April 8, 2024 • 40 mins
In this episode, Gia interviews Matt Gerlach, a successful entrepreneur and author who shares his journey of triumph over adversity and personal transformation.
Matt discusses his struggles with anxiety, panic attacks, and setting boundaries, leading to his path of healing and self-discovery. Through somatic therapy and writing his memoir, Matt found inner peace and redefined success as prioritizing peace above all else.
The episode highlights the importance of vulnerability, setting boundaries, and embracing inner peace in achieving personal growth and fulfillment.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua, empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
now. Welcome to Your Future Starts Now. I'm
your host, Gia Lacqua. Thanks for joining us today. I am so excited
(00:43):
to introduce you to Matt Gerlach. Matt is a highly
accomplished entrepreneur and author who's triumphed over
extreme adversity, emerging as an expert in personal
transformation and alignment. Having become one of the leading experts in
entrepreneurship, Matt's helped three global powerhouse brands
explode beyond 100 million in annual revenue before founding
(01:05):
his consulting firm, that helped build dozens of seven and eight digit
businesses while creating nearly seven digit business of
his own. Through a personal journey riddled with struggles, Matt
confronted his feelings of brokenness, which forced him
into a process of introspection and self-discovery. Matt
firmly believes that each person possesses profound wisdom within
(01:26):
themselves. And he's dedicated to empowering his clients to
access that wisdom and overcome the obstacles that
hinder their dreams from becoming a reality. Matt,
Thank you for having me. And wow, reading that or hearing you read
(01:51):
Yeah, I would say so. It's been a very busy life, especially past
Amazing. Amazing. So tell us a little bit about your
Sure. So, you know, I graduated
college. I guess I'm going to start here. And I've always been a top
(02:12):
performer. I, you know, I got a job when I was 15. I'd always had
a great work ethic and just sort of like fell into
these random careers. I sold metal. I
don't think anybody dreams of that sort of a job. It
wasn't bad, you know, just really not very fulfilling
that it's a paycheck and you know, you get to help people with
(02:33):
their mental needs if you are into that sort of thing. And
I ended up Well, so I'm gay and, you know, and
I lived in kind of a smaller town and I
lived in a smaller town in Los Angeles. And I always knew
that I wanted to move to New York. And I finally took the
plunge. And in 2010, I
(02:56):
just reached out to anybody and everybody. By this point in my career, I
was pretty scrappy and just determined and able to accomplish things
like this. And I wound up in the baby product industry, which
was a just another random career. Very,
very nice career. A lot of good people. It was booming in this time.
You know, like there's a lot of these baby product companies that were founded out
(03:18):
of Manhattan. Because even rich people don't have huge
apartments and don't want to be looking at a Winnie the Pooh, you
know, play gym in the middle of their living room, they want something nice. So
I worked for three companies and just completely learned
so much about entrepreneurship, went on to found my own consulting firm,
and started helping small, medium, baby product brands. And two
(03:40):
of the clients that I said I would achieve great
results for it. I did. And I just kind of became their head of sales,
their VP of sales for two brands. And that's what I've been doing
for the past seven years. And what
happened when I started the business was I was absolutely
hit with a With a
(04:02):
huge surprise, I started having anxiety. I
started having, well, I didn't know it was anxiety at the time, but I started having health
problems. My blood pressure was diagnosed as being high. I
completely obsessed about it. My partner and I moved back
from New York to Los Angeles. I spent my first
night in LA, checked into the hospital, thinking
(04:23):
I was having a heart attack. They thought I might be as well too. soon
started having panic attacks, couldn't really drive very much at
all for the next two years. And this all set me down a healing
journey. And it was, it
changed my life. I mean, I You know, really sort of getting to
this other side and seeing
(04:44):
the adversity that I've overcome. I can honestly say there's not really any
part of it that I would trade. I mean, I think that it builds character.
You look at who's out there changing the world, and it's not
really people that haven't been through some sort of adversity or some extreme
adversity. So yeah, so
I went on this healing journey. And really, I recognized that there was a
lot of trauma that happened in my life. I, I
(05:07):
had always sort of known that that my childhood and that there were things
that happened that weren't really, it didn't make
me feel good. But to my recollection, at least at
this point, nothing horrific had ever happened. And just
kind of the narrative was like, I don't deserve to feel that way. Like,
you know, small t trauma, or little t trauma, as
(05:28):
Dr. Gabor Mate calls it. We,
I think a lot of us grow up and think that we're not really supposed
to feel harmed for, you know, small
things that happened. And there was a lot that happened at school. I
was, you know, being gay at a young age and I had
no friends at all for about three and a half, four years of my formative
(05:49):
years and at home thought something was wrong with
me and just kind of carried it through all the way through
adulthood. Alcohol, marijuana helped. I
made a lot of friends and a lot of good friends, but just never dealt
with it. And then this entrepreneurship journey really forced me
(06:10):
Such an incredible story. Thank you, Matt, for sharing that.
I'm curious, hearing you talk, I think
a lot of us carry things from our childhood, right?
Whether they're trauma or not, I
think we carry a lot of that with us. And it's unspoken.
I think a lot of times we try
(06:32):
to forget about it, right? Or we suppress it. Or
we tell ourselves wasn't a big deal. Right? Or
that was normal. It was normal for our experience. Right.
And to your point, maybe that's why it's harder to identify. I'm
curious as to what that moment was like for
you when you started your business and started to have these
(06:55):
symptoms and these signs. What was that turning point like for
Um, yeah, I mean, I would agree. It's all of the above. It's denial. It's,
um, you know, a big, big thing. Like,
you don't know what you don't know. We don't know what we don't know. And the only
reason that I, or the main reason I would say that I am where
I'm at today is because I just, I, you know, I love
(07:17):
reading. I am social person. I have hundreds of thousands of
friends, not hundreds. of thousands, hundreds and even thousands
of friends. Yeah. And I've just been exposed to so many different things.
