A (2:07)

And why do so many companies and especially large companies that you worked with, like, why do they have trouble with this? Like, they, you would think that they got the way they were because they knew something.

B (2:16)

I mean, they did. And they, they, they do. However, when you look at organizations, especially large organizations, there's so many factors that go into things flowing smoothly, launching projects on time. If you just look at the statistics, there's lots of studies that have been done, around 60% of projects fail to deliver on time and within budget. And it's because project management has so many moving parts. You've got teams of people, you've got external dependencies, you've got company culture, you've got people and communication. Right. And so there's so many factors that make it exponentially complex.

A (2:54)

Yeah, yeah. You know, human beings, how much of it do you think is this? Human beings tend to underestimate the amount of effort it takes to achieve a goal, whether it's resources, capital, time, people, whatever it is.

B (3:06)

Yeah, all the time. All the time. I've actually, I lead training classes regularly, virtually working with lots of different companies and people across different companies. And I often will ask the question, how long do things take longer than you think they're going to take. How often, how often do things take longer? And people are often saying all the time, most the time, 90%. Because we often assume, best case scenario, we assume that we're not going to run into all these challenges or roadblocks or delays. And there's a lot of complexity and work if you don't break it down into smaller, more easily manageable pieces.

A (3:40)

Yeah. So why not? I mean, why do you think they do that? Do you think they do that so that they can get the, the plan passed by somebody that's making a decision because, like. Or do you think it's because they don't want to set their intention on something taking that long? Because then it'll inevitably take that long. So they, they, they shoot lower. I mean, well, depending on how you look at it, they sh, they shoot for it to be working faster. Or, or what have, like, what do you think the reason is? Or is it just that they don't know?

B (4:06)

I think it's a combination of things. I think that a lot of times people, we just tend to be optimistic. Right. You have to be somewhere in 20 minutes. We leave with 20 minutes to spare, not counting on hitting three red lights and traffic and road construction. Right. And then also communication is very complex. And the more people you add to a project or a team, the more exponentially complex it Gets. So there's a lot of studies done on this as well. Not to mention a lot of companies have people working on multiple projects at one time. And so if you look at multitasking alone, there's inefficiencies, there's the cost of switching tasks and change and getting up to speed on something else. And so it's a very complex scenario to unpack.

A (4:47)

Yeah, yeah. All right. And so then you go start working for these companies and were they contract or did you like W2 them or how did you bounce around with each one? Like what's.

B (4:57)

Yep. So I've done both. I've worked for some companies full time actually. My first job out of college, I was working with a very large Fortune 100 company, State Farm Insurance. I was working in their systems technology department. And my first set of projects were the enterprise server release Windows and UNIX server upgrades. And let's just say fresh out of college, I wasn't fully sure what I was doing at that time, but I had just come through learning about process like streamlining and Six Sigma and these different cost saving efficiency models. And as I was working on this project and I had help, but I was managing about $5 million budgets a year at 22 years old and I had a team of 130 people. And as we were looking at streamlining this process, we were actually able to go from two releases per year and replan the project offshore the work to free up our on site people for more strategic work. And for that particular project was a $3 million budget. We were able to save $1.5 million annual residual cost savings. So those were my first projects out of college. And it's like, wow, like there's so much efficiency to be gained because you have companies doing things the way we've always done it, right.

A (6:06)

Yeah.

B (6:07)

And over time they need process in order to be effective. However, at some point those processes get inefficient at times.

A (6:15)

Yeah. Was it a thankless job or did they. Did they really realize when you say one point, some million or whatever, did they reward you or was it thankless?

B (6:26)

You know, despite all the accolades, you might not believe this, but they gave me the maximum 5% salary increase that year. And I did some math and I had actually turned down a different job the year before for different reasons. And I would, I did the math and it would have taken me 10 years to get back up to the job I turned down the year before had I stayed at a 5% maximum increase. And I realized that the system was Broken. It wasn't going to work for me. And so what I did the next year when my performance review came around, I interviewed with lots of different companies and had three job offers on the table. And what I discovered was I got hired a certain dollar amount out of college. Right. As like a fresh grad. However, my actual skillset in the industry, because I learned and developed my skills, was actually almost double. So I actually doubled my salary the second year out of college because I just let them know I had these other offers and I was going to take them if they couldn't match it and they were able to match it.

