Matt Higgins
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
The difference between success or failure is the mere refusal to die.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
This 16 to 26 chapter is really important because I make this one move. I do get into college, but the reality is I am taking care of my parent who is deteriorating slowly in this little apartment alone with us. And I'm trying to have a normal life to have a girlfriend or whatever. And so it took me seven years to graduate college at night. And
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
ups and downs and not wanting to finish and how am I going to make it all work? But I'm still pushing. Most of what was propelling me forward was trying to square two almost irreconcilable variables or mandates. One, preserve my psyche so later on I don't resent my mother for what I was put through. And at the same time, do right by her. So I was like, wanting to be a hero?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Well, first of all, it's great to be with you. Great to be with your audience. And I know your audience is dedicated to just transcendence and how to go to the next level. So that's a topic I love talking about in all its gritty detail. The most important thing to know about me, and I always start here, is just my framework of growing up in abject poverty.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And again, I share this for anybody listening who's having conflicting emotions, right? I would do that about the same time, build a life for myself. So I was on the clock. And I had this sense like, I got to move so damn quickly.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And because the one thing that happened to me by virtue of dropping out that I did not intend, nor how could you know this, right, was that what Warren Buffett talks about with compounding, how it's the most powerful financial principle in the world, applies equally to your career. By virtue of me dropping out at 16, I started making these moves a lot quicker.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I started using whatever assets I had to move quickly with jobs. And the most important one was communication. I could write. I was given that gift. And so I became a writer at a little local newspaper. But because my stories were compelling, I won all sorts of press awards when I was 19 or 20. And I got nominated for a Pulitzer when I was 21. Things start happening.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And then I end up getting a job with Mayor Giuliani. the version 1.0, the part that we all remember fondly, not the second part, version 1.0 of Giuliani. And I ended up getting this job. And because I was on the clock, I would never accept being told to wait your turn. Because I was like, no, I'm on a mission. And so I actually quit Mayor Giuliani twice when I didn't get what I wanted.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I went and I started out and then they brought me back as deputy press secretary. And then they brought me back again as press secretary. And when that happened, I'll zoom in here. I go from 16 years old and making these moves and killing myself to at 26 years old, I'm still living with my mother in this apartment. My life is still a total secret. She has gotten worse and worse.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And now she's on an oxygen machine and she's just sitting in a chair all day long. and I don't know how to get out because I don't have enough money. And I have this vision. If I can make enough money, I can get an apartment across the street and I could finally have a girl over or just like a friend over. But it was like Clark Kent.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I would close the door and change into my mask and my costume and I would go back into this place. And so I get this call from the mayor's office at 26. Now I'm in Fordham Law at this point at night. And going to law school is hard enough, but going to law school at night while you're taking care of a parent and working full time
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
is hard enough and I get the offer of a lifetime to be press secretary to the mayor of New York. I would be the youngest press secretary in history, but that's like a crazy job. And Giuliani was intense. And so, but then I was like, how do I take this job? How do I do what I'm doing? But if I don't take this job now and this opportunity passes me over, it'll never come around again.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I learned at that moment, we don't get to choose our timing, right? We just have to do it. But if I get this one job, it's going to enable me to achieve everything. I would make $105,000 a year at the time. And so I take the job. And then that night, my mother was in pain and very sick. And she pleaded with me not to go to work. And I remember telling her, I was like, we have no money left.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I cannot bring anybody over to bathe you. I have nothing. I need to go to work so I can get the check in two weeks. But if I get this check, mom, everything changes. So I go to work that day. And then as I'm sitting in the office and around 10 o'clock, Angela who worked in the office said, your mom's on the phone. And I was like, oh, you're calling me already. Like, come on.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And those words lose their meaning when you say it, but what does that mean? Grew up wondering what's for dinner, where dinner is coming from. Like a lot of people grow up in poverty, there was a lot of dysfunction, cycle of abuse that I was born into. My poor mom had a horrendous childhood, which only became clear later on in life. You don't understand these issues as a little kid.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And she's like, oh, you know, when you call an ambulance, they insist that you go to the hospital. I was like, that's great. Who'd you, you know, you called an ambulance. She's like, yeah. And I said, well, tell, ask them where you're going. And she said, we're going to Long Island Jewish Hospital. I remember all the details. And I didn't think it was an emergency.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I actually was excited that somebody else maybe would step in. I always wanted somebody to step in and relieve me of this. And then I left and I took my time. By the time I had gotten to the hospital, she had died five minutes beforehand. So I don't know the moral of that story. I share it for a few reasons. One, I knew it was going to end this way. And I knew I only had a limited amount of time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And other people did not act like it was a crisis. But I trusted my instincts. I also knew that the only way I had any shot was to go ahead and upend the rules and get there faster. And then lastly, I don't regret going to work that day. Because...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
If I had not taken that job, if I had not done what I needed to do, you then spend the rest of your life feeling resentful, but more importantly, blaming others, right? I'd be sitting here going, oh, my mother held me back. And I actually think that's a lie. Nobody really holds us back at the end of the day. And so... I know that's a heavy story, but that is what happened during those 10 years.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
She died that day and the mayor was so kind. My mother always loved Queens College. It was the one place she felt happy. And he said to me, you know, is there anything I could do for you that would be helpful? I was like, you know what? If you could arrange for her casket to go through the campus, That would give her dignity. And so he arranged for like a motorcade.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
My brother came up to me at the wake and he's like, Matthew, was mom a maid woman? Like, is she in the mafia? Like, who the hell? Who are these people? And Giuliani had arranged for her to get like a head of state funeral. So it was a pretty... But anyway, that's my... Very tragic beginning. I'm sorry to take this so heavy. Anybody listening?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I always joke, I'm sure everyone feels the same way. Like I would love a clean shot on goal for once, you know what I mean? Like a straight path or even a little bit of a lotto ticket, maybe not the big one, but like a scratch off, you know, but it didn't take any work and it all just worked out perfectly, but that's not how life goes.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I mean, so people ask, zooming out, how does all the pieces fit together? How does somebody go from McDonald's or press to running an NFL team? All the things I've done and the connective tissue was something, a question I would always ask myself. What is the highest and best use of Matt Higgins now? And what can I do now?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So everything about me was, how do I get dinner? How do I get out of poverty? feeling like I don't belong here and where I grew up in. I grew up in Queens, New York, in a little garden apartment, little shoebox. And it was a roach motel. I mean, just true squalor.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
What skills do I possess that I can leverage to move me closer to my ultimate ambition? So every job that came next was because I was leveraging a skill to keep moving me on this continuum toward what? Toward freedom, autonomy. The number one thing I crave and still crave and always want and protect is autonomy because it's the one thing I didn't have. My whole entire goal was to get there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And the reason I got to the New York Jets is because after 9-11, I was running the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. That made me an expert in land use. I know we just glossed over overseeing the rebuilding of 9-11, but that was my skill. And because of that, the New York Jets needed somebody to build a stadium. And I was able to leverage the ability to do that and get that job.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so each of these jobs is because I was moving closer to something. And I say this to anybody listening who feels like you have to have it all figured out or the next job has to be the job. The next job just has to move you due north in the general direction of your ambition. And you just need a thesis about like, all right, if I do this, right, I'm going to learn this and I'm going to go there.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But it shouldn't be an excuse. to prevent yourself from going ahead and doing the next thing. It should be a rational-like continuum. But I'll pause there. But I had all these crazy jobs. But when I was at the Jets is when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. I assume that's what you're talking about. And then it worked out. And I'm fine. And I'm here now. I'm alive.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Just to stick with cancer for half a second, because I think I love what you just said about the victim. I mean, I love Tom, by the way, and I love the way he frames it. For me, it is, I do think that every bad thing that happens to me is an opportunity for exceptionalism. And when I had testicular cancer and it didn't kill me, I thought, you know, this disease hits one in 7,000 people.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And of those 7,400, well, I geek out on statistics, 400 of them will die. Now, it has a very high survival rate. My version was the kind that wasn't going to kill me. So then I thought, okay, out of all the people, those 7,000, what percentage of those people live below the poverty line? What percentage of those people just went through a divorce?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
What percentage of those people have depression, whatever? And when I took a step back, I was like, I'm probably one of the most equipped people to have testicular cancer. And then two, I thought... In some ways, look how exceptional it makes me. I'm probably the only guy in the world with a GED and one testicle. And so I decided to own it. I have these dog tags to this day.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so I started selling flowers on street corners when I was nine, little boy taking care of his mom, kid knocking on your window at the street corner on Mother's Day and Easter, trying to sell you something. And just all these hardscrabble odd jobs, shoveling snow, whatever it would take. And at the same time, trying to take care of my mother, who, because we were so poor, had no services.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
