, as I get older, I think that there are. I. I have really tasted my limitations now. Ironically, even though I have. I've developed enough scar tissue that I'm like, ooh, there, there, probably there is a ceiling to my abilities, but I don't know that I'll ever reach it. And so it's this fascinating, like, oh, I can see now that there are limits. There are things I won't be able to accomplish. But since things like, like the aiming high for anybody, let's say, is a ratio distance from where you are now. So my aim high may not be Elon Musk's aim high. I mean, he's literally talking about terraforming a planet. I admittedly don't have that belief in myself, and so I'm not even pursuing that. But I am trying to build the next Disney, which for me is like, whoa. Like, this is dizzying. And the irony is, when we started, I said to my wife and co founder, I'm not good enough yet to build the next Disney. And so there's somewhat of a leap of faith in a shared belief that you and I have, that you have to aim high. Like, go for something crazy. Go for something that actually exceeds your current grasp. Burn the boats in your way, and now figure it out.
- [61:43]
Matt Higgins
There is this gravitational pull towards incrementalism, right? That we believe that life and experience unfolds like sedimentary rock. But you only perceive sedimentary rock in retrospect when you look back millions of years and it looks nice and organized. So what I mean by that is, like, you first need to have the lemonade stand, and then you get to have a bigger lemonade stand. Then you get to have a business. And I think people look at their progression of their experience and success completely the wrong way. But the first thing we always have to consider is a step change. A step change meaning something that's completely detached from the experience that came before it, by and large. And you envision opening the $100 million lemonade stand before you open or lemonade business before you open a lemonade stand. And the reason why is once you. And you've experienced this, once you have a company, when you have a thousand employees and you think back to when you had 20, the problems are generally the same because most problems are People problems. And once you begin managing people, you have people problems. Right. And so I find that if you bypass the step of saying, well, what if I went for a step change? What if I went all at it, that reach goal, you'll never be able to ask that question again. You can only ask it at the beginning. And most people believe that they have to have this approach towards incrementalism, and they deny themselves the benefit of reaching really far. So I'm always trying to put myself in positions that are tremendous reach. I'm always questioning why not. I never taught anywhere before. For Harvard Business School, it would have been more logical to go to Queens College. I certainly could have. Maybe Fordham Law. Right. But I was like, why can't I try to teach it the best? I think I have it in me now back to my instincts. Trusting your intuition. There was nobody who could have confirmed for Matt that he was capable of walking into that classroom. Right. That. To tell me there's no data. So I feel really passionate that anybody out there is listening. If you have a dream, do not submit to incrementalism before you've tested the idea of a step change. Change.
- [63:34]
Tom Bilyeu
But how do you pull that off? Like, so I know what it takes to run a business. There are times where I'm teaching people business and I'm like, Jesus. Like, to get across the complexity of these ideas. It is so hard. It's so complex. Like, even the throwaway comment, I want to burst out laughing because I know what's hiding in. Oh, you have people problems. It's like.
- [63:56]
Matt Higgins
Like that. Is that.
- [63:57]
Tom Bilyeu
That's tomes. This of how to deal with. With said people problems and all the variations that they come in. So how the hell have you figured this? Kind of like going back to this idea of principles, how do you start? Like, okay, I'm gonna sort of bucket these. Like, is it vision first? Like, you have to be able to see it before you can execute it. Is it convincing other people? Is it understanding? Are you a visionary or an operator? Like, how do you begin to help people?
- [64:26]
Matt Higgins
I think the first thing is one, just as a general principle, never let anybody put you in a box and make sure you're not putting in your own box. So you have to sort of, you know, unchain yourself from what conventional wisdom is that says, this is what I am. This is what.
- [64:37]
Tom Bilyeu
Because you'll end up limiting yourself.
- [64:39]
Matt Higgins
Yes, because, like, for me, I. I never taught before. So if I'm listening to the peanut gallery, they'll be like, well, where do you get off. You're not. You don't teach. And I always have to deal with that response to my audacity all the time. Like, what are you now? You got a book? What do you. Are you some lifestyle guru? That's the question. I'm like, no, asshole, I have something to say. But whatever, you go write a book. It only takes three years.
- [64:59]
Tom Bilyeu
Live a life worth writing a book about. That's the real challenge.
- [65:03]
Matt Higgins
So this isn't a screed against expertise. Expertise does matter. It's a warning that you should be your own litmus test. At least start there. Of whether you have what it takes. So my process is whatever audacious thing I'm looking to do, including, like, Shark Tank, right? Start there. How do you get on Shark Tank? Everyone asked me. I was like. Like, there is no, you know, go on the Internet and put your name in. Like, it was a year's worth of meetings. But I had to start, like, because there is no litmus test by saying, what does it fundamentally to be mean to be on Sharktame? Well, one, you have to have a history of being an investor. All right, well, I did that. Two, you have to be presumed to have some platform, some reach, have that and perform well under a camera so that they want to put you in front of one. Think I have that. Four, have a good, compelling origin story. Right? Well, I think I have that right. So now it's the how. The how's a lot easier, actually. Everything has a how. I just have to look for the how. When it came to Shark Tank is a guy named Reed Bergman. He had helped a Rod get on the show. Like, he's my agent, you know, there was a how. It was the first part of deciding what's the litmus test and relying on my own judgment to say that I belong on that show. Because if you don't do that, then you're just delusional. I'm not one of these people that's like, plan A or all in. Like, I go through a process to determine whether the goal is delusional. I just don't rely on external validation because external validation will always tell you it's not your time or you're not good. Right? You're not good enough.