A (7:24)

Oh, so you stayed at State Farm for a while then?

B (7:26)

Five years.

A (7:27)

Five years. Okay. And then how about leaving there? And why did you leave there? Like, what happened?

B (7:31)

Oh, I wanted to get to the big city. I was two hours south of Chicago, and so I wanted to move downtown, which I did. I was in the Gold coast, in the South Loop. Started working with another very large company. I was in the Boeing building downtown. And this was a company that did GPS routing, very complex navigation for phones for cars, and working with different clients and manufacturers, auto and phones overseas. And so for that company, we actually did a large transition. I became an agile coach and worked with a team of coaches, and we transitioned over 70 teams from a traditional project management approach to using an agile approach, which is an iterative development methodology to help you get to market faster. And that was. That was very exciting to work with all those different teams. And I love being in Chicago too.

A (8:19)

Yeah. And then you started traveling, so. And you've been to all over the place and international.

B (8:25)

Yep. So I started speaking at conferences actually. And, you know, this actually came from, again, feeling not valued, feeling like the system was broken, feeling like I couldn't figure out how to get ahead, but I wanted to be successful. And so going from just working in an office to wanting more, wanting to make a greater impact outside those walls. Right. As I just started submitting to speaking at conferences and I began traveling and doing that from Sweden, Vancouver, Morocco, Istanbul, Shanghai, Thailand, India, all throughout the US as well.

A (8:57)

Wow. Yeah. So then you got a culture shock a little bit or some, you know, mind expansion, seeing different places and. Which is always good. You know, I know when I started traveling, for some reason I didn't travel a lot when I was younger, like even like in my 20s. But when I started traveling, I think my first exposure to traveling was work trips, like President's club trips and different things. And I don't know why. I just never Wrapped my head around going anywhere. And then once I did and I saw, when I went to Miami for the first time, I was just like, wow, this, this exists. I saw stuff on tv, but I just didn't realize it was real. And then I was like, oh, I'm doing this, I'm traveling. You know, like, it's really good for you, the different environments to expand your mind.

B (9:38)

Yeah.

A (9:38)

And now I make a habit of it. Like, you know, six, seven, eight times a year I'm going somewhere despite working from home. So. Yeah, so then let's go. Let's go back to how you grew up and everything. Like, where did you, you grew up outside of Chicago too?

B (9:52)

Yep. Three hours south of the city. And humble beginnings. Parents were always scraping to get by and have an older brother. And yeah, went from there.

A (10:04)

And then you mentioned resilience in the question, what are you made of? So where were the tough times?

B (10:11)

You know, it's funny because sometimes people think, oh, stuff must be easy for you when it looks easy, when you put in the work. Right. And they see the end result. And I mean, I remember I used to be up till 2am Almost every single night working on my laptop, building my first website, starting my company, going a year before I even figured out how to make revenue, and, you know, scraping by, cashing in a whole life insurance policy for a little cash flow, you know, and I, I just remember I had this, this intrinsic motivation that I couldn't really fully describe where it was just I wanted to be successful, I wanted to make an impact. I never wanted to struggle the way we struggled growing up. And you know, over the years, partnering with different people and companies and investing in companies and I mean, there was a time where I took a million dollar hit, where I had business partners and people I was working with that we had firm agreements, we had contracts, and they just didn't come through on their side. And I don't know a lot of people that can take a hit like that and still come back and be standing. And it's not just the money part. It's the feelings of being let down, the betrayal feeling like, you know, somebody doesn't understand the impact of their actions on something that you put your heart and soul into building and building with them. And so there's heartache, there's headache, there's, you know, the challenge along the journey and still finding that umph.

A (11:37)

Yeah, well, there's one school of thought here that if you can get to that level in the first place, you can do it again. And especially with the expertise, I'm sorry, experience that you have from those, you know, events happening. You know, I've been there, I've been there. And you know, the, the thing that got me is first I wanted to blame them, but then I started to realize people are people, they're flawed, everybody's flawed. And it's up to me to pick the right people. And everything changed when I started taking responsibility for myself, getting into that situation in the first place. Did you go through that whole, that whole journey of blame, blame, blame their losers, assholes, or, you know, this and that, and then, and then realizing, wait a minute, I'm the one that got into this in the first place?