And you start to learn that like, this is not like
you start to learn from other people's stories and get perspective. But if you, you
know, never leave your hometown, and I'm only surrounded by
(07:39):
the 10 people that you grew up with, you're probably not going to recognize to,
you know, the, the full degree of
what you've grown up with and the chaos that it might have been. I
wish I had some sort of like epiphany moment where I could tell you that
like everything changed, but it was a very gradual process for
me. When you asked that question, one thing stood
(08:01):
out. I remember exactly where I was. I was taking
my dog for a walk. I had had a very meaningful
lunch with a family member who sort of started validating for
the first time, really validated some of the feelings I had. And
I was walking the dog and I was like, this question came
into my mind, something that I had just like pondered hundred
(08:23):
times probably. And it was like, and I hope
this is not too graphic, but just like, I'd always kind of thought of like a
woman, you know, being raped as like a really, really horrible trauma. And
I had heard so many stories of like, women that don't, that
don't speak out about it, that don't think that they deserve to speak out
about it. And I've always just thought, like, why wouldn't somebody that's
(08:43):
been abused like that speak out and say something? And I was crossing the
street, one foot in front of the other, and I was like, they don't
realize it was abuse. And that
was probably the closest thing I had to an epiphany. I've
had a lot of friends come out lately. I mean, not lately, but over the years
and, you know, admitted sexual abuse that's happened to
(09:05):
them. And we just don't know that
Yeah. Yeah, that is
so profound. And, you know, I think there's probably a lot of
reasons, but that is that is a big one, right? You don't realize what's
happened to you and have trouble processing it, let alone
(09:27):
speaking your truth out loud. Right. There's also there's shame
that's involved. There's fear of coming forward. But
such a powerful moment when you realize maybe what happened to me
wasn't OK. right. And and having the
ability to create awareness around that and explore what that feeling
is, I think can be so powerful. And I love what you said about
(09:49):
kind of expanding your scope, right, in
terms of your knowledge and experiences. You
know, I'm a self-development junkie. I love reading. I love
learning about other people's stories. And to your point, it does force
you to be introspective and reflect on your own experiences, too. So,
you know, I love, which is one of the reasons I started this podcast. I think there's such
(10:10):
power in learning from other people who have been
through similar and different experiences from you. So I
love that. And as you know, I also had my own experience with heart palpitations.
And it's scary, right? When you think you're having a heart attack, I was too
afraid to admit to myself that I thought I was having a heart attack. I'm
like, nope, can't be. There's no way, right? But
(10:32):
yeah, it is incredibly scary. And I think so many of us carry
the physical symptoms of stress
and anxiety, right? And chronic stress that
we carry in our body and we hold and then it has those physical manifestations
and You know, I think it's now we're at a point where we're starting to talk about
it more. And the mind body connection is super important. I
(10:54):
know we're going to get into that. But talk to me a little bit about. So
you went from having anxiety, depression and panic attacks so
bad that you couldn't drive a car. And then you were making
a million dollars in a year. That's a bit of a unique
situation, I'm going to say. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah, I mean, it was like I
(11:17):
wish I could. I'm still putting it all together. But
I mean, I mean, I have a pretty firm grasp on on how
this all went down. I remember when I was suffering so
bad, you know, afraid that I was going to die. And at the same time,
like I started to learn that what was happening to
me wasn't all health problems. Like my blood pressure
(11:38):
wasn't that high. And I had luckily found these
compassionate doctors. And I called
the cardiologist, hey, I just checked my blood pressure at home. And it's, hi,
can I come on in? And yeah, come on in, Matt. And she was always nice.
And I mean, everyone was always nice to me. Finally, once
I realized this was anxiety, I started to have
(11:59):
this visualization of
going to a recovery center. And this wasn't like a recovery center for
anything necessarily specific. It was a recovery center for
life, just for not having, I mean, since
I've turned 15, I've had a couple of weeks off now.
(12:19):
I have a little more freedom. I get a little vacation here or there. But
the first 20 years of my life, I didn't
really ever disconnect from life. I don't remember a single moment in
my 20s where I ever like, just
sat there. Like, I don't remember any sort
of moment like that. And I had this, I
(12:41):
knew I needed to, to, I know, I needed to rest. And
I had this dream of this, like, recovery center on the beach, and
these, like, white curtains going in the wind. And I
just, like, I knew that nobody was coming for me,
there was no help. You know, I knew that I wouldn't
be homeless, but like, I also, part
(13:02):
of my trauma from growing up was like, anything that
ever was wrong in my life was always my fault. And
that built some character, you know, it built some resiliency. Like
I certainly haven't found myself playing the
victim card very often. But
I was very independent and I while I
(13:23):
was struggling at this point, I needed to slow down and I'd always been
a good saver. So like I truly I did have money in the bank where if
I wanted to close the business and just like take a year off, I
could have done that. But my background has a
lot of financial trauma where there's just this constant saving for
tomorrow, saving for tomorrow. mean, just
saving for a catastrophe, and not really enjoying life.
(13:47):
So I just, you know, I pushed this business towards success. And
at the same time, like it was, it was horrible for me at
so many moments, because it was so stressful, but it was offering this,
it was offering two things, it was a platform for me to grow. And I
could see that happening. I mean, I had coaches and therapists, and
mentors all around me, and it was affording me
(14:07):
the opportunity to pay for them. And to pay for, I started somatic healing.
I went to yoga teacher training. About three years ago,
I hired a writing coach and started writing a book. I mean, these things are very expensive.