It's a little crazy and a little crass. And it says half the balls, twice the man. And that became my attitude about it. Like, you know what? What's more badass than surviving testicular cancer and losing a body part? And so...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And the point of that, I tell that story is I really believe that every crisis is an opportunity for exceptionalism, but also every crisis gives you an opportunity to extract something more valuable than what's taken from you. I can honestly say what was taken from me with testicular cancer, and even I've been on testosterone my whole life.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I've had all sorts of physical complications from surviving it. But the window into the world of death was a tremendous gift. To get sideswiped but not killed was an opportunity for me to discover Buddhism, for me to discover the being present. I'm not always great at it, but I learned so much at Sloan Kettering that I wouldn't trade that for a minute, even though I've had all these circumstances.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And that's not just hindsight bias or me just saying it. It really is true. So anyone out there going through something terrible, there is an opportunity to extract more value from it than is being taken from you. But if you don't believe it, you'll never see it. That is the irony of the whole situation.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
You first have to believe this is what I'm saying is true because those who were like, that's not true. What about this situation? I was like, well, you didn't believe it. If you believe that you would have figured out how to leverage it. And so I get through testicular cancer. I go on and I end up progressing into more responsibility at the Jets.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I think the number one is to be intentional. I was amazed going through the book process about how people think that the mere act of the book is writing a book. Like I wrote a book. I'm like, well, anybody could write a book, but can you get somebody to read your book? So I always say, I didn't write a book. I engineered an outcome and I worked backwards from the outcome.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I said, what outcome do I want? The outcome I want is for somebody out there who feels unsupported to feel that if Matt did it, maybe I could do it. And the only way I can make them feel that is if I share cringy details. including the story I just told you or how I had imposter syndrome by going on Shark Tank.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
My book is an exercise in engineering an outcome of making somebody out there in the world feel connected to me. That's really hard to do as a white middle-aged man in our balkanized society. What do I have to learn from you? I'm part of a different group or a minority group or a different economic class.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And my purpose in showing all these moments was for somebody to cross that divide and meet me here. Like, hey, look, I was thinking of my mom. I'm like you. I grew up on government cheese. I was ashamed. I had imposter syndrome. And so the point is, when you're intentional and you set your objective, like I did with the book, you work backwards from it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
She suffered with morbid obesity. She had a thyroid gland disorder. So she would get heavier and heavier. And then at the same time, she was trying to make something of her life. She had a ferocious mind. And a couple of things intersected. My desperation of truly hating my life and hating being the hero child of having to take care of your parents while trying to do the right thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So the back cover, I remember when I was talking to the publisher, and the publisher is very nice, but they do nothing to help you sell your book is the reality, other than give you the nice imprimatur and make you feel good with your little ego. And so I was like, oh, well, what about quotes? You know, which quotes I should get? And it was like, oh, you can get some people you know and it's fine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I was like, no, no, the cover is about conversion. This is the bottom of the funnel, right? People are now in the bookstore. What quotes are going to resonate? So the truth of the matter is the quotes on the book are designed to convert you. And I decided to take somebody from each area. And so I was like, all right, number one is Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So I was like, how do I? But I'd met his son before, who's a sweetheart. And I said, look, Arnold has an incredible video on YouTube and it was called No Plan B and it's amazing. And it did influence me, influence this book. And I worked on getting Arnold Schwarzenegger for three months to do that. And every single person is there for a reason.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so the moral of that story, I think when you set an intention, like we were talking before about you getting Richard Branson, who's God and amazing. And you got him on your podcast. I think people oftentimes put a ceiling on what's possible without even realizing it. And the reason why you and I are talking about victimhood and blaming is The fuel for that impulse is blame.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Well, it was easy for you to do because you had X, Y, but I can't possibly achieve. I can't get Richard Branson on my podcast, or I can't get Arnold Schwarzenegger on my book. And so I learned from that very young age that being a little bit defiant and oppositional unlocks all that tremendous opportunity. So that's where the quotes on the back of the book came from.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I'm lucky to be around a lot of fantastically successful people. And wealth is a proxy for that, but that's not the only measure. But I'm just talking about a specific cohort of extraordinarily wealthy people who've achieved crazy things on their own. And what I find in common is that they make it up in volume.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
It's like sheer volume of attempts and shots on goal, which most of us can't do because we can't handle losing. Our ego can't handle it. And yet... I'm around people who do such stunningly terrible things. I don't mean ethically, I mean dumb decisions, and with such horrendous consequences. And then I marvel at their ability to go on, and I'm like, this would wreck me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And then knowing that if I don't do something and take matters in my own hands, my mother was going to succumb to depression and to her illnesses.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I feel like you and I are connecting over being, you know, somewhat self-possessed, or at least we can handle it. We're resilient to maybe not self-possessed, but resilient. And I watch what they can endure. And I'm like, oh my God, that would kill me. And then I spent some time in the book trying to deconstruct it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And what I found is the common thread is that highly, highly successful people who break new ground, when they have a setback, they simply expand the definition of what they're trying to achieve to encapsulate that setback. So in other words, they're like, oh, of course it happened. I mean, this is what I wanted to happen. And by virtue of it happening, I'm gonna be even better position.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And because they take that attitude, they expand the definition of the journey and success to include that setback, they're ultimately successful. So for those who doesn't come natural, including myself, I came up with a little bit of a simple master of the obvious like format that I do that I realized, When we have a failure, the first thing most of us want to do is protect our reputation.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
When in fact, the thing we should be protecting is our self-esteem. And so now when I have a failure, one, I acknowledge it and say it out loud. I have failed. There's something very powerful about taking away its power over you by trying to conceal it. Two is, but I am not a failure. I had an incident of failure, but I am not a failure. It's just an incident of failure.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And then three, what was that failure trying to teach me? Like, what can I extract so it's useful? And then four, I'm going to go shoot it and bury it in the backyard, never return to it. And when I see really successful people, they do have the ability to absorb the wins and repel the losses. When they win, they're like, I did it. It's a little bit, you know, a little bit narcissistic maybe.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But when I lost, it was like, that's okay. It doesn't affect their self-esteem.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Just talking philosophically, I'm obsessed about this idea of step change versus incrementalism. What I mean that is we have a societal bias towards incrementalism. In other words, I must have the lemonade stand before I have the lemonade drink, before I have the lemonade business, before I get to run that business. And those are unwritten rules that are actually weighing down on our ambition.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But the reality is those rules are not as hard and fast as we're led to believe. And the reason why that's so important to think about is we find ourselves conforming to those unwritten rules and say, you know, if only I do this next thing, then I will be able to do the following thing I really want to do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But when you actually dissect that, it turns out that most of those incremental steps you believe you have to go along in order to pursue your true ambition are actually about convincing yourself that you have the credentials so you're not embarrassed by the audacity of saying, I want to be a business owner.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I went to Harvard and got the certificate for eight weeks because now I have Harvard on my LinkedIn or whatever nonsense you've come up with in your mind to delay pursuing your ambitions. So I, for whatever reason, back to defiant little kid, pissed off about poverty, I, for whatever reason, have a bias towards step change.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And what step change means is pursuing something that doesn't follow the natural progression of the direction you're moving in. So, for example, let's use Harvard and we'll talk about charting. When I went to teach, I have an academic part of my brain that I crave to flex, but I never got a chance because of my upbringing. But I also wondered if that was bullshit and if that was an excuse.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And everybody these days has to have like a hard luck story. Unfortunately, we've all been like, you can't be born on third base. I'm like, what's so wrong with third base? I would like to be born on third base. Everyone's got a story. Yes.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I was like, could I really actually perform at the highest level? It's convenient that I sold flowers on street corners because now we'll never know. And no one would ever believe that that's a valid excuse, Matt. You were poor. Of course you went to Queens College. So point is, I could have taught anywhere, probably a different level institution, but to teach at Harvard Business School.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
is a very different thing. And even though I didn't have the credentials, and even though I have this crazy story, I didn't let that stop me from trying. And because I tried, I got there. So with Shark Tank, it really all began with an attempt to connect with my beautiful boy who was not interested in sports, even though I ran the Miami Dolphins.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But what he was interested was Mr. Wonderful's royalty deals. And we would watch the shows together and I would make fun of those deals. I'm like, that doesn't happen in real life. And he's like, well, how do you know? I was like, well, cause I'm like a shark. I invest hundreds of millions of dollars. Like I know this. And so I then had that epiphany.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
One, I'm going to sit here with my son together. We're going to watch me on Shark Tank. And then two, that is the shortest way to prove to people that you are the best, right? If you end up as a shark on Shark Tank, people will presume a lot of things about you. Some of which may be true or not true.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
and so i set the intention now there's no template for going on charting there's no internet application form there's no process and this is really important everybody listening you just have to make the next step the next right decision that brings you closer right and so the next thing i needed to do was how do i get to a producer who would give me 10 minutes and let me try to turn that 10 minutes
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