B (12:20)

Yeah. I actually went a couple years back, I went to Bali for a 10 day retreat and I ended up staying two years.

A (12:27)

Wow.

B (12:27)

And in that time, I did a lot of juice fast, cleanses, did an 11 day water fast, lots of meditation, became one with nature. Right. All of those things. And there was a moment where I realized that you need to take radical responsibility, what you're talking about, for your choices. Because what that does is that takes you from being someone who had things happen to them. And it puts you back into a position of power where you can choose your own adventure, you can choose your path forward. And it doesn't have to be a scenario where you're reactive to all these things happening around you, but you can create. And sometimes we have to remember that we can create, though. It takes that radical responsibility for you to take that acknowledgment of what decisions you made to get in that situation in order to then realize, oh, I can make different choices moving forward.

A (13:23)

Yeah, it gives you some semblance of control to put you at cause versus effect. Right. And I remember going through that and I was. Matter of fact, I just had a conversation with my son yesterday. He missed an exit going to work. He's got a relatively new job now. And I told him, you know, leave early, so you're 15 minutes early every day, don't play around. And he missed an exit. And he calls us, my wife and I, he's 19, he calls us and he's like, ah, missed an exit. This, this jerk wouldn't let me over. And he was blaming this and blaming that and I was like, dude, just number one, you gotta leave earlier in case you miss an exit. And number two, when you go there and you show up late, just own it and say, you should have left earlier. Don't blame the guy that didn't let you over all it's just a little lesson right there that in life as you go forward, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, I. Look, I had. It was close to $800,000 similar situation, and I had to take ownership of it. I had to, you know, because it wasn't going to do me any good blaming the guy that did it, that he's a, you know, whatever he was. And it was the. The short period of time where I was going through that blame phase. It was holding me back, and I felt worse and worse every day, you know, and then I started realizing, wait a minute, I got to be the one that picks and choose my thoughts, words, actions, and the environment that I keep and the people around me and. And I have to be hypersensitive to who's around me, who I let in and. And definitely who I do business with. So great lesson there. Now I want to. I want to go deeper into. In Bali. So you go there for a retreat and how did that all transpire? Where you ended up staying and like, what was going through your mind?

B (14:52)

Yeah, so I went for this retreat. Some good friends of mine invited me there and they said, hey, Maria, we're gonna stay a couple extra weeks. You should stay longer too. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, that sounds great. Twist my arm right before you go further.

A (15:06)

Like, what were you going back to anyway? Like, did you have something to get back for at the time?

B (15:10)

I was going back to managing five different companies, helping friends, launching their business, running my business, working around the cl, zoom calls back to back all day. You know, the huge.

A (15:21)

Did you. Did you have to get out of that or did you still do that from remote?

B (15:25)

Well, the beautiful thing I was, at first I was concerned about the time zone. Then I realized that was my greatest ally because it's almost completely inverted. 12 hours. So 8am depending on the time zone, if there's a daylight savings time, 8:00am was 8:00pm on Easter, or maybe 9:00pm, depending on the time zone, and all that with daylight savings time. But I was realized I was able to actually lead my virtual training classes. And I also realized that maybe all of these meetings I was on back to back phone calls with every day were not so essential that I needed to continue to have them. And I couldn't have them because it was in the middle of the night. A 3pm meeting was 3am So I was like, oh, sorry, I'm not available. What I found was that it actually cleared my schedule in a way where I could then focus on the Meaningful work that was revenue generating without all the other noise that we find ourselves getting pulled into where we aren't fully focusing. Right.

A (16:17)

Yeah, so true. Okay, so then you decide to stay there. They said, yeah, we're going to stay a few more weeks. And then you said, yeah, I guess I'll do that.

B (16:24)

Yeah.

A (16:24)

And then you ended up staying for years.