I mean, I spent absolutely $100,000 on healing, if not more. really
what started happening was like, as I started healing and learning my worth and
(14:30):
setting boundaries and learning what I was doing for my clients, that's
when I was able to start advocating for myself. And really, like,
it just kind of all perpetuated itself. And as I
started to become more confident and feeling good, and knowing
that I deserved the abundant life that I was creating for myself, I
asked for it. And you know, my compensation package was variable. It
(14:51):
was based on performance. And I just got
the confidence and oh my god, it was hard, but to negotiate what
I was deserving of. And so yeah,
it was driven by absolute scarcity. I don't necessarily recommend
that sort of a strategy. But
at the same time, my story is unique and that it offered me a
(15:16):
Mm hmm. Absolutely. It's your own unique journey. And so
I hear you saying you're you have some financial trauma
from the past that was impacting you in your current day and
the scarcity mindset. You know, I also hear
you talk about self-worth with which I think is such a common theme
for people. Right. Regardless of what's happened to them at some
(15:38):
point in their lives, I feel like we have all questioned, are
we enough? where we all carry this concept of,
I'm not enough. And so I love what you talked about
healing that piece of it and really giving yourself
the confidence from within, in knowing your worth,
regardless of what you do, where you live,
(16:01):
right? The kind of car that you drive. And I think that's such
a powerful, powerful lesson. It does take some
introspection. It does take a lot of work. Right?
But the payoff, to your point, once you have found
that, and that inner peace, is such
a game changer. And, you know, I love hearing you talk
(16:23):
about that. You also talked about somatic
healing and would like to talk a little bit
more about that. So tell us a little bit about
somatic therapy, what it is, your experience with
it. Obviously, you know, it deals with the mind-body connection. I
think the way I like to explain it and think about it generally is, you
(16:44):
know, traditional talk therapy is a top-down approach of, you
know, cognitively thinking and processing feelings
and emotions, right, which then may have an effect on
your feeling in your body. But somatic therapy, from my perspective, and
what I know about it is more of the bottoms up. It's how do we
work within the body, right, which then may transform your
(17:04):
thoughts and your feelings. So I'm curious as
to what role did that play in your healing journey? What was
Somatic experiencing therapy is probably
the reason that I am where I'm at right now. I
found a practitioner that was just absolutely
(17:25):
fantastic. And I'm
not sure that every somatic experiencing therapist is created
equally. The one that I had was just somebody who was
so compassionate towards me and that
really changed the game for me. Because what
(17:48):
happened, for me, when I first started my healing journey, I
found Brene Brown. And that was the first
author that I'd ever really read every book. And I'm just like,
my books have all these marks in them. And I was able to
identify that shame was really at the core
of what was of what was really
(18:10):
holding me back the most. There was the shame. And then also, which
is my superpower, I learned that vulnerability is
the way through shame. And
it's funny, like even in childhood, I was always a very emotionally intelligent, sensitive
guy. I was able to express my feelings, but over the
years that it sort of clammed up and stopped wanting to talk about feelings.
(18:32):
And so somatic experiencing changed
this. because It gets you
into the body to trust what your body is telling you.
Like I remember us in one in one therapy
session, us, me and the therapist, you know, just walking
through, OK, let's like let's like get into your childhood home
(18:56):
and I'm there with you. Who else do you want with us? The two of us,
me and you. And who else do you want? I chose Oprah. Nice.
So and like you're really able to like
rely on the body's intuition like and I was able to
remember like how I felt during like that specific moment that we were
(19:16):
there and let that guide the you're
not in your brain you're in your body and you're letting your body
like you're learning how to trust your body. And
I'm not the best at explaining this. And truthfully, I don't even know what was going on
for most of this. And I mean, it wasn't invasive. It wasn't, I
mean, it wasn't really truly uncomfortable. It was just learning how
(19:38):
to connect your body's signals
to your heart and then to your vocal cords
and then out your mouth. And you can, it really
got me to, open up about what
my body had remembered, you know, like the book, the body keeps the
score, like this book has been on the bestseller list for like, what, 180 weeks
(20:01):
or something right now. And when we
are, when we're suffering from trauma, our
minds aren't really the first place
that we find the answers and because we don't trust our minds, we've
been told that we can't trust our minds. And
(20:22):
you, it's like, you know, like, it's like, I mean, this is therapy 101, you
know, I mean, you go to see a therapist, like you start telling them, okay, like, my,
you know, husband yelled at me, or my wife, you know, won't, like,
talk to me sometimes, they ask you, how does that make you feel? You
know, so it's like, It's
really about getting yourself out of your mind and into
(20:45):
your body. And you're able to feel however you
want to. You might be
more resilient than I am and something that didn't hurt your feelings really
hurt mine. And that's not
my fault for being too sensitive. That
is... Like for me, a big part of like the journey with
(21:06):
entrepreneurship was that like, I had to set boundaries for the
first time ever. I had to advocate for myself and I
couldn't do it because I had never lived in a situation where
there were appropriate boundaries. I had never been respected by
people above me in a way like that, that I could
have, I mean, what are they, what's the word? I'm
(21:28):
struggling with the word right now. What is it? Um, like just having a disagreement and
getting through it. Like that was foreign to me. I thought
that when disagreements happened, fights happened and people yelled and,
you know, tears had to happen. So, um,
somatic experiencing therapy for me, just your
(21:51):
I love that. So, so powerful. And I think oftentimes we
become dissociated from our body over time.
And so reconnecting and bringing
up memories that are stored in our bodies almost at a cellular level is
just so incredibly powerful. You talked about boundaries
a little bit and having to set boundaries. I want to explore
(22:13):
that a little bit and sort of how you learn to establish those boundaries for
Um, if you don't mind, can I comment on that dissociation piece
real quick? Because this was a big, I mean, this was huge for
me. Like dissociation is what happens, you
know, if somebody is going through a traumatic episode, you're being, um, intensely
(22:35):
physically violated. We do dissociate and
it is a form of protection. Like you are escaping the
pain of your body. And I learned that, like,
I think that the connotation might be like, Oh, dissociation is
bad. I mean, It's not ideal
to be in a place where you're having to dissociate, but dissociation saves
(22:58):
It's a coping mechanism, right? In the moment, it is saving you,
but long term, it's not effective. Right.