- [66:29]
Tom Bilyeu
I really hope people heard what you just said, that you don't have a delusional plan A and burn the boats. And then you're like, well, I'm now fucked.
- [66:36]
Matt Higgins
No, not at all. I'm very risk adverse. So my plan A allows pivoting and Iteration. But like every audacious goal, I have a hierarchy of goals with the book. Right. My number one goal, which was the hardest one, is like, let me connect with people in a way that's unique, unusual. Let me not write a boring business book, that's redundant after the third chapter. Let me write a story. Well, story takes a load of work. I was like, well, I was a journalist when I was a kid. I was a little reporter. I was nominated for a PULITZER. I was 19. You know, anybody could. You and I can nominate each other, but Carl Bernstein nominated me.
- [67:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Jesus.
- [67:05]
Matt Higgins
He's on the board of directors of my company. So I always have to caveat that very clearly anybody can be nominated. But I won a lot of awards for investigative journalism. Oh, I, I have the skills to tell a story and I have a vision. I'm going to do it differently and I have something to say. Point is, there's nobody for me to go on the Internet. Does Matt Higgins deserve to write a book? And could it be a book that gains traction? And I think that's where people go wrong. There's a gravitational pull of incrementalism because incrementalism is the only thing for which we have data to validate our choices. Incrementalism, like, oh, I know that the person who opened a lemonade business would probably have evidence of having a lemonade stand. So there's a conversation in my book about Jesse Darris and we ultimately created a communications firm together and we went for this epic walk and he's a risk adverse human and his mind kept telling him, let me be the partner at this firm first before I'm capable of running my own business. And I was like, why? What is it about getting the imprimatur of being a partner on a door that actually makes you more qualified to run your own firm? Because society told you that that was the logical sequence of events. And then in the end we created the firm, obviously, or else it wouldn't be in the book. And he sold it for tens of millions of dollars. But those are the most transformative, trajectory, changing conversations, conversations I have with people when I challenge their bias towards incrementalism. And we break down and people always know when it's right. They always know. Oh, for me to run my own private equity firm, all I have to have is access to deal flow, a great network to raise money, the tenacity to keep going and off we go. There's a student in my book, Harvard student, was about to take a job with a soul crushing private Equity firm. And he was in my office trying to help decide which crappy firm to take. And as he was talking, I was like, can I ask you a question? I was like, why aren't you just creating your own firm? And he goes, well, who's going to give me money? I was like, nobody. Until the one person who gives you the money. And when they fucking do, you're going to have your own firm. True story. Leaves my office after giving that speech. I'm like, I don't know. He came from the military, so used to corporate military hierarchies. I'm like, I don't know if he has the willingness to break out of that gravitational pull. Three months later, whatever, he calls me up, let me get your address. And I'm like, why is. I want to send you the swag from the firm I created. When I walked out your office office, I raised $10 million and now I'm raising 50 million. That's a long way of answering your question. I guess the question is not. It's really about containing within yourself the ability to decide whether you have the expertise necessary, not whether somebody else grants you the expertise necessary or validates.
- [69:33]
Tom Bilyeu
You've done a lot of crazy things. I think I'd heard you throw away that you were a journalist, but that one didn't sink in. So the fact that you've done that, people don't even know about your time, time in the government, what you did with 9 11, the memorial, what you've done in the NFL.
- [69:47]
Matt Higgins
I mean, ah, right.
- [69:48]
Tom Bilyeu
It's like your story's crazy. You should be 75 to have the biography.
- [69:53]
Matt Higgins
Still 75.
- [69:54]
Tom Bilyeu
Pretty, pretty nuts. How do you learn? Like, how do you go and okay, I'm gonna do this crazy thing that is new. It's a step function ahead. But at some point you actually have to get good at that thing. How have you gotten good at that?
- [70:09]
Matt Higgins
Such a great point. I, I, I, I, I'm sure like you do. I have that voice in my head that does say, like, where do you get off? You know, a bit. Right. And then I have this tremendous desire to do well and to do right, to honor the, whoever granted me entrance to the, to the setting, you know, or a seat at the table. There's always somebody who decided. Yeah, I agree, I agree with your litmus test. You do have what it takes. I'm going to open the door to you now. I'm going to vouch for you. I might even put myself in harm's way by letting you in this Room. I feel such tremendous obligation to confirm
- [70:43]
Tom Bilyeu
even at my age convince people to do that. Are you really good at that? Because like your firm rse you guys say we're about connecting the dots.