B (16:26)

Yeah. So I stayed a couple extra weeks and at first I, I wasn't really. I was thinking it might fly back. And I did buy a one way ticket there because I suspected that I might want to stay. And I may have also rented out my apartment, put some things in storage because I thought I might, I suspect it might happen that way because I did. Once I left Chicago in 2013, I did travel the world for five years with home. So I did a little bit of a nomadic lifestyle, but that's how I launched my international consulting company. Just city to city, country to country, and working with different companies. And when I got there, I was like, you know what, I might go back because I wasn't really feeling it. I was in Ubud at the time, which is super zen, but also was almost a little too chill. And then we went to Canggu, which is one of the really happening spots. And I heard all the, the music that live music all the time outside and they had beautiful nature. And I, when I got there, I was like, oh, wow, this feels like home. It just, it was a feeling, it was a knowing that it just felt right. And I deep down knew that I needed to step away from all the busyness and do something different because I'd been working ham since 15.

A (17:33)

Yeah.

B (17:33)

Going hard.

A (17:34)

And the cost of living is lower there.

B (17:37)

Oh yeah, yeah.

A (17:38)

So that helps.

B (17:39)

And $60 steak for five bucks. You can stay in, rent a room for $250 for the month. Now, of course there's luxury. Right. But you can get the basics and you can survive for very little.

A (17:51)

Well, even luxury would be something basic here, right?

B (17:55)

Sure.

A (17:55)

Yeah, yeah.

B (17:55)

Oh, you could get a 2 1/2 million dollar home for a couple hundred thousand.

A (17:59)

Yeah.

B (18:00)

It's amazing.

A (18:00)

Yeah, yeah. And you're, you're able to buy houses there. Not being from there is that I.

B (18:05)

Actually did get all the paperwork in place for that. It's called Akitas and you get to open a PMA company and you can actually own land as a foreigner in Indonesia. And so I did actually set all that up.

A (18:16)

Gotcha. Now, when you were setting your own business up and not working for someone else, where were you? Were you in Bali at that time, or was that before or after when you went out on your own?

B (18:26)

Oh, yeah. So I've had my own business. It's going to be 14 years this year. Formula Inc. The idea is everything in life is a formula. You just got to know the steps to take and then ink it in pen to paper to take action. And so, yeah, that was in Chicago that I first launched.

A (18:39)

Okay, gotcha. And that you mentioned that first year, it took you about a year to start making some money. What were you doing that first year? Giving away free service, free advice, free.

B (18:49)

I was speaking at conferences. I was going to networking events. It was a little bit challenging as a female in business to get started, because it's hard to tell if people want to. Are taking you seriously or if they're just trying to get closer to you for personal reasons. And so I found there were two things that made a world of difference. One was I brought on a director of business development, and he became my best friend. He was in Chicago. Love him to life. He's just an amazing person. And having someone else who believes in you and will speak highly of you and someone who demands respect of other people with you, like, he would just put me on this respect pedestal where other people would be like, oh, well, she must be important, you know, whatever those dynamics are. He's like, no, you want to talk to Maria? Okay, great. What is it? What's the business need? Oh, you don't have a business scene. Okay, well, she's busy. She's doing business things.

A (19:45)

Right.

B (19:45)

So he was an amazing, amazing person in my life. And then I also got a metal business card. Now, those were a little bit expensive, but it's. It's wild, the small things that make the impacts. Like, I'd be at networking events and literally trying to just be in the conversation, and sometimes guys would just, like, look right past me and not even like, oh, what does she have to say or contribute? It's like, oh, a lot, actually.

A (20:09)

Yeah.

B (20:09)

And I remember there's this one specific event. It was a leadership conference, and we're going around the table, and, like, I couldn't. These people, like, wouldn't even look me in the face. Like, they didn't even seem to care who I was or what I did. And then someone was like, hey, before we get back to the event, let's all exchange business cards. I handed this guy a metal business card, and he, like, acts like, whoa. Like, it was so heavy, he almost dropped it. And he's like, wait, who Are you again?

A (20:31)

Yeah, yeah.