Well, and then I mean, along with setting boundaries, your question, it's like
getting yourself in a situation where you're not having to dissociate ever
and boundaries. I mean, you know, I had a friend say
(23:19):
this to me many years ago. She said something like life is a
constant, like, I wish I remember the exact verbiage, but it's
like life is a constant. It's
all about setting boundaries. I mean, it's just like they're like, there's never
a place in your life where you're like, Oh, I've set all my boundaries. I'm good. You
know? Yeah. It's and I don't know how
(23:41):
else to do it other than to start, you know, get support
for sure. You know, read your books, listen to people, talk to your friends. But
you start small, you know, when you're at dinner with somebody and,
you know, I'm just making this up, but like you don't drink and somebody ordered
$300 bottle of wine and you're splitting the check several ways and you can't afford it. Hey, guys,
(24:01):
you know, I really can't afford this right now. I think one
of the ways to set boundaries is through vulnerability. You know, really
just being honest about what you can handle. Don't start off like setting your
boundary with some narcissistic boss that flies
off the handle at everything small. That is not the place to start setting boundaries.
But you get there, you know, and you get to where I
(24:23):
am right now. And I'm not, I mean, like I said, you're not done setting boundaries
ever. But I remember there being situations, you
know, professional situations where I
let things happen to me that I would not let happen
to me now. like, things where somebody's raised their voice and
done something, you know, that's really been unprofessional and
(24:46):
uncompassionate, forget the unprofessional, uncompassionate. And
now, like, I've gotten to the place where I would, you know, I'd be
able to just, you know, say, I'm leaving. And no,
and if that costs me my job, that's, that's okay, at
this point, you know, obviously, that's a privileged place to be able to say that. But
um, boundary, I mean, boundaries are
(25:08):
like, It's not an isolated area. It's part of
the whole equation. As you set these boundaries, you start honoring
your truth. You do get to a place where you are comfortable
with the consequences of those boundaries, because you
don't want people in your life that are not respecting
your boundaries. That's not to mean there's not compromise sometimes, but
(25:31):
like Boundaries, you just
keep practicing and talking about them in therapy, talking about
them with friends. You know, a lot of people are struggling with
It's so interesting, and I agree with you. I hear it
so often, especially in the clients that I work with. I think part
(25:52):
of it is nobody explicitly taught us
how to set boundaries growing up, I think for the most part, right? Some
of us may have been fortunate enough to have that role modeled
in our families, but even then, as a child, you're
not thinking, oh, that's how you set a boundary, right? So
part of it is, learning to
(26:14):
set boundaries. But I think you really touched upon a critical
concept, which is accepting the consequences. I
think we're so afraid of what happens when
we set a boundary, that it deters us from setting the
boundary to protect ourselves. And so once
you get to a place where you can say, I'm okay with
(26:35):
whatever's on the other side of this, Right. I'm okay
if I set a boundary and somebody is not respecting it and I need
to walk away from that relationship. That's okay. And
it's really, really, really hard. Right. And a lot of
the ingrained fears and conditioning comes
up for us in terms of the fear of judgment. Right.
(26:56):
The fear of losing a friendship, the fear of vulnerability and
being able to share what you need and what you actually
want. And so, you know, I always like you said, start small. I
always encourage people to figure out where they're feeling that tension in
their lives, where they're feeling the discomfort. when they feel like
they have to do something or should do something versus they
(27:19):
want to be somewhere or with someone, exploring what
that feeling is and really looking at what's bringing that up
and where do they need to set or wanna set some boundaries in their lives. Yeah,
such an important topic. You are
writing a book. I know you mentioned that earlier. Talk
(27:45):
Thank you. So, you know, this book has been a
has been probably my biggest
modality for healing. You know, I don't
think I could have written the book if I didn't start the therapy and get
these thoughts out of me. But I mean, I like writing. I think that
and I'm not trying like when I mean, when I work with my clients, I
(28:07):
try to not mandate any sort of modality, you
know, if writing is not your thing. I think journaling is like one of the most accessible
and amazing things ever. You can just write a couple sentences, but
if that's not your thing, I don't preach that. But I have
found that writing is a place and
it's a place and a way for me to get thoughts out of my head and make
(28:30):
sense of them. So I started this book project.
It's been 38 months, I guess, as of now. Wow.
And I hired a writing coach and I had no experience writing at
all. I didn't even like to read when I was a kid, which
is just crazy because I read probably a book a week now. If I could
read more, I absolutely would. But. Yeah,
(28:51):
so I started writing this book, really outlining my my
my healing journey in 2019, something sort of really
hard happened on my healing journey. My grandmother passed
away, which she was old and this wasn't like
the most traumatic thing ever. But As
I was trying to express my needs to my family, we
(29:16):
had a falling out that really kept us from speaking for about three
years. And this was during COVID and it
was painful for everybody involved. But at the same time, it
was absolutely needed for me to really get to know myself. and
to acknowledge that there were things that I needed that weren't provided
(29:36):
and explore the root of them. And
my book is really sort of takes
place during that time period from 2019 to
2022 as I progressed from these wake-up calls that
I was happening and then reflecting on childhood and
then kind of making sense of it and how I came out on top. You
(29:59):
know, I mean, COVID was a really interesting thing for
me. Talk about boundaries. I was probably the most careful
person of anybody I've met during COVID. I still am
not quite clear what that was about. I would say something like
I started, my life started getting good for the first time ever and
I didn't want to die, you know. where
(30:21):
I think like if I would have been enjoying my life all along the way, I
might have been a little bit more risk tolerant. But the
book really chronicles this journey to where, you
know, my partner and I ended up buying our dream home over here
in LA. And really, I gave myself the life that I wanted. And
through this time, Not to
(30:43):
give too much of a spoiler alert, but I had this general practitioner
who took an insanely abnormal
amount of interest in my mental well-being. And so I
saw him frequently, and we always did these assessments. And
then he's like, Hey, Matt, what's going on? You're not doing... And
(31:03):
one day I came in and he's like, Matt, you know, what's
going on? Like, you're you tested perfectly. And I just
kind of responded intuitively. And I said, I
don't hate myself anymore. And then he looked at me and he said,
Wow, Matt, he was like, if you could bottle that up, like that's worth billions of
And that's kind of the that's kind of the journey that I'm taking the
(31:25):
reader on through this book. And, you
know, it's just like, I just never knew that I was supposed to feel any of
these feelings. I never knew. I just I thought I was broken,
thought I was damaged. And I
came out the other side and I
want to show other people it's possible for them, too. You know, I
(31:46):
didn't I didn't like there weren't like
therapy sessions where I was just like screaming, crying
or anything. It was just like, oh, like it felt good.