- [70:53]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [70:53]
Tom Bilyeu
And the testimonials. I don't know if you prompted people, but they were all like, oh, they know how to connect us. That. That is my crypto night. How. How do you find.
- [71:03]
Matt Higgins
Wait, what do you mean in a good way or a bad way?
- [71:05]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm terrible. I don't. Networking is my crypto connecting.
- [71:09]
Matt Higgins
Terrible networking. I hate networking. The most introverted human. This is the first meeting I've had in a year. I don't even leave the house. I just hang out. My wife.
- [71:14]
Tom Bilyeu
You and I are.
- [71:15]
Matt Higgins
No, I'm really so introverted People. People don't believe it because I have charisma. You have charisma. Right. Charisma is just an accident. Like I so introverted, I'm lost in my head. So when I say connect the dots, it's more people. You know how these investment firms put such a narrative to make things tidy. Like we are only doing in this, you know, Series B, whatever. Like I don't have the need to do that because it's myself and Steve Ross. We're of part partners. Right. But he connects.
- [71:41]
Tom Bilyeu
For those who don't know, it's Steve Ross.
- [71:43]
Matt Higgins
Steve Ross. Yes, Steve Ross. Right. So he's, you know, largest developer in the United States, tremendous entrepreneur. But he gives himself permission to play in such attenuated places and spaces and doesn't care what anybody thinks. But when you look back, how did he get here? And I'll give you an example for those who don't know. My firm does, you know, consumer broadly. We're in food. I'm partners with Dave Chang and Momofuku. I've done a lot in sports. Huge international soccer business. This. But there was a time when Steve and I decided we would buy Formula one. And I had, based upon my experience in sports, know that the asset was completely under optimized. Spent two years attempting to buy the entire sport. It does not work out right. For a variety of reasons and. But the consolation prize. But we understood enough about the sport and what was wrong with deal structures on these races that we ended up incubating a race in Miami. So now we have what I believe is one of the coolest races in the world that takes place every May in Miami.
- [72:36]
Tom Bilyeu
So you did a Formula one race?
- [72:37]
Matt Higgins
Formula one race, yeah. We brought a Formula one race to the United States. And I Never would have done that. So if you are looking for a tidy narrative, an F1 race and a sea of other things next to Momofuku might not make sense, but there's a reason. So when I use connected dots, it's actually leveraging that which came before to put the pieces together. It's not so much networking that's really interesting. But my body, I'm not my body. Me as an individual as the self is operating under the same general principle. And that I. I don't know how much you're into real estate, but there's a phrase in real estate zoning or philosophy called highest and best use. It's a way to ensure that you don't have a piece of property sitting in the middle of a metropolitan area that's zoned to only be a two story church, you know, in the year 2023. Right. So you want to make sure a property is always put to its highest and best use. I treat myself like a piece of property that's constantly being rezoned every week. Sounds a bit crazy, but. But I ask myself every week, sometimes every day, what is the highest and best use of Matt Higgins today? And the reason why that question is so important. I am an amalgam of all these accumulated experiences that now give me permission for a step change into a new environment.
- [73:44]
Tom Bilyeu
And so, dude, I like that so much.
- [73:46]
Matt Higgins
Oh, thank you.
- [73:47]
Tom Bilyeu
That's really powerful.
- [73:49]
Matt Higgins
Yeah, I'm obsessed with that thought. And that is really the formula that I'm operating upon. So when I finished Shark Tank, which was a great experience, I remember sitting with my wife on the second time on the set and I kind of went all in and I was like, babe, let's just sit here for a minute because I don't think I'm ever going to be back on the set. She's like, no, you're a recurring shark. They named you. I was like, don't think I'm coming back. I don't know why, but it's just
- [74:10]
Tom Bilyeu
no longer the highest and best use.
- [74:12]
Matt Higgins
No, no. Will be just because I feel like they'd move on and they were more charismatic. Whatever. I just thought that the journey would end here. And my point is, once I did that though, I said, what would actually be better than now that I've done Shark Tank? What's the highest and best use of Matt Hagens now that I've done it? Oh, creating your own Shark Tank. And fast forward. I partnered with Mark Burnett to create our own show called Business Hunters. Right. And then after I Did that show. I was like, huh? Well, now that I know how to do a show, wouldn't it be better to, like, own the show outright? And so I created a production studio with Gary Vaynerchuk and Eric Wattenberg. So I'm just showing you how that mentality now, people listening are going to say, this is exhausting. So I don't, you know, like, I'm sorry, I apologize. It doesn't have to be like that. I'm just trying to show how you can make big hopscotches if you want in your life.