into 60 Minutes. And how I got there is less relevant, but I got that one meeting. And when I got that one meeting, and this is one of my favorite stories, I had, up until that point, never given an interview like we're doing now, generally. I did not talk about mom and dying and the sadness and being... But for whatever reason, on that one day, I opted to throw away my shame.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I told the story just as I did on this podcast. And that 15 Minutes Turned into an hour, turned into an hour and a half. And at the end of it, he's like, gosh, I love your story. Such a damn good New York story. We haven't had a story like that. I was like, let's keep talking. That led to a year of conversations that eventually landed me on the set of the show.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And to get into this part, because this part is even more interesting to me than getting on Shark Tank, was what an anxious mess I was going on Shark. I don't know why I'm the only guest shark to talk about this, but I almost succumbed at the moment of being able to do it. And I freaked out about feeling like a fraud, feeling like my bank account didn't have enough zeros in it, everything.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
There was a lot of dysfunction, a cycle of abuse that I was born into. I started selling flowers on street corners when I was nine. Little boy taking care of his mom. By virtue of me dropping out at 16, I started using whatever assets I had to move quickly with jobs. And I got the offer of a lifetime.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I had one of these great conversations and we can stop here. I just want to share it with the audience. It's like, I was so fragile and my sweet wife was like talking me through it. And I had Eminem on a loop on my thing. Lose yourself, mom's spaghetti. I'm sick of myself. Anything to hype me up, but I'm still a little anxious mess.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Because I felt like I would be seen through, finally revealed as the fraud that I feel like we all feel like we are sometimes. And I went to talk to Damon John, who is a shark, and he grew up in Queens, New York, near me. Very different cultural prism. He was black, I'm white, and he was at Red Lobster, I was at McDonald's. But we had a lot of similarities. And I told him the truth.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I said, in this little dressing room, we have a photo of it together. It's one of my favorite. And I'm like, man, Damon, I'm freaked out. He's like, what's wrong with you? I was like, I just feel like... I don't belong here. I was like, this is this whole thing. I don't know why I'm having like these, these emotions of doubt. And he goes, let me tell you something.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
This is, I always say after he like MF to everybody else, what we've been through to get here versus, you know, and he goes to Matt, you belong here because you are here. And I know I said this before, but it's so powerful. I always say it's like Socrates is talking to me or something. And the point of that story is that there is no final arbiter of belonging.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
It's funny that you said beautiful story. And in my mind, I don't know if I feel like it's beautiful, but I guess it telegraphs how I grew up. So we were always struggling. Holidays were always a source of pain, to be honest, and melancholy because my mother wanted to turn it into something, right? Like something to look forward to.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
No one is going to pull up the seat for you like, hi, Matt, welcome to the boardroom. And a lot of times women acknowledge this feeling. And I think it's harder for women because they tell the truth and men lie. We all feel it. But the reality is there's no final arbiter of belonging. And when you realize that...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
when you realize that no one's gonna give you permission or credentialize or validate you for the move you're trying to make, you stop looking at the world through the lens of incrementalism. Like, cause you realize so much of your steps that you've imagined are about seeking approval or permission from other people to move along.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
If I get the Harvard certificate, people will believe I'm good enough. And when you stop worrying about whether anyone believes you're good enough, then you aim as high as humanly possible. And I, despite my anxiety, and I talk about in the book, I have been able to do that. I approach every single situation saying, who made that rule? Who said I have to do that first before I can do that?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So...
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
No, first of all, I love the pattern interruption. I mean, the words burn the boats is an inside joke, actually, in my head. It's actually often used by right wing people. And it can sometimes be very like, burn the boats to hell with everyone. I'm saying the opposite. The boats I'm talking about in my book are the metaphorical boats that that beckon us to retreat from our own ambition.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
It's the reasons why we erect barriers to our own progression subconsciously. Like I need to do this before I do that. The boats I'm talking about are to burn those so that you stop looking over your shoulder and stop questioning whether or not you deserve it. And we don't realize we do it to ourselves, but the truth is that is everything.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Like the belief, the consideration even, not even the belief, just consider whether you can make that leap like you talk about. And I have a great story in my book. It's one of my favorite ones in there. I had a student at Harvard Business School.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And some holidays, it meant we don't have a turkey or we don't have... And so the Catholic Church... even though we were terrible Catholics, would always come. And I always remember this, the knock on the door and the father and me, like a little boy, you feel like you're going to go to like the God police or something.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And what I found fascinating when I first started teaching there and mentoring students, from me having not gone there and started where I started from, it seemed so obvious that that student has de-risked their life. You will never have a bad career. You're going to make six figures. You won. And you deserve it, because it's an amazing institution.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so yet they're so fragile and vulnerable, just like the rest of us. They don't know what they should do. And in fact, they have a different kind of pressure. which the world expects them to do amazing things. And they're not clear what they want to do. So I had one of my students who came to see me and he was about to take a soul crushing job at a massive private equity firm.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And he was sad about it in my office. And we started talking. I was like, well, you know, you don't seem that happy. He's like, it's just not what I want to do. And I was like, what do you want to do? He's like, I want to have my own firm. I believe I could do it. I said, oh, well, what does it take to have your own firm?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And he's like, well, you have to have deal flow and you have to have these things. You have to understand what's feasible and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, well, do you know how to do those things? And he goes, well, I do. I said, well, why can't you start your own firm then? He goes, I've never been a managing director at a firm. I said, oh. Well, is that a rule? He's like, well, generally.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I said, well, I just invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this little chair I'm sitting in right now. I've never been a managing director. I had no idea. I got to go back and interview. And so he goes to me, he goes, yeah, but who's going to give me money having never done this? I said, you're right. No one's going to give you money. Until one day, somebody gives you money.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Somebody's gonna give you any good. And that's how the conversation, true story. He calls me a couple months later asking for my size. And I'm like, what do you want my size for? I wanna send you my swag from the firm that I just created when I walked out your door. I made a ton of phone calls. Everyone said no. He goes, but one, some person gave me money and gave me $10 million to start this firm.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
True story, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal like six months ago. He had raised $100 million. And I tell the story in the book. And I tell the story to be like, you have to go into the weeds a bit and dissect your behavior. Be like, why am I doing it? Had he not done a step change from that moment when he walked out,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
He would be working in one of those private equity shops, sad, and would have erected a new barrier to his progression. Well, I can't take that step until I get promoted or I have responsibility for one region of the planet or some other excuse or barrier. And then one day he has children and now he has a 529 plan. Maybe he has an unhappy marriage.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
there'll be new barriers that he actually can't control that are not self-made and maybe he never does it. And so everyone out there, I think you and I feel the same way philosophically, like just scrutinize your excuses, your reasons, and God forbid, if there's any blame in your vocabulary, expunge it because it's robbing you of your full potential.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Because I remember I was standing behind my mom's dress and peering through the door and just always seeing this warm, nonjudgmental face that would just deliver a box of food and how much relief that would bring my mother, who was also a bad Catholic. And so throughout my life, and I've had the pleasure, fast forward, this is a crazy story, but I've had two private audiences with the Pope
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I would say burn the boats does not guarantee that you'll be successful. Not burning the boats guarantees that you won't be successful. If you're doing something that's just a pattern, a formulaic, you don't need to burn the boats because you're on autopilot.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But if you're doing something that might trigger imposter syndrome, you have to burn the boats or you will not be successful. And if I had not burned the boats to get to Shark Tank or perform on it, there's no way those two things happen. So But in terms of failure, like I fail every step of the way and not in cliche ways.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
When I got divorced and I talk about in the book, there is no more feeling of failure, at least for some people, for a lot of people. So for those listening who can relate, for me, it was the feeling that you had done all you could to try to architect this life, this perfect life. And then at a relatively young age, you're getting divorced. But professional failures. I opened the book.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
This is one of my favorite stories in my book. I opened with the story of how after I went on Shark Tank, this is another one of my formulas, right? I always say, okay, what would be even better than being on Shark Tank? It'd be like having my own TV show. And so I partnered with Mark Burnett, who created The Apprentice, who had created Shark Tank, like the biggest reality producer in America.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And we created a new show called Business Hunters. And it was going to be on CNBC. During the pandemic, I shot eight episodes. I put in so much time to make this show. I love this show. I was the executive producer and the host of the show. And then right as the book is about to go to print, the show gets canceled. It never even aired. Crushing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And then I'm like, wait, this is the beginning of my book. And then I decided, you know, I think this is the point. That's why it still should be the beginning of the book, right? Because I love what you just said. It is easy to maybe say, well, it's easy for you to say, Matt, you burned the boats and everything worked out and you can handle the risk. I was like, no, that's the opposite takeaway.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I was like, along the way, when I fully committed. But then the next thing I did is the thing that mattered. Every single time, like I said earlier, there is an opportunity to extract more that's taken from me. So even though that show was canceled, two things happened. One, I formed an incredible relationship with CNBC and have been on CNBC at least 60 times since that.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But two, I said, well, what would be better than having your own show that then gets canceled by a network for which you have no control, that you spent hours and hours of your life and poured your heart and soul and thousands of dollars of your own money? I was like, having your own production company.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