B (20:32)

Oh, okay, buddy. Maria Mattarelli. Oh, now I matter. Now my business card matters. Same thing with speaking at conferences internationally. I felt like when I was in Chicago, like, people, you know, again, trying to network, trying to be taken seriously in business, and people just, like, looking right past you. And I came back from my first international speaking event was for the Project Management Institute in Malmo, Sweden, and I literally flew back, and that next week in Chicago, I was at an event, and I was like, oh, yeah, I was just speaking at a conference in Sweden, and people were just like, oh. Oh, wow. And, like, you can tell how much they treated you differently. It was that. And I also volunteered. I was on the board of directors for the Project Management Institute, Central Illinois chapter for two years. I was their VP of operations. And with that, too, I'd be at these networking events, and people, oh, yeah, I'm the VP of operations. And they'd be like, oh, they start treating you all different. I'm like, I'm the same person. But apparently I got on a plane and do some volunteer work, and suddenly I must know stuff. So, like, these dynamics are so fascinating. Right?

A (21:34)

Yeah. And it's credibility, authority. It's actually, it's perceived credibility and authority.

B (21:41)

Right. And it's fascinating how people, they. They shift their tune so much when they think that or they. They see evidence of. Or whatever. But it's like, is that all I had to do this whole time?

A (21:53)

Yeah.

B (21:53)

Right. Get a business card, get a director of business.

A (21:56)

I've. I've made. I was doing eight figures plus in a business that we started from scratch. And that didn't do it. But what did it for me was when I started going on podcasts as a guest, and people saw me being interviewed multiple times, and then I blast the clips all over social media. And then all of a sudden, it was just like that, even as a guy, like, still, like, people don't. People don't know if you're real or not. But then even when you're going on as a guest on podcasts, they still don't know if you're real or not. But the perception is what matters. It's all about perception.

B (22:26)

It's so wild. And, you know, for you, having legitimately done business on one of the greatest levels that many people aspire to, but talking, having, having conversations is what does it.

A (22:35)

Yeah. And. And proximity. It's proximity, right? It's like, oh, he. He's being interviewed by that person, and they got a top show. Like, he must be important. He Must know what he's talking about. And half the time they didn't even watch the podcast or listen to the podcast. It's just they saw clips and that's it. It's like three seconds, you know, it's just like dropping that business card in somebody's hand. Three seconds, that's it.

B (22:55)

This is why I went my major in college is marketing because I thought this can always be relevant. I just suspected like no matter what industry or where you're at, like being able to do good marketing and branding, Branding is so important. I think that's overlooked by some people.

A (23:09)

Yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. It's, it's all the perception game now. When you had the business development person like you, were you bringing in revenue at the time or did you just work something out with him? Like, oh yeah, okay.

B (23:20)

Yeah. So yeah, I mean my clients became Fortune 100 companies pretty quickly because they were all wanting to, they're wanting to get this process efficiency framework, they're wanting to train up their teams. So it took me a little while to figure it out. But then once I started to get the momentum, I mean we're talking like 20, 30 grand in a couple days just to lead a training class.

A (23:41)

So how, well, how did you figure out how to charge or how to charge or what to charge?

B (23:46)

Just working through like industry standards. So it's around a thousand dollars per person for quality certification, training. And in the corporate world that's, that's normal numbers to them. And if you get 20 to 30 people in the room, There you go.

A (23:58)

Gotcha, gotcha. And then how, how many were you doing it like per month?

B (24:03)

Oh, I was traveling all over the world. You know, I didn't fully, I didn't fully book myself out all the time because I wanted to make sure that I still had time for life, for living. And around 2015, I actually got very sick. I was in and out of the hospital and discovered I had three tumors growing in my stomach area and thankfully they were non cancerous. But I was in a wheelchair for almost a year and couldn't walk. And my health was so poor and my hemoglobin, the blood count dropped from a normal person's range is 12 to 18 and mine dropped to 7.6 and then 5.8 and I had to go to the hospital hospital for emergency blood transfusions. And so there was this period of time where I could barely stand without like a crippling headache or migraines. I just didn't have the strength. And I realized that working all the time maybe isn't the way. Right. And I got to learn that at a younger age to where it was like, wait a minute, maybe there's. There's moments. And I had some great friends and mentors that, you know, shared this type of wisdom as well. But people would always be like, maria, why are you so driven and working all the time and doing all these things and pushing and pushing. And it's like, because, you know, I have to be successful. It's like this insane thing I couldn't explain. And I realized that, okay, wait a minute. If you don't have your health, you actually have absolutely nothing.