Yeah. It's liberating, right? Yeah,
I think because we were taught to suppress
or hide our true feelings. Right. And we were also taught there's good feelings
(32:08):
and bad feelings. Right. So if a bad feeling came up, what
do you do with that? And so I think keep it to yourself. Keep
it to yourself. Right. Like don't don't inconvenience anyone else.
Nobody wants to hear about it. So I think that's
so powerful. And obviously, therapy can be a wonderful healing
modality to process, to go through those
(32:29):
emotions that you have not gone through. And
I love it sounds like such an incredible book, such an inspiring story.
And I can't wait to read it. And I'm sure that a lot of
this work that you do with your clients is
I'm assuming it ties into the mindset work that you do
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now, like I
(32:51):
just, you know, I can't I mean, I'm careful to say this and
I know that life is not linear and there's going to be obstacles that come
my way. But like, I felt so horrible that
I I, you know, I like, I don't feel
anxiety or depression at all. And I haven't felt this for, I
mean, a year maybe. I think it's
(33:11):
possible that there might be some underneath, but I just am
so used to feeling horrible that this is like, it's just so tolerable.
But right now, I mean, my partner and I are starting our surrogacy journey.
You know, business has changed a little bit in my consulting business. The
economy has affected, you know, things. I just have
(33:32):
probably never had more, more
real stress on my on my plate. But I'm
sleeping better than ever. I just I trust that it will all work out
the way it's supposed to. And it's all order.
It's taken a while to get here. But you know, you
learn that like, you don't have to control everything. And I think that's the
(33:54):
effect of trauma. Like, you know, you think that you're Yeah, you
think that you're not good enough. And I could not describe this, like why
this perfectionism, why I was so hard on myself. But
it's like, you start to let that go eventually.
And you just do your best. And you have these boundaries. So
people aren't around that are making you feel bad anymore. And you're
(34:17):
just, you just believe that whatever you When
you believe that whatever you dream is possible, you look around and you
see like there's tens of millions of people who
have accomplished the things that you want to do. And they're
not smarter than you. They might know how to ask for help
better. They might. But it's all mindset. It's
(34:39):
all mindset and learning and learning that that
Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. So Matt,
tell us a little bit about, um, we talk about success on
this podcast and redefining success. Talk to me about how
you define success. What does success look like to you? What does it feel like
(34:59):
to you? And how has that changed? How has that
You know, I have a lot of like, I mean, this is, I
mean, I mean, it's not a hard question to answer, but it's just, I mean, it's a
big question. You know, I mean, I think that there was an, I
think that, like many people, success was mainly financial. When
(35:20):
we were younger, it was things. And
success for me, it still does involve financial safety.
I wouldn't use the word financial. It's
not to buy more things. I mean, it's to buy more things that make you feel
safe. Like I'd love to have a vacation home in the mountains right now.
Nothing fancy, but like I'm that's kind of on my shortlist, something
(35:43):
that I could go to and recharge to. I don't think that's extravagant. The
word that comes up for me, though, is peace. And
I am You know, when this when
this thing happened with my family a few years ago, I
remember just like I probably a therapist asked me and
I was kind of perplexed by the answer that I they're like, there's like
(36:05):
someone said, what do you want? And I just said, peace. And
that meant like internal peace. Yeah. And this this year I read
this book. This this probably changed me. I'm still this really changed
me in December. There was a book called The Velvet Rage.
It's it's a gay author. this book, it's probably
20 years old, or so maybe 30 years old, even I forget exactly. But
(36:27):
he gives like these, like these, these
recommendations, like 27 things to embrace to
live a, you know, fulfilling life. That's not verbatim
at all something like that. And I was just shocked. Like
he said, prioritize inner peace above
all else. And that just
(36:49):
changed everything for me since then. I have. I've
changed the way that I drink, the way that I use
marijuana. I mean, I really haven't. I had some the other day
and it was not what I remember it being, but. It
doesn't make I mean, it makes me feel peace. I mean, I'm eating better. You know, sugar
is not making me feel peaceful. Sorry, I'm giving a long answer, but it's
(37:11):
like it's peace. Yeah. Yeah.
calm, the calm and the peace, I think. And I think that also
relates back to your earlier point talking about Brene,
right? It also ties back to the vulnerability and the authenticity
of being true to who you are at your core. I
(37:33):
think there's such power in that. So, and that's different for
everybody, right? What brings you inner peace is going to be, might be different
than somebody else. So it's great advice. Matt, it's
such an inspiring story. Thanks so much for being here, for sharing your insights and
expertise. Where can our listeners more about, learn
Thank you. And thank you for having me. I love speaking with you and I love the work you're
(37:55):
doing in the world. And I mean, the trauma piece, like, you
know, I know this is a tall statement, but I think all of us
have something, you know, somebody said something
to us when we when we were a child that we never process. Right. There's
a limiting belief. Yeah. How many of us were told, you know, things
about money, like be grateful for what you have. The world is a completely different
(38:16):
place now where the cost of living is just astronomical.
And I believe that I'm very
grateful for a lot. I'm not grateful for a small paycheck that
can't provide me what I need to survive off
of. So thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you. My
website, I'd love for you to follow me. I have a weekly blog.
(38:37):
I'm all about vulnerability and talking about what I'm learning in my journey.