where no one can do that to you again and so i partnered with gary vaynerchuk and eric wattenberg we now have our own production company i am now the executive producer on multiple shows that will air on different networks and so at the end of the day was more value extracted from the experience of canceling that show absolutely because i knew i had what it takes so the part that does weigh on me a little back to the whole point of like
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
This is when I allow a slight bit of victimhood to slip in. I'm like, just once, I would like it to be easy. And most people don't believe this one. They're going to hear about what I'm about to say. The difference between success or failure is the mere refusal to die.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I was sitting in a meeting the other day with a business that almost went under, and I can't say what it is because it's such a big national brand. But I was sitting in this meeting and we had tanked the company with some bad decisions. And it was such a shame. And we stayed alive within like, just so close from not even being around. And I was in the meeting, this just happened last week.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And part of the reason I got involved was not because of doctrine, but because the Catholic Church has the longest supply lines. And as a little boy, I was on the receiving end of that supply line of people who just dedicated their life to doing good things for people. So yeah, those are my holidays.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I was sitting there thinking, oh my God, we are going to make it. This is going to work. And that moment happens in every single thing I do where I'm shocked by our bad decision-making or shocked by something we didn't foresee. It almost dies, but we refuse to die and we find a way to survive. So anyone out there who sees the mere act of almost dying or your failure as a referendum,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
on your future you or your worthiness, you've got it completely wrong because every single success is forged of fire, but forged of failure. And it's not cliche because I could show you every single thing I'm doing right now. We can get into the drone business if you want. Every single thing had an existential crisis where it almost died.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I lost faith in what I just told you right now, where I was like, it can't possibly work. This is just bullshit rhetoric. But I was like, no, but I just, I can't give up. I don't want to die. And my refusal to die, our refusal to die is the thing that makes it actually successful. And I've learned that from being around these incredible people too. And it's their formula, not just mine.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Yeah, and I'll put it in the context of this discussion and I'll shorten it too. So way back when I wrote the first into a new sport called the Drone Racing League in 2015. And it wasn't always clear to me, will this take off? It's very hard to create a sport. Talk about something I don't recommend to anybody listening. It is so difficult. So many things have to go right.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But early on in that evolution, we realized the technology that we're inventing, the ability for drones to fly 100 miles an hour with goggles, the ability to operate in very crowded environments with cellular signals, messing up the signal between the pilot and the drone, All this stuff would one day probably be put to nefarious purposes and conflict or terrorism.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And it just gave me the same feeling I used to have standing under the twin towers of 9-11, thinking like, how did this happen? How did we not see it coming? And we couldn't look away. And so quietly, a group of us created a new company in Huntsville, Alabama. It's called BDW.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But a reason why I say I don't know if it's a joyful story, because it was a story of shame, mostly, growing up. We would take a bus. I didn't understand why we would do this, but we would take a bus over an hour away to actually, it was a Black Baptist church, and they would be so kind to me. I also have fond memories of... Baptist churches.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And we spent the next several years working to create a tool that would give the warfighter on the edge of conflict the ability to call in their own air support in the form of this drone. And why I love that story, aside from I think it's just some of the best work that I've ever done professionally with my team, my co-founders, is we had to see the future.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
We had to believe it with all of our heart. And we had to do something so difficult. There's even a name for it. It's called the Valley of Death in the military world and defense. It's this gulf where you don't get a program of record, but you have to spend so much money creating it in the hopes that one day you'll win. And we worked on it.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Tens of millions of dollars and all this effort below the radar on September 11, 2024. The US Army designated our drone the program of record for the United States. And whether somebody is interested in this category or not, or robotics or military, what I love about it is we could have just chosen to never try. We could have instead say it's just a sport.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
The most incredible outcomes come from when you make those pivots and you see something and you're willing to believe it. And the reason why I said before, you have to be comfortable being alone like that little boy in the steps of Cardoza High School, is that if I had relied on other people's validation that the future of conflict was gonna be about small drones,
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
nobody would have believed me in 2017, right? Like, and now everyone reads the clips about what happened in Ukraine. This is a national security priority for the United States of America, that we have a domestic drone industry. To be honest, I always thought it would be, and so did my colleagues, but we were alone in that thought.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
You know, so we just had to like talk, no one cares, no one's listening, and we just had to do it. And so fast forward, I love that. I love the moments when I had to be lead alone with a few colleagues and no one agreed. And then you come out the other side and everyone is right there alongside with you. And the best work I've ever done, that's always the same scenario, you know?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And that's why it's so important to realize that The magnitude of an opportunity has an inverse relationship with the amount of evidence and validation there'll be to support it. When you deconstruct that sentence, of course, this is a huge opportunity and we need to build this domestic drone industry. Nobody agrees. Why? Because it's a big opportunity and it's not here yet.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So anyone out there, when you're like, why won't anybody listen to me? Or why does my wife or husband think I'm crazy? It's because the epiphany was rendered to you alone as a gift from God or the universe. The epiphany was not given to your spouse.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
or your boss, or your frenemy, it was given to you at three in the morning, and it's your baby, and it's your burden now to carry it alone until others will one day agree with you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And we would collect a box of food and take the bus back. And as I got older, I could think like, was there no church closer to home? And my mother obviously was trying to hide, you know, best she could, you know, the situation we're in. So that's why I struggled. Like, is that a good story? Is that a sad story? But that was my upbringing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I think a couple of things. One, for anyone out there who also has gone through trauma or poverty and like pain, like It's okay that it takes a lifetime to heal. I am not even remotely healed. It's a lifelong pursuit. So be kind to yourself that it takes a long time.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
If I could go back in time and talk to the younger version of myself or the 20 version of myself or the 30s, it would be the same speech. Nobody cares. You are spending so much mental energy anticipating how your ambition will be rejected or judged. And you are self-censoring your own potential because you believe that others will care.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And the reality is they don't care a fraction of what you think they do. And two, those who do are wasting their life and you should pity them.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
and not fear them and i if i had known that i would have achieved more with this life i would have done it more peacefully i would have done it with a more open heart because i think when you anticipate judgment you become more close-hearted and because you're everyone's an enemy right like oh somebody's trying to tear me down you and you do feel their energy sometimes and that does make you more more resistant to opening your heart up if i had just realized like nobody cares and the ones who care you should just feel bad for
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so I would say to anybody younger or at any point in our life, we are going to meet God one day. And I'd be like, oh, nobody was thinking that. You were lost in your own little prison of your own making. And the other thing I wish I would have told them is the only thing guaranteed is truly the present. You should embrace mortality. Mortality is a gift that can zoom you into the moment.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I would have spent a lot more time early on thinking about death. I know this sounds nuts, but I have an app on my phone called WeCroak where five times a day it reminds me I am going to die. And those moments are actually quite peaceful because they make me not care about all the noise that's going on. So I gave you two. not just one.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I love connecting with your audience. I'm rooting for everybody out there. If you read my book, Burn the Boats, DM me because I'm a human being who needs to sustain this effort. I am doing it. I'm on a mission. And so it's not a mission of ego gratification. It's a mission of having an impact. Maybe that is ego. But if you read it and it moves you, just DM me on LinkedIn.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I read every single comment. So I would love to hear from you.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Oh, thank you so much. Have a great day.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Yeah. And I really tell this because I don't want people to be like, oh, you're the kid who made good. You know, you ran with the gang. I was like, no, that's actually not what I was. I was the sad, depressed kid who was parentified at an early age. A lot of people listening to this may know somebody who's a caregiver and not prepared, nor do they want to be in that situation. That was me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I also felt like there was a destiny about my life. And I also felt let down by society. Family members, they moved on. And when someone steps up to take responsibility, everyone else is like, good, you deal with mom unable to take care of herself. So that's my reality. And it's complicated.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
As I'm sitting in the office at around 10 o'clock, Angela, who worked in the office, said, your mom's on the phone. By the time I had gotten to the hospital, she had died five minutes beforehand. Every bad thing that happens to me is an opportunity for exceptionalism. When I see really successful people, they do have the ability to absorb the wins and repel the losses.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I think it's so funny, I think about this too, because I always want to keep myself honest. It doesn't do anybody any good if I put myself out there as being the oracle, you know, knowing things so young. Honestly, it was the feeling of being disenfranchised and disenchantment.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And what I mean by that is no power, disenfranchised and disenchanted with the system, school, support networks, family, everybody letting me down. And I was like a sweet little happy kid, you know, but by the time I was around 10 years old, I was like, you know what? Nobody gives a shit. And the reality is this is going to end horribly.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so I need to sever with the reality of being a child and I need to become an adult now. And it happened around 10. It was like an incident that I don't really go into. But when I realized the cavalry is not coming. And so that did cultivate an extreme level of defiance. And a feeling that I'm going to have to hack my way.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