- [74:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. I really. Maybe they will, but I would be if people are exhausted by. I'm learning. So let me start with that and thank you because this is the thing that this really changed my life. So I met entrepreneurs that they were just farther ahead than me. And while they didn't have the words that you're talking about about aim high and all that stuff, it was like, I watched them do it it. And I was like, oh, I'm playing way too small. Interesting. Oh, I can be way more aggressive than I'm being. Interesting. Like, even now, to your point about people problems, the. When. When I have people problems in the company, it's almost always because people underestimate what they can pull off. And so they're not moving with urgency. They're not being aggressive enough, they're not like, reaching far enough, making demands of people, et cetera, et cetera. So hearing how you move, hearing your story, hearing what you've done in soccer, hearing how you spent your time in the NFL, what you liked, what you didn't like, it's really interesting because I'll add something. I think you're going to agree with this. Okay, so you're, you're looking for what's the opportunity, what's underserved? Like you said, F1 is an underutilized asset that also ties into what you were talking about with Emerson, where it's like you have to have a. An epiphany and then trust it. And look, you're going to get slapped in the face sometimes because you're going to be wrong or mistimed or whatever. But if you're learning from that every time and you act with a boldness and you look for. How do I connect the dots? I mean, this really is like. So the step function change. God, the step function change. I'll explain. I'm nesting ideas. But the step function change of really reaching beyond what you're currently capable of, of is the path from getting out of your sort of rut 9 to 5, like, I'm only ever going to achieve this much and doing something really extraordinary. Okay, now that that idea is finished. Just yesterday, one of my students from Impact Theory University applied for one of our jobs, got on the call, and he's not the right fit. And I told him so because he doesn't have enough experience in that thing for me to feel like, okay, like, you need to go get knowledge that would be useful in this job. But as he was telling me his story about what he had applied, that willingness to step function, he'd got into surgery, and so he's on the. There's a name for it I'm forgetting now, but basically, they sterilize everything. And they're the ones. When you say scalpel, they hand you the scalpel. That whole thing. Okay, this kid took himself from Watts, which, if anybody is familiar with South Central la, Watts is rough. Rough. And so we used to hire a lot of people out of Watts. So I. I know what I've seen. Watts up close. That's one of the few places I've been scared in broad daylight. It is. It's. It's a whole thing. And so he took himself from that to getting all the way there by saying, okay, I'm gonna believe that I can learn. I'm gonna push myself. He was taking a bus four hours a day to go to school. Just really incredible. When people get out of that rut, start looking at, okay, what is the highest and best use of my current skill set? How do I get out of. My God, what'd you call it? You're challenging the conventional wisdom. So something along those lines.
- [78:30]
Matt Higgins
Gravitational pull there. Yeah.
- [78:31]
Tom Bilyeu
No, no, no. One of the very first things you said, like, you really have to break outside of that. Like, oh, this is the standard path. And most people just do that, and that's it. So you end up, like, for him, the standard path would have been basically day labor, and that's that. And so for him to push outside of that, get on a surgical team, it was really amazing to hear him talk about, hey, I'm deploying these ideas, and I'm using it to, like, make these leaps. So anyway, this is all a reaction to you saying that people are getting exhausted, but that, to me, there's a nugget there that's hard to encapsulate, which is you need to be getting yourself in new rooms with new people that force you to learn new things. You need to be freakishly looking for what's the opportunity here? How Do I connect dots that other people aren't connecting and then just keep
- [79:18]
Matt Higgins
leapfrogging for me, giving people practical advice, well, how do I identify that breach? Right. What is the thing, you know, the, the opportunity or the arbitrage, like, where is that? I feel convinced that everybody has within their life a proprietary insight that could be the seed of, if not a new business. Not everybody has to be an entrepreneur, but at least a promotion or a step change of their life and sort of to unpack that. And when you think about the best businesses of the last 20 years that stick with us, the brands like Airbnb, for example, they're not inventions like Shark Tank leads you to believe, Shark Tank leads you to believe that you have to have an invention to, you know, to have your own autonomy and run your business. Nothing could be further for the truth. Usually it's a refinement or an improvement of a process. Right. And so when you look at Brian Chesky and his co founders of Airbnb, you know, he slipped on a futon at one point, was like, maybe other people would want to rent futons, which is a preposterous idea in 09, like, everybody's going to steal shit, you know, they're not going to pay like this. I don't know how he had that insight, but for some reason, him and his three friends recognized that the sharing economy was going to explode and extend to houses. And now he has $100 billion business because of a proprietary insight. Everybody listening to this right now sees something that is a proprietary insight that in order to bring it to fruition now you have to eschew incrementalism and have the courage to make a step change. So when I was on my show business Hunters, and the whole purpose was to take somebody who wanted to start their own business and give them them and help them determine which business to buy. Like House Hunters, right? This is a show that did not air. We're still trying to find a home. But I was sitting there talking to these two sisters from the Bronx, and I was asking, what do you do now? He's like, well, I have five Airbnbs. I'm like, where are they? I think they were in Georgia. I'm like, oh, well, why there? He's like, well, we have a lot of visiting nurses there, and I know the visiting nurses can stay for extended stays, 30 days, and they pay better because they're subsidized. I'm like, huh? Well, how'd you figure that out? Well, I used to work in A hotel. What'd you do at the hotel? I was just at the. At the, at the front desk. But I would always hear visiting nurses come in and wonder why they were staying so long. And we. And they. And we charged them more because, you know, that's. That was the setup with the visiting nurses. And I thought if I could create an Airbnb as a network of them for visiting nurses, I could have an annuity business. I'm like. That was my. I was like, mind blowing. That's a proprietary insight. So for anybody listening who are like, wait, I've had one of those. You know, that's what gets me excited about the book. And I. Can I deconstruct what it looks like to have both a proprietary insight and what a step change would look like? She could easily have said, well, before I can run my own Airbnb, I need to be the manager of a hotel first. So I'm going to wait three or four years. This is what most people do. And I just. For whatever reason, I don't know if it was my mom or God, but I was like, I was not wired to accept those boundaries. I challenged them until one of them beats me into submission, which happens. Happens regularly. Oh, for sure. For sure, right?