A (25:29)

Yeah.

B (25:29)

And so from that experience, I realized that, you know, what? It's okay to. And that's actually where I picked up my favorite hobby of DJing. I started DJing at a conference that didn't have music entertainment. And I've been traveling around the world, DJing as well, ever since.

A (25:45)

Wow, man. Yeah. You know, there's a. The thing called the law of indirect effort. And if you can figure this out. And I have somehow. But it's amazing because it's not like the results and the money that's coming in, the revenue is not tied to direct effort. It's wild. If you can just figure this formula out, like talking about formulas. If you can figure out the formula, part of it's the perception thing. Part of it's creating an attraction model. I talk about this all the time versus being in chase mode. And part of it is your environment that you create and the people you surround yourself with. And then how they. How they speak of you. Like you're talking about the business development guy. What's his name, by the way? I want to refer to him.

B (26:27)

Nick.

A (26:27)

Nick, yeah. If you get somebody like Nick or several people like Nick around you, oh, man, that's powerful. That's. That's what I figured out somehow. I, like, look, sometimes I wake up in the morning, like, how the heck did I do this? I don't think. I mean, I guess I could, but I don't think I could teach what I've done, because I think some of it has to do with personality. You know, it has to do with, like, who you are and how you operate. And I don't think you can teach that to everybody because they don't have that personality. Sometimes some people aren't, you know, really able to be authentic.

B (27:01)

Well, it's also. It's the it factor sometimes. Right? It's having the charisma. It's being able to speak and be confident and walk into the room. Right. It's how you portray yourself. It's energy, frequency. Some of those things can be taught, like the confidence. Right. But there's definitely a secret sauce in there that, you know, some people do have that quality and just the ability to have those conversations. But then also you mentioned something around authenticity. And I was talking to a friend the other day who said that's actually the highest frequency, greater than love is authenticity. And we live in such an inauthentic world these days. Right. Everyone highlight reels online and now questioning what's even real online. Right. And yeah, it's something that the more that I believe that you can have that human connection, the more that you can be authentic, will rise above many other things and set you apart.

A (27:54)

Yeah, that's a huge part of it for sure. So traveling and doing all that you've done, how did you. How did you balance the personal life?

B (28:03)

Oh, not well. Yeah, I used to average three cities a week.

A (28:08)

Yeah.

B (28:08)

I went past through like 70 cities in. In a year and 15 countries. And I did the math and there's only four weeks in a month. But I would sometimes go through like seven or eight countries or cities or. Yeah, it was, it was definitely. I was on submission and I didn't know where in the world I belonged. I didn't know who cared about me and where I should go and where I should be. And it was definitely quite the. The journey of just exploring.

A (28:36)

Yeah. I mean, because you have. You don't have connection needs. You have needs as a. As a human being. Like, you know, you want connection, you want good conversation, companionship. And it was, I guess. Yeah, it was tough. Right? Like, how so, so what happened? Like, you just didn't have any. Like it was tough to have relationships or.

B (28:52)

Yeah, it's tough to. I mean, when you're traveling like that. Yes. You can't really. When will I see you again? I don't know if my client flies me back here.

A (29:01)

Right, right.

B (29:02)

And so I really wasn't focused on that at that time in my life. I was focused on building a business. I was focused on speaking at conferences, I spoke, focused on inspiring people and helping change their lives. Looking at these agile techniques that app business, they also apply to any goal you want to achieve as an individual. And so I. My. One of my most recent books on personal agility, co authored with a trainer based out of Switzerland. And it's about how you can take these agile techniques that work in business and apply them in your Life to do more of what really matters. And we started documenting case studies of people changing their lives all around the world by using these proven systems. And so there's one woman she got into. I got into the backseat of her Uber from the airport and as we were talking fast forward, I started showing her this approach. And she went from working five jobs and barely getting by to starting a business. And I helped her bring in 20 grand the first, like one of the first months and up to six figures total. She landed a six figure client. She became the private chef for a billionaire and brought in over half a million dollars total just following these proven systems that work. Not only that, she lost over £55. She was over £300 when I met her. And she told me that she felt like she was living in a way that she had not felt before.