You know, it's fine when your life no longer matches the reality of your peers. They're going to school and having somewhat of a normal existence. And I'm sitting there standing on line on behalf of a ticket scalper so I could buy tickets to a concert all night. And then he's going to pay me for waiting.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Like when the departure becomes so great, you realize there's no point leaning into the system's rules and you need to make your own. So I don't absent... My upbringing, I would have been that sweet little cherubic kid, you know, with little chubby cheeks, but it was that sense of being let down. The positive, it stoked a fierce level of defiance and independence, and that birthed my epiphany.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So my mom, when she left my dad, she got her GED at a local college, and then she enrolled in Queens College. And she would take me to classes, starting at a very young age, 10 years old or whatever it was, And I saw an ad in a newspaper, and it said that you could deliver flyers for this local congressman, and you could make $8 an hour. And I think I was making $3.75 at McDonald's.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
$8 an hour, college students only. And I was like, what is it about a college student that's going to enable me to 2x my salary? And I became obsessed with the following. What if I were to drop out of high school on purpose, like my mother did? Because if you're a product of abuse, what if I did it on purpose, took my GED at 16? Technically, there was a loophole back then.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Anybody with a good enough GED score could go to any college in America, all the way up to Harvard. And that was probably like a, what I say, noblesse oblige. Like, we will let you come into college, even though your life is a screw up. Nobody ever probably used it. But I became so excited. Like, I have a way out. I became giddy. And then we can get into this if you want to now.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But when I started sharing with everybody this plan, I was met with equally fierce resistance.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Yeah, we can get into that. So I put language around this as I got older to try to explain the difference. But The reality is I was what I call an edge case. I'm somebody who's working overnight at a deli. I'm doing all these things. I'm an edge case, not the base case that has some degree of a functioning family unit that can go to school.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And when you're part of a bureaucracy, whether it be a school or a corporation, when you're an edge case or an outlier, the rules don't work for you, right? So, but when you consult people whose job it is to protect the status quo, like a guidance counselor, and when you come up with something that's designed for the edge case, They think you're out of your mind.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I remember talking to Mr. I kept getting picked up by the Truant police. Now this is ninth grade. And I would hang out at McDonald's. I would watch CNN, you know, the war in the Gulf at the time. Like I was just doing my thing, buying time. And he was like, what's wrong with you? You're such a smart kid. What are you doing? I was like, no, I have a plan.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And when I had testicular cancer and it didn't kill me, I thought.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
I'm going to take my GED and I'm going to go to college at 16. I'm going to bypass this. I'm going to make a lot of money. And of course, he was like, you're going to have a terrible stigma for the rest of your life. This is before Mark Zuckerberg made dropping out of things cool and Silicon Valley bros, you know, able to walk away like back then you would get beaten up for being a loser.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
So I burned the boats moment for which I wrote the book and stole the metaphor from Cortez and others was that it wasn't that I dropped out of high school. It was that I gave myself no other choice but to go through with dropping out of high school. I didn't have the confidence to resist guidance counselors, police, and everybody else, unless I had no other choice.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And it would be tantalizing to turn around if I hadn't become such a castaway. And so my burn the votes moment was to fail every single class in high school. I've told this story before, it's true, except for typing, because typing seemed useful. And then I got left back over and over.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And when you get left back, back at Cardoza High School, and I still remember the sweet teacher, Mrs. Vega, who was always so empathetic and understood what I was doing implicitly. I would sit in the back of the room, put my head down the desk, and I would just go to sleep, you know? And around me were the drug dealers, were the beepers, and there were some kids who were pregnant.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I put myself in that cohort. And then not only that, I started wearing a jacket and I let all the gang kids tag it. So I had tags all over my jacket. I was completely a manifestation of a kid that should be discarded. And that's how the system, they stopped treating me as trying to make me a base case, but actually treated me like an outcast and was waiting for the moment that I would drop out.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
Now, that's a lot to take on. And then when the moment came that I actually had to drop out of high school, anyone listening, when you make a bold decision that you're like, what system am I operating on? It feels like a lot of adrenaline and momentum. When you drop out of school, you have to return your textbooks. I have no idea why I complied with this rule, but none other.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
This is also true, I feel a little bit bad if he's out there somewhere hearing these interviews, but I went to my second class to see Mr. Rosenthal and I go to give him the textbook and the textbook is unopened and I'm like a little punk and he was like, what's this? It's my textbook, it's my last day of high school, I dropped out. He doesn't miss a beat and he said, Higgins, what a waste.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And he had a biting sense of humor, so I guess it was funny. The class starts cracking up, and I almost want to pass out. I'm so humiliated. And as I'm about to walk out, he says, Higgins, what a waste. I'll see you at McDonald's.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I had worked at McDonald's, and the kids would make fun of me because I used to scrape the gum underneath the tables, my little green uniform, and stick Chicken McNuggets stuffed in my pocket for the break and make rib sandwiches. And then as I walked out, I said, if you see me at McDonald's, it's because I own it. And everyone was like, oh.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
But the truth of the matter is, that was me trying to preserve my self-respect. I sat on the steps of Cordoza High School. I packed a butt. Back then, you packed butts. I don't know if you do anymore. And I spoke to Marlboro. And I really, this is true. I really sat there and said, you know, he's probably right. And it was such a hollow, desperate moment, which is funny.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
This is not a moment of transcendence or victory. This is a moment of Utter like, look what I have done. Like I have leveled my- This is real. This is real. Like I am a high school dropout with an eighth grade education. And I had started off as a kid who went to a special school and like all this kind of like, wow. And here's the other crazy thing. I never talk about this.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
When you stood outside smoking cigarettes in Queens, you know, security guards would shoo you away and all that. But I was allowed to sit there now. I was emancipated, except it didn't feel very good. You know what I mean? I had no structure. Now I had no bureaucracy on top of me. Nobody would chase me away. I just sat there smoking a cigarette. And then I got to pick my ass up off those steps.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I was like, all right, go to work. And I remember... With the GED, you have to take this GED program, which I did one day of that. I was like, I am not doing that. This is creating a feedback loop that is not healthy. And instead, I decided I would take the test on standby. You could show up and take it. And I went to Springfield Gardens High School in Queens, New York.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I waited in line one day. And within a week, I took the GED. And fast forward, got the score back, took the SATs for good measure anyway. And I got admitted to Queens College. Now, this is the redemption story. Just like Gladiator and Maximus, I decided to return to the arena. And I went to the prom with the prettiest girl who would go with me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And I remember seeing Mr. Rosenthal, Dr. Baker, and Mrs. Vega. And the look was all different from their prism of perspective. Mrs. Vega, who was always so empathetic, was like, oh, sweet boy. Like, you did good. And Mr. Rosenthal was begrudging respect. And so with one chess move, whatever judgment had been rendered toward me had turned to some form of admiration.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And it's an important thing for everybody listening. If you're going to make a bull burn the boat's move, also why I wrote the book, you're going to have to go it alone. If you depend on validation when you have an epiphany like I did, and you depend on counseling from people who have no perspective, nobody could look into that dirty house and watch my mother crying through the night.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And like what it would take for a little boy to deal with that pressure. Of course, their advice is going to be corrupted because you haven't shared with them what you're going through. They didn't know actually the level of pain I was in because I was wearing my Jordache jeans and using that flower money to cover it all up.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
And so I learned so much from that one moment, which is why I'm kind of stuck there. Because I always like to share with people, what does it take to do something so outrageously bold? But long story short, I went to my prom as a president of the debate team when I was 17 years old.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
It's still raw, years later, still very raw.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Shark Tank’s Matt Higgins: How I Beat Poverty, Loss, and Cancer to Become a Global Investor | E73
No, I appreciate that. That was the goal, was to make you cry.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
We all have another level of effort, energy and determination that we can only harness if we cut off our backup plan.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
The most successful people I have, I know, are shockingly tactical. So what I mean by that is like Mark Cuban is the single most responsive person I've ever met on email. And in general, I don't know how he does it. And and usually the response is the word no, but at least it's responsive.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And each one of them gets involved in a level of work that I think if this audience heard that would be surprised.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
like how granular and the takeaway from that is if you want to be successful like you got to grind out the details there is no presiding at any level there's no set it and forget it unless we're talking about bitcoin compounding in the next 15 years so those are the three so optimism uh i would say you know grinding it out and fearless uh would be the three qualities that come to mind you know what's interesting about that
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
For the bullshit. I always say, to make this understandable for people, I put this out on Twitter a few times, X. I never met a wildly successful pessimist. And people will say, oh, what about short sellers? I was like, that person's optimistic. They're more optimistic than anybody.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
They're going against the grain, and they're willing to risk everything with unlimited downside because they believe that they're right. That's pretty optimistic. Pessimism is somebody who thinks the deck is stacked against them, the system is rigged, all that crap. Please, some of that may be true from time to time, but at the end of the day, we all have the power to change our circumstances.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