- [82:11]
Tom Bilyeu
Dude, this is so interesting. So you're. Here's a trick that I do. So I want to help people cross a bridge. So people are going to hear this and they're going to get in the room now, and they're going to be looking for that proprietary insight, and they're not going to know how to manufacture it. I think there's a way. So here's what I do. This is how I interview. This is how I read books. This is how I come up with vision for where to take the company. Me, I'll look at something. And so I did this with your book. So I read your book, and I start myself with the question, what's interesting here? And then what I try to do is break down what I think your thesis is without going back to reread, just without looking at my own notes. What's interesting? What is this thesis? What's the narrative thread that you've woven? And what it forces you to do is understand it.
- [83:01]
Matt Higgins
It.
- [83:02]
Tom Bilyeu
And so if somebody finds themselves in the room in F1 soccer, you're in over your head. You have no idea what's happening. The. The thing that changed my life is when I get in that room, I'm not afraid to look stupid. Because if I ask, until I understand, I can have A proprietary insight because now I actually understand it. But if I, if I'm just like, oh yeah, and I want to look cool and I'm yeah, yeah, no, I get that for sure.
- [83:26]
Matt Higgins
Yep, yep, yep.
- [83:27]
Tom Bilyeu
And then you don't understand it. You can't synthesize it at the end. And so you, you have to push yourself and you're. It's going to make you feel like an idiot. At least it does me. So I always end up feeling really stupid for a second. So I'm like, wow, I don't actually understand this. What is this? How do I connect that? And I have to ask, what about this?
- [83:41]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [83:41]
Tom Bilyeu
And. But once I get it and I think of myself like AI and I'm like, I need to feed the tombot. I need to, to force the data into my brain and go, okay. Once I understand it, then my subconscious will start working on like how it's usable, what it can be deployed against. It will interact like, almost like, you know, chemicals interacting with each other in ways that I couldn't have predicted. So again, a nested idea in the Nobel Prize. Typically they're one at the intersection of two things, biology and chemistry, whatever. And so it's like when you have two worlds colliding, you'll get far more unique insights sites. So I had this happen very profoundly for me in comic books. So this was six years ago. We're launching Impact Theory. I know that comic books are traditional feeder into film and tv, so I'm like, all right, let's do comics. Low dollar amount, potentially big win. So we create a comic, we get it printed, we get it distributed. And I've had 40,000 plus points of distribution in at Quest. So I know what real distribution looks like. Real volume, like 2.5 million bars a day or whatever. And it's just insane. All over 100 countries, whatever. It was amazing. Yeah, nuts, right? And so I'm used to knowing what shelf I'm on. Who's category Captain, like all of like, ah, like what? How am I selling in Poughkeepsie with this sku, right? And you're getting it almost real time. And I go into comics, there's one distributor and they give you no information. And so I was like, timeout. This is so crazy. I'm like, either we buy the distributor or we get out of this completely. And so we ended up getting out of it because it was self evident to me, because I understood distribution. I could have a new chemical reaction of what I knew from, even though it was from nutrition Manufacturing, it was helping me in comics because I understood it. And it's like if you force yourself to understand and synthesize now, as you go into a new space, you can make unique connections, get these proprietary insights. Insights. Anyway, I wanted to give people, you know, I love it.
- [85:48]
Matt Higgins
And if anybody's listening to what you just said, because this is where the mind goes, they'll be like, yeah, but when I, when I ask questions, I feel stupid because I kind of exposes where I came from, my background, my deficiencies. The way I immunize myself is what. Because I do exactly what you did. I don't, I don't give a. I'm, I'll ask questions. I'm not afraid. I, I, I'm, I transport my, this whole room that I'm in to a different, to my playing field where I know they'd be out of their depth. And I imagine, well, and this could be as simple as, you know, you play Twitch all day and you're a great gamer, whatever it is that you're a little patch of dirt that you own. Transport that room to your territory and imagine them out of their depth because everyone's out of their depth. And you are always in your element somewhere to immunize yourself from the insecurity. But love the way you put the pieces together. For those listening who want to say, okay, but make it even more actionable. I tell the story in the book. I love this story. Because this is irrefutable evidence of what a proprietary insight, what somebody could do with a step change. Michelle Cordero Grant was a maybe like a director at Victoria's Secret in the marketing department. And she kept being alienated by her own marketing thinking. It feels like we're talking to women only as, you know, objects to please men. And all the branding around our branding. Maybe, maybe I'm being too harsh. Maybe it wasn't as harsh. Sorry, Michelle, if that's not exactly what you said, but whatever. And so, But I believe there's another demo and cohort that would like to wear this clothes for their own edification, to feel good, body, positive, sexy, whatever it is. But I'm just an executive at Victoria's Secret, right? So what does she do? She's like, I think this is a proprietary insight. Didn't use those words. Creates a, you know, a community to crowdsource it creates a waiting list. It like blows up, right? So now she knows there's a market for this. But the problem is she's an executive, right? She has to make this. She can either now go work for someone else's company, or she could lobby Victoria's Secret to create a new line. Or she could cross the threshold and say, I think I have what it takes to be a founder and a CEO and I'm going to do it. She quits based on the strength of the community. So my point is, to everybody out there, don't be afraid to share your idea with others. You know, people always worried somebody's going to steal it. When somebody says they're worried about somebody going to steal it, it's the end of the meeting for me. It's like, you're here. There's a great line in the social network movie. If you had invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook. Don't be afraid. She shares her idea. She quits. She creates a company called Lively, which is all premised on this idea, and she sells it for $100 million within five years.