So mattgerlach.com. I'm very active on Instagram at
I am Matt Gerlach. I'm really putting
a lot out there for entrepreneurs right now. I have a mastermind that
I'm starting right now to help entrepreneurs learn their value
and create themselves a very abundant life by setting
(39:00):
boundaries and just everything that I've learned. I want to help other
entrepreneurs right now, but everybody, everybody
will benefit from facing this, this trauma and limiting beliefs.
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Matt. And of course, you can visit my website
at GiaLacqua.com. Reach out on Instagram at GiaLacqua. On
(39:20):
the homepage of my website, you can download your complimentary copy of From Chaos
to Clarity, a 30-day journal for self-discovery and healing. This
is Gia signing off with gratitude for your time and energy. Our
mic drops, but the movement continues. Until next time,
your next chapter is waiting. Take care. That
concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
(39:41):
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
you. And of course, share Your Future Starts Now with the extraordinary women
(40:03):
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
Gia Lacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
Welcome to Your Future Starts Now, the go-to podcast for
extraordinary women who are ready to step into their next chapter with
authentic confidence. I'm your host, Gia Lacqua, empowerment coach,
motivational speaker, children's book author, and girl mom. Whether
you're a corporate powerhouse or an entrepreneur, this show is
designed for you. Your Future Starts Now is more than
(00:20):
just a podcast. It's a movement, a movement towards rewriting
the rules of success for high-achieving women. Are you ready
to get unstuck and step into your next chapter? If
so, you are exactly where you need to be. Your future starts
now. Welcome to Your Future Starts Now. I'm
your host, Gia Lacqua. Thanks for joining us today. I am so excited
(00:43):
to introduce you to Matt Gerlach. Matt is a highly
accomplished entrepreneur and author who's triumphed over
extreme adversity, emerging as an expert in personal
transformation and alignment. Having become one of the leading experts in
entrepreneurship, Matt's helped three global powerhouse brands
explode beyond 100 million in annual revenue before founding
(01:05):
his consulting firm, that helped build dozens of seven and eight digit
businesses while creating nearly seven digit business of
his own. Through a personal journey riddled with struggles, Matt
confronted his feelings of brokenness, which forced him
into a process of introspection and self-discovery. Matt
firmly believes that each person possesses profound wisdom within
(01:26):
themselves. And he's dedicated to empowering his clients to
access that wisdom and overcome the obstacles that
hinder their dreams from becoming a reality. Matt,
Thank you for having me. And wow, reading that or hearing you read
(01:51):
Yeah, I would say so. It's been a very busy life, especially past
Amazing. Amazing. So tell us a little bit about your
Sure. So, you know, I graduated
college. I guess I'm going to start here. And I've always been a top
(02:12):
performer. I, you know, I got a job when I was 15. I'd always had
a great work ethic and just sort of like fell into
these random careers. I sold metal. I
don't think anybody dreams of that sort of a job. It
wasn't bad, you know, just really not very fulfilling
that it's a paycheck and you know, you get to help people with
(02:33):
their mental needs if you are into that sort of thing. And
I ended up Well, so I'm gay and, you know, and
I lived in kind of a smaller town and I
lived in a smaller town in Los Angeles. And I always knew
that I wanted to move to New York. And I finally took the
plunge. And in 2010, I
(02:56):
just reached out to anybody and everybody. By this point in my career, I
was pretty scrappy and just determined and able to accomplish things
like this. And I wound up in the baby product industry, which
was a just another random career. Very,
very nice career. A lot of good people. It was booming in this time.
You know, like there's a lot of these baby product companies that were founded out
(03:18):
of Manhattan. Because even rich people don't have huge
apartments and don't want to be looking at a Winnie the Pooh, you
know, play gym in the middle of their living room, they want something nice. So
I worked for three companies and just completely learned
so much about entrepreneurship, went on to found my own consulting firm,
and started helping small, medium, baby product brands. And two
(03:40):
of the clients that I said I would achieve great
results for it. I did. And I just kind of became their head of sales,
their VP of sales for two brands. And that's what I've been doing
for the past seven years. And what
happened when I started the business was I was absolutely
hit with a With a
(04:02):
huge surprise, I started having anxiety. I
started having, well, I didn't know it was anxiety at the time, but I started having health
problems. My blood pressure was diagnosed as being high. I
completely obsessed about it. My partner and I moved back
from New York to Los Angeles. I spent my first
night in LA, checked into the hospital, thinking
(04:23):
I was having a heart attack. They thought I might be as well too. soon
started having panic attacks, couldn't really drive very much at
all for the next two years. And this all set me down a healing
journey. And it was, it
changed my life. I mean, I You know, really sort of getting to
this other side and seeing
(04:44):
the adversity that I've overcome. I can honestly say there's not really any
part of it that I would trade. I mean, I think that it builds character.
You look at who's out there changing the world, and it's not
really people that haven't been through some sort of adversity or some extreme
adversity. So yeah, so
I went on this healing journey. And really, I recognized that there was a
lot of trauma that happened in my life. I, I
(05:07):
had always sort of known that that my childhood and that there were things
that happened that weren't really, it didn't make
me feel good. But to my recollection, at least at
this point, nothing horrific had ever happened. And just
kind of the narrative was like, I don't deserve to feel that way. Like,
you know, small t trauma, or little t trauma, as
(05:28):
Dr. Gabor Mate calls it. We,
I think a lot of us grow up and think that we're not really supposed
to feel harmed for, you know, small
things that happened. And there was a lot that happened at school. I
was, you know, being gay at a young age and I had
no friends at all for about three and a half, four years of my formative
(05:49):
years and at home thought something was wrong with
me and just kind of carried it through all the way through
adulthood. Alcohol, marijuana helped. I
made a lot of friends and a lot of good friends, but just never dealt
with it. And then this entrepreneurship journey really forced me
(06:10):
Such an incredible story. Thank you, Matt, for sharing that.
I'm curious, hearing you talk, I think
a lot of us carry things from our childhood, right?