The reason I love why we're drilling down on this is I talk about this in this book, this one phrase to always anchor me to what I believe in and what I'm doing. Opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence. Right. And that's a simple way of saying like lightning and thunder. You know, you always see the flash of light first. That's the opportunity. It travels.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Light travels many times faster than the speed of sound. And evidence is thunder. It's unmistakable, but everybody hears it. If you want to be wildly successful, you first have to be an optimist or else you won't even believe you saw the light. You'll be like, ah, it's in my head. Then the ability to act on it is the thing that sets winners apart.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Good question. Well, I got a book behind me, wrote a book about it. This idea of, you know, burn the boats and commitment. I think the simple answer to that is when I was very young, I had to make a really radical decision in order to escape out of desperate poverty. I grew up on nothing, selling flowers on street corners and eating government cheese and taking care of a sick mom.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Back to your point about belief, it's why burn the boats is so important because the time to burn the boats is when the opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence. When you burn the boats, when everybody knows about it, it's like... Well, it's, you know, it's too late.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
You know, that being said, if you're an innovative and dynamic and optimistic person, when you think it's too late, it's still okay. Like we were just talking about Bitcoin, having a fun conversation. Like it's not too late at all. It's actually quite early.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
I'm urgent. I can be patient. Yeah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And I get when I get objections to my book, which I love. Right. I mean, there's a lot of things to object to. It's not safe or whatever. I have to pay the rent. And I have answers for all that, by the way. Anybody here who wants to object, but read the book first.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
But one thing I do get is that always tugs at me a little bit when somebody is like, look, like I hear everything you're saying, but I got no resources. I got no autonomy. I got no power. I'm just trying to survive. I have no opportunity to burn the boats. And I was like, burn the boats or believing in your potential, your ideas doesn't require you to act on them when you have no power.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Just practice, flex your potential for being right just by acting as if you did move on. If you saw Bitcoin seven years ago and you didn't have the money to invest in it, so what? It's the fact that you saw it, right? And so I'd say to anyone out there who's not in a position because they're making $18 an hour and they're like,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
and they're in a situation that they don't want to be in and they feel like they have no power to express their ideas. Just practice identifying patterns of the universe and write down what you would have done if you had the power to do something about it. Those reps count. As long as you're being honest, like you would have done it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And I think sometimes people dismiss when they don't have the resources to go all in as if those ideas don't count. So When I was in my darkest days and I had no power to act on things, I would still keep score. Like, damn, if I had some power or money, I would do this. And then the day came when I did.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Anybody out there who's had to deal with the desperation of having a sick parent understands how that just changes your brain chemistry, to be honest. And
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And it turns out, by the way, you make even worse decisions when you do because you can handle the loss, which is very corrupting. You're like, ah, shit. Million dollars a year on a shit coin. Oh, no. Stupid NFT.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
But anyway, so anyone out there who's listening who feels like they don't have the power or the autonomy, like the reps still count, even if you don't have the capacity to do anything about it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Great voice. Although I'm going to end it right now.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Yeah, and this ties together a lot of the themes that we talk about. It requires a second of setup. But for those that don't know my early background, I was the press secretary to the Mayor Giuliani on 9-11, version 1.0 of Mayor Giuliani, America's mayor. And then I ended up becoming chief operating officer of the World Trade Center site to do the rebuilding.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
So I was there standing under that building on the morning of 9-11 and witnessed horrific things. And fast forward many, many, many years later, I wrote the first check into the Drone Racing League, the sport.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And as we were inventing all this technology for this sport, how to fly a drone at 100 miles an hour with a goggle with no latency, it doesn't crash into the wall, how to get radio signals in a complex environment with cinder blocks, like all these technological challenges. In that journey, a couple of years in, we had this feeling that like, wow, what we are inventing could be used by terrorists.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
and your decision-making and when i was young i made a radical decision to drop out of high school at 16 to get my gd so i could go to college so i could get a job making eight bucks an hour literally none of this is hindsight bias that was my decision making and everybody had told me at the time you're gonna be branded a loser for the rest of your life and and i had to come up against conventional wisdom to make that decision and it was the single greatest decision i ever made in my life
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And this is probably going to be the future of warfare with drones. And we should spin off a company quietly, blow the radar and make sure it's built here on American soil. I know this sounds like grandiose, maybe not in hindsight. Right. But at the time. And so we created a company in stealth mode in Alabama called Performance Drone Works.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And I spent the last seven years fighting for this with my co-founders to manifest this company, tens of millions of dollars, many lonely times when nobody believed in it. And the Department of Defense budget, there was like a tiny fraction for small drones. And then Ukraine happens. Right. And we and we and then, of course, the entire battlefield is changed.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And then Elon Musk is suddenly treating about drone wars and everything. This is incredible. On September 11th, 2024, a couple months ago, my company was awarded the U.S. Army Program of Record for small drones, medium range reconnaissance. And so in that journey is everything we've just been talking about.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Because I stood under the Trade Center, it gave me the same feeling like, oh my God, this is going to be the source of terrorist attacks in the future. And the United States must build up a drone ecosystem and get there first before our enemies do. I'm going to do something about it, which is probably the grandiose part, but like, I'm going to do it. And then, okay, phase one.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
I see an opportunity arriving before the tipping point of evidence. This is not just an opportunity. It's a necessity, right? I act on it. I'm alone. There's no money. Investors won't put money in. You know, the company almost goes under. I have to save it, right? There's no programs at the U.S. Department of Defense.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
I've got to act on it, and I have to spend the time alone and endure the skepticism and the ridicule with my fellow co-founders. And then on the other side, we win the program of record. And then it becomes obvious. And so what I love about that is when people see it now, like, well, of course you're in drones. What do you mean, of course I'm in? Like, do you know what it took to build this thing?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And so I love that because it's the most important work I've ever done in my life. I mean, maybe competes with this book because the book is helping people reach their potential. But building this company is is the most important thing I ever worked on for the home team. You know, I'm patriot like you never served in the military, but this is my chance to do something. And and I love it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
I love it because it was bold and courageous. And now we've created an exquisite product that is serving the elite warfighters in this country. That's what I'm working on.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And I think one of the best things about like people say, what do you really burn the boats for in your life? If you had to summarize, I burned the boats for autonomy, because when you grow up with poor with dysfunction, you have no power to save your family members to help them. You have no power to dictate your life. And I hated it. I'll never go back.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And so when you get a little bit older, what are you going to do with your autonomy? I now have autonomy, right? Some wealth and and reputation. I could spend it. I would not. I want to be around military members. Nothing brings me more joy and seems objectively incredibly honorable than the U.S. military. And so now I get to use my autonomy to put myself in situations like that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
I was just in Poland overseas. I've been all over the U.S. on different bases. I finally feel like I know where I want to spend most of my time on. And that's the benefit of all this hard work that is behind me. Matt, can you talk?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
I can talk about what we did. I mean, this gives you context to how much work goes into this. Like we, we, we had done a million dollars of revenue last year in 2023 after six years of work, whatever the year. Right. But then in the seventh year, we'll probably do $50 million of revenue this year.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
That single decision to drop out at 16, start college at 16, pulled forward my entire career. And Warren Buffett talks about this all the time in the context of money, about compounding. But he doesn't talk about it in terms of career. The sooner you put your ambition into production, the more years you have to reap the exponential gains.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And we'll eventually end up doing half a billion dollars of revenue in another, you know, whatever, seven years. Because the thing about this work, it's called the Valley of Death for those who don't know how hard it is to build a defense tech company.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
And the reason it's called the Valley of Death, this is a long delta between when you first make a prototype and you have all these early signals like, oh, this is necessary. Government is great at like encouraging you. But the problem is a program of record, which is the thing that sustains you.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
takes years and years and years to go there so there's this big value of death where it's very hard to raise money and uh but once you get a program a record you kind of get to the other side so what i love about our product is called the um c100 it was reverse engineered specifically for what does the warfighter need to call in their own their own air support
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
Burn The Boats - Greatness Has No Plan B With Matt Higgins
Like, how do we make something that really is responsive? Whereas I think a lot of things out there are like science projects where like, oh, it'd be really cool if we could do this. Like, okay, that's great. What happens when it rains? You know what I mean? Or like all these practical things. And so we've created an incredible company that marries operators and engineers under one roof.
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And so the product is designed with the warfighter in mind. And so that gives you some context of it. But yeah. I'll tell you, it was no fun when the revenue was zero. And, you know, you don't really know what the future holds. The valley of death.
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No, no, it is. Honestly, like those, it is the worst possible space to invest in. But I didn't invest. I built. Does that, you know what I mean? It's very different. I decided, I decided like I'm going to go all in and, and, and, We are going to put tens of millions of dollars into this. We're going to make it happen.
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I was so confident about the vision, but you can't be confident you're going to win. People think like there's so much criticism of the government. It's inefficient. All these things. True. Elon Musk with Doge. I will say the government is very good, though, enforcing competition and making people do irrational things. And like to get here, we have to beat out the best.