- [88:17]
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
- [88:18]
Matt Higgins
So now she's a woman of color. She was never founded before. She had no money there. You cannot remove yourself from the truth of that story. So anyone out there listening that wants a case study, reach out to Michelle and say, how'd you do it? But I believe everybody. That insight was so simple. Right. Like, why aren't we talking to this other group? Everybody has an insight like that within their grasp. Not that everybody needs to be a founder. Michelle could have leveraged that for a promotion too. So I don't want to just talk about, like, fetishizing the entrepreneur. I hate that crap. But, you know, anyway, I just love that story.
- [88:51]
Tom Bilyeu
Story.
- [88:51]
Matt Higgins
The elegance of it.
- [88:52]
Tom Bilyeu
It is a great story. Yeah. Having the gumption to act on that and to start your own company. It's very impressive.
- [89:00]
Matt Higgins
Right. And she didn't take on a co founder. So I use it for two reasons. Because. Because. And you talk about partnership all the time with your wife. One of the top questions that people have at Harvard at the. At the end of these 17 classes, they always want to know how the founder chose their co founder and how to decide whether you need a co founder. She actually didn't have a co founder. And in the book, I go through her process for deciding she didn't need one and how she thought she could pull in. Right.
- [89:26]
Tom Bilyeu
I remember that.
- [89:27]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [89:27]
Tom Bilyeu
Walk people through that. It's actually. So I have always had a co founder and probably always will. Going back to. I love winning as a team. The idea. I like to see other people succeed, which makes me like being on a team. Blah, blah, blah.
- [89:39]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [89:40]
Tom Bilyeu
But she had a really logical way of thinking about how she could get around it. Because it wasn't like, oh, I can do everything myself.
- [89:47]
Matt Higgins
No, it was, it was basically she, she honest asked herself, what are the deficiencies in my skill sets or my expertise or desire, and can I backfill those or augment those by hiring people versus equitizing a co founder. And as she went through each one of them, supply chain, all the other issues, she felt like I could hire that person. Now, oftentimes people get that equation wrong and they think, I find this a lot with, like, robots, people who are kind of like robotic and they want the world to be driven by Excel or AI, that they have a disdain for marketing and eq and they're like, I'll just hire some tiktoker with almost like, disdain. That never works out so. But the conclusion. In my Harvard class, whenever we ask successful co founders, how'd you choose? They always contradict what the students believe. They said, complementary skill sets is way subordinate to value overlap. I chose my partner, Bob or Sally, whatever, because we looked at the world the same way. And why that mattered is companies fail when things go wrong and we can't survive. And when you have value overlap, we're able to survive. So I, I thought that because conventional wisdom is augmenting where you're weak, and they said actually overlap where you're strong, which is your value system, and then subordinate as maybe. But if not, you know, winners will, Winners will figure it out.
- [91:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. I'm a big believer that choosing a business partner is like choosing a spouse. I think you want somebody who overlaps on your values. Like 80%, 85% of your values better be the same, otherwise you're going to have. Have collision. There are two collisions that can really cause a breakup, and that is a values collision or a collision of base assumptions that you never recognize. And I see that one a lot. Like, if you're having a problem in your marriage, I guarantee it's either a values collision or a base assumption collision basis. I think people will get values, but base assumption is that I invisibly think the world works in XYZ way and the other person invisibly thinks the world works in a different way. Values is ought. The world ought to be this way. Base assumption is it is this way. And so often people don't realize you have codified the world in that way. It's not necessarily objectively true, or at least not in some binary way. And so I found this was from working with my former business partners. I would sit there and be thinking they're a idiot. And they're talking to me like they think I'm an idiot. And so I'm like, I know they're not and I'm not. So what is happening when two smart people think that the other person is a moron? And I was like, oh, wow. Because I'm a writer by trade. And so I always go back to, if I were writing this person as a character, what would they need to believe for them to be acting this way? And so I was like, he would have to believe that this is true. And I remember one day I stopped him and I was like, do you think this is true? He's like, yeah, obviously.