A (30:14)

That's amazing. And so that's what it's all about.

B (30:16)

Love, helping people impact and change their lives and business for the better.

A (30:22)

Yeah, that's what it's all about, man. Like that, that for me, I made millions in my life. That wasn't anything, I mean compared to just the impact that we can make. You know, we all have the ability now. So now you settled down in Vegas.

B (30:34)

Yep.

A (30:35)

And so how did that come about? As we wind down here, I want to touch on what you're doing in Vegas and how you got settled down there now and how that's changed where the, the, the, the, the business and the personal side.

B (30:45)

Yeah. So I actually didn't think I'd ever come back from Bali. I thought I'd be there forever. I even left two sets of my DJ decks there. I plan to go back, but what happened was I was in a motorbike accident, got hit from behind going about 40 mph. Tore both ACLs in my meniscus and couldn't walk for about 6 to 8 months last year.

A (31:03)

Last year. Oh my goodness.

B (31:05)

Yeah, last year. And let's just say the healthcare system is a little bit better here in the US to come back from that. And I'm very grateful to be able to walk again. That was a really challenging time. And now I simply am leading virtual training classes, still helping businesses, consulting businesses, and started hosting private events here in Vegas.

A (31:27)

Yeah. And so has how's, how have you settled in there? Like.

B (31:31)

Oh, I love it, I love it here. I've felt I found such an amazing, beautiful community here. Like you never really know this when you visit Vegas, that there's a whole like world outside the Strip.

A (31:43)

Yeah. Of Course.

B (31:44)

And so a lot of my friends, you know, DJs, their hosts, like they're here in the city and it's kind of like you have access to like a side of the world that most people don't even know exists. I mean, right now we called the space here our event space. The Kaya Club. My DJ name is Kaya Kya. And just the other day we had some gentlemen gave us a key to the city, a key to Vegas.

A (32:09)

So yeah, yeah, I've seen those.

B (32:11)

Get access to all like the different high end hotspots and you know, there's a whole community here and it's just, it's amazing. There's a lot of heart centered people and just people into, you know, even like the Burning man crowd, there's a huge burner network here and just people that are just full of love and wanting to see the world be a better place.

A (32:32)

Yeah, that's awesome. By the way, who did that key? I forget the guy's name. I can see him, you know who.

B (32:38)

Yeah, yeah. So Tim and Tony brought this over here. Presented.

A (32:42)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've spoken in Vegas several times and you know, it seems like when you have those events there, it's not just people flying in. A lot of the local crowd comes to the events too. And so I, I got, I got a lot of friends in Vegas actually, so.

B (32:55)

Oh, very cool.

A (32:56)

Yeah, definitely, definitely do something together there. Yeah. So, all right. Where can people go deeper with you to learn more about the events or, or about your training?

B (33:05)

Yep. So just go to findmaria.com and you can find links to everything there.

A (33:09)

Okay. That makes it easy. Maria, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate. And also sharing vulnerably your stories of being in a wheelchair for a year and the stomach tumors and everything. Thank you.

B (33:21)

Yeah, you're welcome.

A (33:21)

Yeah, everybody on the outside, it seems like everything, like you said, it's easy and it's all working out and you don't go through anything.

B (33:27)

They don't see the trials and the tribulations and the struggles and maybe that's on us that we don't always show it, but it's hard to show that when you're in it.

A (33:35)

Yeah, yeah. You don't want anybody to have sympathy for you because then you're in the victim mode. But usually it's after that and you overcome it. That's when you share, but that's. It seems counterintuitive because you need the help and the encouragement while you're going through it. You know, you're in it.

B (33:48)

Yeah.

A (33:48)

People like us, a lot of times, people forget about encouraging us because we do the encouraging most of the time.

B (33:55)

Right. You know, so, yeah, gotta remember that.

A (33:57)

Well, thank you so much for joining us. Hang tight while I wrap this up, folks. That's this episode of the Woody Made up show with your boy, C Rock and Maria Mattarelli sharing what she's made of. Keep coming back until next time. Hit that subscribe or follow button at the top of your favorite podcast platform and keep coming back until next time. Be that one.