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You know, this wasn't like no one's handing anything to you. You have to make a great product. So you there are others competing for similar contracts. I mean, there were dozens of competing, but not only dozens, the biggest defense companies in the United States competing.
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But we just happened to, because I had the insight and because the company was born of this technology, the greatest experts in small drones in the world, we just happened to make a better product. And I had a year and back to others who are listening to this, who have their own vision for innovating in a category.
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You have a head start against incumbents because you've been thinking about it longer and you've been thinking about it from the outside. Whereas a Lockheed Martin or some other company might be thinking about a million things. We were thinking about one thing. The future of warfare is going to center around small drones. And here's how you make an amazing small drone.
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And that's the only thing we worked on for years and years. And that focus paid off in creating the best drone in this category, 20, 20 pound drone. Yeah. Singular focus is incredibly powerful. Coming from the guys who have total ADD and do a million things. Yes.
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We were just talking about being early on Bitcoin and all these other things. I was early on Matt Higgins. And I was early because I burned the boats on this one crazy radical idea. And so when you try to figure out how does this all hold together, all these companies, these different careers, it's just this pattern playing out over and over again.
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How do you square the fact that you teach at Harvard or you are on Shark Tank? Well, each one I'm killing myself. for that thing.
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It does. And I do think there's a – where you and I are making a distinction that is really important, right? It's not that you have to only do one thing in life. Just make sure the one thing is about the one thing. Right. And then make sure you're allocating enough bandwidth to make a difference. This is where I do struggle. I'm sure everybody listening, you probably struggle. Right.
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I want to be stimulated. I want to have fun. I want to I do want to go ahead and buy, you know, whatever coin we were just talking about. You know, we're human beings. Right. I don't watch Netflix. I like I trade. That's my fun. But but there is energy leakage that I always have to be mindful for. So I spent a lot of mental energy thinking about opportunity cost.
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What is the opportunity cost of this distraction? And I'm willing am I willing to pay that price? If I'm going to spend a half an hour playing around with Twitter and looking for the next big idea, I know that I could be using it out of one of my companies. And a lot of times, as long as it's about a relief valve, an escape hatch, we all need one, then I'm okay with it.
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But I would argue, everyone, the way to strike a right balance about focus is to constantly ask, what's the opportunity cost of the distraction? And I'm willing to pay it. As long as you've asked a question and you're willing to pay it, then it's okay. What makes Matt Higgins happy? Um, it's also cliche. I've number one, I married my best friend, which is great.
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I hang out with like, you know, truly my best friend. And so it makes days fun. I love being around my kids as long as I get that right. I'm okay. And I love travel. I like being uncomfortable. I like being deposited in a place where I can't read the signs and I like seeing the world upside down and I like being stimulated.
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So if I could absent family, I would be on a plane and, and just be in airports all the time. And just like looking at that board saying, where am I going next? You know, I love to be in strange places.
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I see something, I believe in something, and then I figure out how to overcome my anxiety and just go all in.
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I want to give two answers because one I'm sitting with, I just, God forbid, turned 50 recently. And it does prompt a little bit of an existential crisis. So I'll give you the benefit of that. I didn't buy a Ferrari, but I've been probing my decision making. Yeah. The number one piece of advice I would give is that nobody cares.
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And like you and I talked about it off camera, I think, but we spend so much time self-censoring our own ambition in anticipation of how that ambition will be received by a boss or a spouse or the voices in our head. And we don't realize that nobody cares. And like, as you get older, you realize like, oh, winners don't care because they're so focused on what they're doing.
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And the only ones that don't care are not deserving of your time. They're deserving of your empathy, right? Of like, oh, if you really care about me, that's so tragic because you're just, you know, wasting. So number one would have been nobody cared. Number two. would be for those who have born up born with scarcity and who have, have some degree of dysfunction or desperation.
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I do think it does something to your psychology of money, which is everything's about a lotto ticket. There's no way out of your hole. I remember there was no way out of my hole growing up with my mom. So we would, she would spend money on Omaha steaks. Like it'd be so bizarre. We would order these Omaha steaks. And I'm like, why? And the answer was like, tomorrow has no more hope than today.
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So we might as well feel good today. And so there was a lot of ticket mentality that I think I was born was the only way out of this if I went a lot of ticket. And I think that follows you through adulthood. And so my greatest regret with money is that I squandered the greatest gift everyone is given, which is time. Anybody on this call on listening has actually the power to manifest wealth.
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simply by taking advantage of compounding in time. And I did not learn that until half my life was over. And it's like, damn, I squandered that asset. Like we were talking about Bitcoin for some context, right? I mined Bitcoin starting in 2012. And I was early and I mined 290 Bitcoins. And I got disinterested with that idea. I lost hope. I even put in my book, Bitcoin Stupid.
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And I sold that Bitcoin in 2016. And if I had had not a lotto ticket mentality, but born with the recognition that compounding is everything, I would have stuck with the math of Bitcoin back then. And today that position is worth $30 million. By the time I'm 70, it'll be worth almost $400 million. And by the time I died, actuarially, it would be worth a billion.
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So, if you are listening and you have a heartbeat, the greatest asset you still have in your possession is compounding. And I wish I had realized that, but because I was so anxious to escape that I didn't realize that pattern had taken hold of me. So, I would have gone back in time and be like, Matt, you got it all wrong. Just put it in the S&P. Yeah. Dollar, dollar, dollar cost average, baby.
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It just means, I always say this, it's one of my favorite principles. It's hard enough to be right. It's impossible to know when you're going to be right. And I think people confuse those two concepts. They have an idea. They're like, I'm pretty sure self-driving cars are going to happen. And they go all in on something. But they didn't ask, well, when might that happen? And
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It's probably going to take longer than anybody ever realizes, right? And that's the bottom line. You'll never get the timing of the arrival of your epiphany right. So you need to structure your bets to account for that. The better way to approach a thesis is to do what's called dollar-cost averaging, investing in something at regular, disciplined, formulaic intervals that you never change.
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And so for fun, I was doing this exercise last night. I went to chat GPT and I said, what will be the price of Bitcoin in 15 years based upon the previous rate of return? But let's take the rate of return down to just 5% at the end of the 15 year period. If I were to put $1,000 in every month based upon whatever number you come back, what would that be worth in 15 years?
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And the number was like staggering. It was like $9 million. And so dollar cost average simply means investing in regular intervals and not feeling like you got to go all in today. You got to go all into that coin or that idea. And it's how – People like Warren Buffett got rich simply through compounding.
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Dollar cost averaging takes the idea of compounding, which is the more time things have to grow by simple inflation or growth rate, with the idea that you put your investment in at regular intervals so that you don't have to worry about timing the market. I've lost so much money and energy and emotional health by thinking I could time things when in reality, I didn't even need to bother.
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I could have just DCA'd.
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Now, somebody, by the way, somebody here who's listening might say, but I'm already 50. I don't have time. Actuarially, you got to 77. You got 27 years, a long time. You have a ton of time. You got a heartbeat. You got time. So I think that's the reason people, as they get older, say, I don't have time. I need the lotto ticket. Like, no, you don't. You still got time.
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Plus, you really don't have time. Then you don't have time.
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Then you can just go on a cruise and eat fucking gyros all day long, whatever it is. And get some Omaha steaks.
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Great. So I'm on Instagram, Emma Higgins. I'm on LinkedIn a lot for those who are on there. I'm on Twitter, same handle. My book is on Amazon. If you read it, you like it, DM me. I burned the boats when I started it back to being very tactical. I was like, what's a way for this to be an enduring classic?
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And I decided I'm going to DM every single person that ever comments publicly on this book for however long it takes to get to a thousand reviews. And I am 27 away from that. Please put me out of my misery. It's been two years. So if you read that book, DM me.
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And my theory back to doing things other people won't do was that if somebody were to write a review of the book, they probably are more evangelical and they're more likely to pass the word. Books become classics because word of mouth. And so my theory is if I could get more people to review it, it would eventually be an enduring classic and outlive my life. That was the goal I set. And I'm
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I'm 27 away from achieving it.
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Oh, thank you for having me. This is a great conversation. We talked about things I never talked about. So this was fun. That's the goal, brother.
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We do. There's a great YouTube video, if you want to Google it, anyone out there listening, where there's a Navy SEAL, I don't remember his name, and I should find it out. But he asked the entire audience, everyone, stretch your arms up as high as you can. And everyone in the room stretches your arms up, right? And you watch in the video, everybody stretches. Now stretch an inch higher.
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And everyone stretches one inch higher. He said, I thought you were stretching as high as you can. And the point of that is we all have another level of effort, energy and determination that we can only harness if we cut off our backup plan. And this idea of burn the boats, a lot of people probably know it from Cortez, this idea that he burned the boats and he conquered the Aztecs.
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I'm appropriating this war metaphor in a slightly different way. The boats that I'm talking about are the things that we all carry inside of our heads or in our past that make us hesitate when we have a vision for our own future that maybe isn't being validated by people around us.