- [92:29]
Matt Higgins
And I was like, oh, my God.
- [92:31]
Tom Bilyeu
And so then I was like, okay, we're going to call this base assumption from now on. So your base assumption is this. My base assumption is this. Now we can actually talk about it. One of us is probably right and one of us is wrong, but at least now we're talking about the real thing. And yeah, I think that's really important. So anyway, you have to have overlapping values with your founder, spouse, whatever. But I do think that you want to have that. You will be best suited if you guys don't think the same way. So you value the same things. You don't think the same way. There's a great quote. I don't know if you've heard this before, but. But that if in business you and your partner think the same way, one of you is irrelevant. And I've. That really resonates with me.
- [93:12]
Matt Higgins
So I would agree with your caveat to value overlap. I think at the end of the day, when there's not a clear reason for why both of you exist, that is a recipe can be a recipe for a disaster. So whether it's saying, you know, think exactly the same way or it's, you know, a bias towards one particular area of the business is actually helpful. I find where people where partnerships go wrong because I'm often stepping into like a failed partnership or trying to work it out. I mean, that fact pattern recurs over and over again because that's where opportunities happen, right? There's a lot of value destruction when partnerships go wrong. And I found when I look at the genesis, like, how does partnership form? And oftentimes it's because there was a. There was a interloper into an industry that had a vision for doing things differently, but they either believed that they were deficient in some area or they needed subject matter expertise. Wow. They go ahead and they choose a partner. The problem is because they had the courage to, to invade the industry that only lasts like four months before they're like, this is all stupid. You guys are all stupid. And then now they're stuck with the co founder who is born of that industry and not born of disruption. And then eventually the disdain or, you know, conflict sets in.
- [94:23]
Tom Bilyeu
That makes a lot of sense. And there really is a temptation to do that, to get somebody that really knows the space.
- [94:29]
Matt Higgins
It's logical. That's why I thought Michelle created her Chris in the book. I'm like, well, she didn't have that because she was from the industry. She knew what she wanted to disrupt. But I see that fact pattern over and over again. I don't think it applies to personal, personal life. I think that augmenting, you know, or fill completing applies more to personal. But I see that in business all the time with failed partnerships.
- [94:48]
Tom Bilyeu
That's so interesting. All right, I have to ask, were you the one that brought Kim Kardashian to Harvard?
- [94:53]
Matt Higgins
I was. Well, I shouldn't say. I, I have two co professors. They're professors. I'm a fake professor. I'm an executive fellow. But they, one of them had a relationship with Jens, who's her partner. Partner. And then we did multiple calls to, you know, what are we going to talk about? Is it comfortable? And then sure enough, it happened. That's my class though.
- [95:11]
Tom Bilyeu
So I, I am very impressed with what she's done. And I remember I heard about her saying like, basically, God, if I'm misquoting, I hope not. But basically, hey ladies, like don't let anything hold you back. Just work harder or get up and work or whatever the quote was. And when I heard it and didn't know people backlash, I was like, yes,
- [95:29]
Matt Higgins
that's, that's so dope. And I was like, hell yeah, say that again.
- [95:33]
Tom Bilyeu
No, I have to because I really believe it.
- [95:35]
Matt Higgins
Yeah.
- [95:36]
Tom Bilyeu
So did you get backlash for bringing Kim Kardashian and then what do you think of what she's accomplished?
- [95:44]
Matt Higgins
The answer is not enough backlash.
- [95:47]
Tom Bilyeu
I was not enough back.
- [95:48]
Matt Higgins
I was hoping for more because it's entertaining because I don't care. And I was a little annoyed that it like didn't come land. You know, it took like a few days before I was on CNBC and I was asked about it. And the reason why is she has built a multi billion dollar business. I'm an investor actually, but that's really. Yeah, I'm an investor in skims. But you know, Congratulations. Thank you. But that's beside the point. She has built an amazing business and I love the lack of intellectual curiosity to say, well, why was she invited to Harvard? And the reason why my course is called Moving Beyond Direct to Consumer. And this year's Every Year is a sub theme that I like to introduce that would surprise the students or like at that demographic might be slightly beyond their reach. So this year, sub context was TikTok is. Is the new Google. Right. Like, and that's where search begins. That was 1 and 2 and 2. That CAC on the DTC model is out of whack and rhymed. I didn't mean to, but the CAC is out of whack and that acquisition costs are really expensive and a lot of DTC models are broken and they raised at these inflated valuations and they're not sustainable because now investors are demanding profitability, but blah, blah, blah. So that was like the whole thing. So we brought in Scarlett Johansson. I'm an investor in her business and advisor. We brought in Bobby Brown to demonstrate that somebody in their 60s could dominate TikTok. And we brought in Kim Kardashian. The common thread between those three is they're all using their community and celebrity to generate subsidized CAC with outrageous numbers and their businesses are printing. And so it was entertaining to watch everyone judge Kim in this very superficial way. Now, I don't keep up with the Kardashians, literally, so I had no idea, honestly. And when I saw her in that class, she was there for almost two hours. It's not like the students hold back, you know what I mean? Watching her volley with everyone in that class and watching her hold her own with all the founders was pretty remarkable. I was incredibly impressed. But I love those situations when you have total conviction and, like, you don't really care. And then I was waiting for more of the backlash and it didn't, it wasn't quite intense enough.