Whether they're trauma or not, I
think we carry a lot of that with us. And it's unspoken.
I think a lot of times we try
(06:32):
to forget about it, right? Or we suppress it. Or
we tell ourselves wasn't a big deal. Right? Or
that was normal. It was normal for our experience. Right.
And to your point, maybe that's why it's harder to identify. I'm
curious as to what that moment was like for
you when you started your business and started to have these
(06:55):
symptoms and these signs. What was that turning point like for
Um, yeah, I mean, I would agree. It's all of the above. It's denial. It's,
um, you know, a big, big thing. Like,
you don't know what you don't know. We don't know what we don't know. And the only
reason that I, or the main reason I would say that I am where
I'm at today is because I just, I, you know, I love
(07:17):
reading. I am social person. I have hundreds of thousands of
friends, not hundreds. of thousands, hundreds and even thousands
of friends. Yeah. And I've just been exposed to so many different things.
And you start to learn that like, this is not like
you start to learn from other people's stories and get perspective. But if you, you
know, never leave your hometown, and I'm only surrounded by
(07:39):
the 10 people that you grew up with, you're probably not going to recognize to,
you know, the, the full degree of
what you've grown up with and the chaos that it might have been. I
wish I had some sort of like epiphany moment where I could tell you that
like everything changed, but it was a very gradual process for
me. When you asked that question, one thing stood
(08:01):
out. I remember exactly where I was. I was taking
my dog for a walk. I had had a very meaningful
lunch with a family member who sort of started validating for
the first time, really validated some of the feelings I had. And
I was walking the dog and I was like, this question came
into my mind, something that I had just like pondered hundred
(08:23):
times probably. And it was like, and I hope
this is not too graphic, but just like, I'd always kind of thought of like a
woman, you know, being raped as like a really, really horrible trauma. And
I had heard so many stories of like, women that don't, that
don't speak out about it, that don't think that they deserve to speak out
about it. And I've always just thought, like, why wouldn't somebody that's
(08:43):
been abused like that speak out and say something? And I was crossing the
street, one foot in front of the other, and I was like, they don't
realize it was abuse. And that
was probably the closest thing I had to an epiphany. I've
had a lot of friends come out lately. I mean, not lately, but over the years
and, you know, admitted sexual abuse that's happened to
(09:05):
them. And we just don't know that
Yeah. Yeah, that is
so profound. And, you know, I think there's probably a lot of
reasons, but that is that is a big one, right? You don't realize what's
happened to you and have trouble processing it, let alone
(09:27):
speaking your truth out loud. Right. There's also there's shame
that's involved. There's fear of coming forward. But
such a powerful moment when you realize maybe what happened to me
wasn't OK. right. And and having the
ability to create awareness around that and explore what that feeling
is, I think can be so powerful. And I love what you said about
(09:49):
kind of expanding your scope, right, in
terms of your knowledge and experiences. You
know, I'm a self-development junkie. I love reading. I love
learning about other people's stories. And to your point, it does force
you to be introspective and reflect on your own experiences, too. So,
you know, I love, which is one of the reasons I started this podcast. I think there's such
(10:10):
power in learning from other people who have been
through similar and different experiences from you. So I
love that. And as you know, I also had my own experience with heart palpitations.
And it's scary, right? When you think you're having a heart attack, I was too
afraid to admit to myself that I thought I was having a heart attack. I'm
like, nope, can't be. There's no way, right? But
(10:32):
yeah, it is incredibly scary. And I think so many of us carry
the physical symptoms of stress
and anxiety, right? And chronic stress that
we carry in our body and we hold and then it has those physical manifestations
and You know, I think it's now we're at a point where we're starting to talk about
it more. And the mind body connection is super important. I
(10:54):
know we're going to get into that. But talk to me a little bit about. So
you went from having anxiety, depression and panic attacks so
bad that you couldn't drive a car. And then you were making
a million dollars in a year. That's a bit of a unique
situation, I'm going to say. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Yeah, I mean, it was like I
(11:17):
wish I could. I'm still putting it all together. But
I mean, I mean, I have a pretty firm grasp on on how
this all went down. I remember when I was suffering so
bad, you know, afraid that I was going to die. And at the same time,
like I started to learn that what was happening to
me wasn't all health problems. Like my blood pressure
(11:38):
wasn't that high. And I had luckily found these
compassionate doctors. And I called
the cardiologist, hey, I just checked my blood pressure at home. And it's, hi,
can I come on in? And yeah, come on in, Matt. And she was always nice.
And I mean, everyone was always nice to me. Finally, once
I realized this was anxiety, I started to have
(11:59):
this visualization of
going to a recovery center. And this wasn't like a recovery center for
anything necessarily specific. It was a recovery center for
life, just for not having, I mean, since
I've turned 15, I've had a couple of weeks off now.
(12:19):
I have a little more freedom. I get a little vacation here or there. But
the first 20 years of my life, I didn't
really ever disconnect from life. I don't remember a single moment in
my 20s where I ever like, just
sat there. Like, I don't remember any sort
of moment like that. And I had this, I
(12:41):
knew I needed to, to, I know, I needed to rest. And
I had this dream of this, like, recovery center on the beach, and
these, like, white curtains going in the wind. And I
just, like, I knew that nobody was coming for me,
there was no help. You know, I knew that I wouldn't
be homeless, but like, I also, part
(13:02):
of my trauma from growing up was like, anything that
ever was wrong in my life was always my fault. And
that built some character, you know, it built some resiliency. Like
I certainly haven't found myself playing the
victim card very often. But
I was very independent and I while I
(13:23):
was struggling at this point, I needed to slow down and I'd always been
a good saver. So like I truly I did have money in the bank where if
I wanted to close the business and just like take a year off, I
could have done that. But my background has a
lot of financial trauma where there's just this constant saving for
tomorrow, saving for tomorrow. mean, just
saving for a catastrophe, and not really enjoying life.