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In my case, it was that I didn't know which spoon to use at the dinner table because I grew up so dirt poor I was embarrassed by my background. And that shame would make me hesitate. And so I wanted to write a book to really prove – like exactly what you said, the mere presence of a backup plan is exactly the thing forcing you to need one.
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And that there's tons of science and psychology around what happens when you fully commit to your plan. I always say just, you know, burning the boats doesn't guarantee you'll achieve your dreams, but not burning the boats guarantees you never will. And the thing I hacked into, and it's against my nature. I, I'm the most paranoid risk taker you'll ever meet.
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And so this doesn't come effortlessly to me. But I do think the thing I hacked into is I put myself in situations where I don't have the answers and I reverse engineer the outcome by figuring it out. It's how I got onto Shark Tank, you know, when I had no business being there as a shark. It's how I ended up at Harvard Business School on the faculty as a person with a GED to a JD.
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And like, it's not because I'm so special. It's just because I had no choice. I had a gun to my temple. And my mom was dying in the room next door. And the day I became press secretary, the mayor of New York, she died that morning at 10. Like it was a gun.
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And that gun, though, made me hack into something I never would have discovered on my own because we're conditioned to believe that to play it safe is better than to play bold. And because my mom, God bless her, who always believed that anything that little boy set his mind to, he could figure it out. I landed on this burn the boat strategy.
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And ever since I've been sort of running the same play over and over again.
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The problem is if you're the guy who writes that book, a lot of people are turned off by title and think like, Oh, easy for you to say, or it's reckless. I'm like, Oh no, no, it's not easy. And it's definitely not reckless. It comes with a lot of deliberation, you know, to get there.
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Right, where they fully commit to their own potential. Because we're so comfortable, right? Yeah, it's interesting you say that because when I wrote the book, like, Part of me has this geeky academic brain that would love to write like a treatise on neuroscience. But that's not going to resonate with people. So instead, I chose to take a different approach. I did it through storytelling.
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So in my book, I tried to dissect these moments where people had to sort of overcome their own objections and sort of fully commit. The number one piece of advice I always have for it. If you're not fully committing to what you know is true about yourself or the universe, it's usually because you have an enemy within or without.
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Either somebody in your foxhole, it could be a spouse or it could be somebody who's trying to hold you back or something is happening within that you're afraid to face. The dad who never said, I'm proud of you. You know, the incident that you've been trying to conceal, you know, for me, it was the shame of poverty and like lack of refinement.
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But maybe for you, it's you did something wrong and you're afraid to confront it. And so I always think focusing on the enemy within without identifying what's preventing you, when you face it fearlessly, you're like, that wasn't that big of a deal. Then I feel like you can fully commit. It's usually somebody being blocked by something in my experience.
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And my book is full of these little vignettes of trying to say how the person was blocked. And again, I always talk so openly about my anxiety and imposter syndrome. So I could let people know, like, it took work. You know, I wasn't born this way. Kevin O'Leary was born this way. He's totally self-possessed, but I'm not.
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I love archetypes like that because he was on a CNBC interview. For those who know Kevin O'Leary, he's obviously Shark Tank and he's my colleague. I love the guy. But he went on CNBC and they were ripping him to shreds for FTX, right? And I've never and this is his like home network. And it was such an uncomfortable interview.
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And I called him and I said, Kevin, like, first of all, I'm so impressed you handle that. But also, how do you how do you handle that without feeling, you know, torn apart? He goes, oh, Matt, here's the thing. I just don't give a F. I was like, Kevin, I do. And he goes, that's your problem, baby. Yeah.
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See, the thing for me, it's a little different. I am endlessly intellectual curious to see if somebody might have a point. And so I spent a lot of mental energy being like, do I agree with you? But I don't actually give a shit if you agree with my vision. I don't care at all. I'm happy to be alone sitting with my little Bitcoin mining, you know, or whatever it is. But I do care.
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I am interested when you project your negative energy. I mean, one, it triggers empathy. I know it sounds nuts, but I'm always like, oh, what a waste of your life. That sucks. You're going to wake up one day and realize you wasted your energy directed at me. And two, do you have anything I can learn from this negative energy? And so it's a little more cerebral, but it's a waste of time.
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I would much rather be Kevin O'Leary, but I'm not.
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I mean, it was it was amazing, you know, getting through. I tell the story in the book, too, about imposter syndrome is a great proxy. You know, Damon John is on Shark Tank. Damon grew up like a mile from me. A lot of similarities. He's black. I'm white. That's a big difference. But he worked at Red Lobster. I was at McDonald's.
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Like, so we kind of connect on this, like, who's poorer than who thing, you know? Yeah. I went to the dressing room and I was just honest. I was like, man, I'm so freaked out going on this show. And he was like, why? And I was like, I don't know. I just kind of feel like, what am I doing here? And he would first, I left everybody else. He's like, look what we did. Look where we came from.
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And then he told me the one greatest piece of advice I love sharing to this audience. Like, because you belong here because you are here. And I always say it's like, oh, Plato or Socrates, like you belong here. I think therefore I am. I belong here because I am here. Anyone here ever feels out of place. There is no final arbiter of belonging. No one's going to let you know you've arrived.
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It's for you to realize if you're in the room, you're meant to be in the room. after that little pep talk, the experience was amazing. Everything you see on the show, oddly is the way it is on the show. And so, cause you, I thought there'd be way more scripting and it's like lights, camera action. And also everyone is so rude steps on each other. Like, cause it's real money at stake.
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And when I say rude, I'm being kind of playful, but, Like there's no, there, there, there, there's no like chivalry. Everyone's trying to win the deal. And as a mental exercise, it's fun. Cause when you're home, you're like, I would do that deal.
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And you're like doing the math when you're like trying to sell somebody and make you thinking that you're the one you stay, you know, you should take your money. But at the same time, you're assessing whether you want to do the deal. There's a lot going on in your mind at the same time, which I think is really interesting psychologically.
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Yeah, we shared all the good stuff, though. We got to respect it.
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Like most fundamentally, how do you determine if somebody is truthful and worthy of backing, you know, in 40 minutes?
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Now it would be fun if that were the case. I honestly wish there was more game theory like that. I do think if anyone ever creates a winning iteration of Shark Tank, it's going to have more game theory about how to screw each other. But the answer is no. I mean, they... Real money, real intent to do the deal, real work.
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I mean, the part that is I'm kind of fascinated by, like I was only on a couple of seasons and I just did Shark Tank Dubai, which was totally trippy, but we can get into that. But if I had been on many years, I don't think I would do it. I don't think it'd be worth it. The amount of energy it takes to Like, look, you do a deal with somebody, you know, you write a check.
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You're also signing up for a job. And that job has got to answer the phone when you're when you're when your founder calls you and things are going terrible. Right. And you've got to monitor your money. Some of these have they have hundreds of deals. And like these aren't the next like chat GBT. Right. You know, they're not having a shark tank if they are. Right.
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Life is good. I feel good. A lot of fun, stimulating stuff going on. We're in this sort of go-go era. Everybody's lost their mind, texting me shit coins all night. It's great. It's good to be back.
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There are that many squatty potties in the universe, right? So I don't know if I would have ever done it for all those years because it's so much work to hustle those deals.
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I mean, it is, but you can't get the brand play without doing the work of investing in the deals and those deals, heavy tax. That's why I admire Kevin O'Leary. Kevin and I do stuff together. We're in a dumpling, a thing called Brooklyn dumpling shop, which we both love that guy worse, man. Like, like he works harder on the deal than I work on the deal.
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And, and, and, and he has, he's more spread thin. He's on TV all the time. So all the sharks really work because there's no other choice to make these deals play out.
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been on the show behind the scenes you know what it is maybe what what comes to mind yeah i would probably say the number one i'm just responding and no one's ever asked me this question so i'm just responding like primitively like what's the first word that came to mind and it was it's optimism each one of those people's fundamentally optimistic that anything is possible and that anyone can do anything that doesn't that didn't say pollyannish which would have been another word right like or naive
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But they are fundamentally optimistic. And I'm going through Lori and Barbara and Margaret. That's number one. And then two, fearless. Like, I've done deals with all of them. When shit's not going right, they don't panic. I hate investors, even though I can be an investor too, but I'm fundamentally a builder and a founder.
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Investors, they get so panicky and the first one to freak out and they have a very myopic view. Wait, I'm going to lose all my money. I was like, what about that guy who's going to have to go home and face his wife and kids that he squandered the 401k for the business that didn't work out? So what I've found is when things go poorly, they become more fearless and working with all of them.
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And then three, I'd say everyone's a grinder. Mark Cuban, I'll give you an example of what I mean by that. I think sometimes when somebody doesn't have money and they're climbing up, they imagine when you get money, you're like, I'm not going to work. I'm going to be in the Caymans and other people are going to do shit for me. It's not true.