- [97:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, I, I. So going back to things I'm allergic to, I don't understand people that look at somebody that's successful and look for reasons to dismiss them and why? Well, that's a terrible example because xyz, right? It's like, man.
- [98:10]
Matt Higgins
Well, not only that, if every celebrity could slap their name on the brand, they'd all be moguls, right? They'd all be billionaires. It's not, it's not easy what she did.
- [98:16]
Tom Bilyeu
She didn't just also stayed relevant for a long time. Right.
- [98:19]
Matt Higgins
And we just have found an amazing sliver of the market, built a direct to consumer business that is valued in the. I don't know what it would be valued now. Probably $5 billion. And yet there was this desire to dismiss. Now, in fairness, you. You reap what you sow. Right? I mean, she. I even said to her off camera, this actually probably be on the Hulu Show. I was like, I don't follow you. So maybe everyone knows this about you, but I would not have perceived you as somebody that could go in at Harvard Business School and hold your own with the best found consumer founders in the country. She actually said, I want to show more of this of me. But when I had my show on E, they never wanted to show it. They said it was boring and people don't want to see me in this light. So it's.
- [98:58]
Tom Bilyeu
Admittedly, it's. It's not entertaining in that way.
- [99:00]
Matt Higgins
That's true.
- [99:01]
Tom Bilyeu
So I get E. Like, they've. What they've done is amazing.
- [99:04]
Matt Higgins
And again, you and I don't keep up with the Kardashians. Maybe you more than me. I have a feeling as time goes by, she will become more than even a Paris Hilton figure. Right. You know, Paris Hilton had her own redemption story. Right. But my point is we will see Kim Kardashian in the light of the mogul that she is, and there'll be an integration.
- [99:24]
Tom Bilyeu
She keeps this going. God, you just. You can deny somebody only so long. So she's winning people like me over who I'm not immersed in her world. And so for all I know, she's saying just absolutely atrocious things on social media, But I don't think watching her move as a business person, I'm like, damn.
- [99:40]
Matt Higgins
But if she was sitting at the table right now, you know how we're having this intellectual conversation about partnership and bad equity structure and product, she would be keeping up with us. And I, I was. I was like, is this on purpose? You know, and they also didn't work very hard to get the story out in a business context that she was coming there. So maybe I thought maybe there's like
- [99:57]
Tom Bilyeu
a grand plan and there's an intriguing question there, like, is that brand damaging for her?
- [100:01]
Matt Higgins
No, I think it. Maybe it's all just like we're living in a Truman show called Kim Kardashian. I don't know. Maybe it was all calculated. I don't know. So it was pretty amazing.
- [100:09]
Tom Bilyeu
So. Interesting. Interesting. Dude, the book is amazing. Where can people find you?
- [100:13]
Matt Higgins
Thank. I am. I'm on Instagram. I'm on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time. I can't stand Twitter. I'm there, but it's the land of Matt Higgins at Higgins Land of hate. Can we talk one more before we go about your spouse?
- [100:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [100:25]
Matt Higgins
I love your relationship with her.
- [100:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Thank you.
- [100:29]
Matt Higgins
And I talk about my wife all the time as my. Basically my co founder and that I. No matter what environment I am, the, The, The. The. My conditions are always. I need to do it with Sarah because we're better together. And so when I teach at Harvard, people don't know that Sarah's in the back of the room and she. So my wife does the logistics for the course because they're third.
- [100:51]
Tom Bilyeu
You're playing into a thesis I have. So my wife is all about logistics. Is utterly amazing. Obviously my co founder. Yeah, we'll need a lot more time to talk about how that ends up happening, but that's. That's amazing. So you went through a divorce. It was utterly soul crushing, by your own admission. How did you rebuild and how did you find somebody the second time that actually really fit you?
- [101:16]
Matt Higgins
I think I went online, to be honest. Like, I think get more data was the first starting point. But I think we all. We don't believe that we either entitled to something or that something exists. And the change in my mindset was maybe that that person does exist. That's right for me. And maybe. And maybe I deserve it. People can be cliche. Like, I just want to thank my partner. Like, I'm like, no, no, no. Like, I dedicated the book to her for a reason. And she unlocks all this potential because there's value alignment, but also there's no ego. And so the secret. My secret sauce is that we are doing it all together in these different environments, which can seem a little bit unconventional. But back to you guys. I admire the way you talk about each other, and I feel like by modeling it, this is the point of my story. You take care of one of the two issues that I just brought up, that maybe it. Maybe it doesn't exist, or maybe it does exist. If somebody models that kind of dynamic, then people believe that it's out there. And so when I see you two on the Internet, it's like, oh, you're telling millions of people that it exists.
- [102:20]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.