(13:47):
So I just, you know, I pushed this business towards success. And
at the same time, like it was, it was horrible for me at
so many moments, because it was so stressful, but it was offering this,
it was offering two things, it was a platform for me to grow. And I
could see that happening. I mean, I had coaches and therapists, and
mentors all around me, and it was affording me
(14:07):
the opportunity to pay for them. And to pay for, I started somatic healing.
I went to yoga teacher training. About three years ago,
I hired a writing coach and started writing a book. I mean, these things are very expensive.
I mean, I spent absolutely $100,000 on healing, if not more. really
what started happening was like, as I started healing and learning my worth and
(14:30):
setting boundaries and learning what I was doing for my clients, that's
when I was able to start advocating for myself. And really, like,
it just kind of all perpetuated itself. And as I
started to become more confident and feeling good, and knowing
that I deserved the abundant life that I was creating for myself, I
asked for it. And you know, my compensation package was variable. It
(14:51):
was based on performance. And I just got
the confidence and oh my god, it was hard, but to negotiate what
I was deserving of. And so yeah,
it was driven by absolute scarcity. I don't necessarily recommend
that sort of a strategy. But
at the same time, my story is unique and that it offered me a
(15:16):
Mm hmm. Absolutely. It's your own unique journey. And so
I hear you saying you're you have some financial trauma
from the past that was impacting you in your current day and
the scarcity mindset. You know, I also hear
you talk about self-worth with which I think is such a common theme
for people. Right. Regardless of what's happened to them at some
(15:38):
point in their lives, I feel like we have all questioned, are
we enough? where we all carry this concept of,
I'm not enough. And so I love what you talked about
healing that piece of it and really giving yourself
the confidence from within, in knowing your worth,
regardless of what you do, where you live,
(16:01):
right? The kind of car that you drive. And I think that's such
a powerful, powerful lesson. It does take some
introspection. It does take a lot of work. Right?
But the payoff, to your point, once you have found
that, and that inner peace, is such
a game changer. And, you know, I love hearing you talk
(16:23):
about that. You also talked about somatic
healing and would like to talk a little bit
more about that. So tell us a little bit about
somatic therapy, what it is, your experience with
it. Obviously, you know, it deals with the mind-body connection. I
think the way I like to explain it and think about it generally is, you
(16:44):
know, traditional talk therapy is a top-down approach of, you
know, cognitively thinking and processing feelings
and emotions, right, which then may have an effect on
your feeling in your body. But somatic therapy, from my perspective, and
what I know about it is more of the bottoms up. It's how do we
work within the body, right, which then may transform your
(17:04):
thoughts and your feelings. So I'm curious as
to what role did that play in your healing journey? What was
Somatic experiencing therapy is probably
the reason that I am where I'm at right now. I
found a practitioner that was just absolutely
(17:25):
fantastic. And I'm
not sure that every somatic experiencing therapist is created
equally. The one that I had was just somebody who was
so compassionate towards me and that
really changed the game for me. Because what
(17:48):
happened, for me, when I first started my healing journey, I
found Brene Brown. And that was the first
author that I'd ever really read every book. And I'm just like,
my books have all these marks in them. And I was able to
identify that shame was really at the core
of what was of what was really
(18:10):
holding me back the most. There was the shame. And then also, which
is my superpower, I learned that vulnerability is
the way through shame. And
it's funny, like even in childhood, I was always a very emotionally intelligent, sensitive
guy. I was able to express my feelings, but over the
years that it sort of clammed up and stopped wanting to talk about feelings.
(18:32):
And so somatic experiencing changed
this. because It gets you
into the body to trust what your body is telling you.
Like I remember us in one in one therapy
session, us, me and the therapist, you know, just walking
through, OK, let's like let's like get into your childhood home
(18:56):
and I'm there with you. Who else do you want with us? The two of us,
me and you. And who else do you want? I chose Oprah. Nice.
So and like you're really able to like
rely on the body's intuition like and I was able to
remember like how I felt during like that specific moment that we were
(19:16):
there and let that guide the you're
not in your brain you're in your body and you're letting your body
like you're learning how to trust your body. And
I'm not the best at explaining this. And truthfully, I don't even know what was going on
for most of this. And I mean, it wasn't invasive. It wasn't, I
mean, it wasn't really truly uncomfortable. It was just learning how
(19:38):
to connect your body's signals
to your heart and then to your vocal cords
and then out your mouth. And you can, it really
got me to, open up about what
my body had remembered, you know, like the book, the body keeps the
score, like this book has been on the bestseller list for like, what, 180 weeks
(20:01):
or something right now. And when we
are, when we're suffering from trauma, our
minds aren't really the first place
that we find the answers and because we don't trust our minds, we've
been told that we can't trust our minds. And
(20:22):
you, it's like, you know, like, it's like, I mean, this is therapy 101, you
know, I mean, you go to see a therapist, like you start telling them, okay, like, my,
you know, husband yelled at me, or my wife, you know, won't, like,
talk to me sometimes, they ask you, how does that make you feel? You
know, so it's like, It's
really about getting yourself out of your mind and into
(20:45):
your body. And you're able to feel however you
want to. You might be
more resilient than I am and something that didn't hurt your feelings really
hurt mine. And that's not
my fault for being too sensitive. That
is... Like for me, a big part of like the journey with
(21:06):
entrepreneurship was that like, I had to set boundaries for the
first time ever. I had to advocate for myself and I
couldn't do it because I had never lived in a situation where
there were appropriate boundaries. I had never been respected by
people above me in a way like that, that I could
have, I mean, what are they, what's the word? I'm
(21:28):
struggling with the word right now. What is it? Um, like just having a disagreement and
getting through it. Like that was foreign to me. I thought
that when disagreements happened, fights happened and people yelled and,
you know, tears had to happen. So, um,
somatic experiencing therapy for me, just your
(21:51):
I love that. So, so powerful. And I think oftentimes we
become dissociated from our body over time.
And so reconnecting and bringing
up memories that are stored in our bodies almost at a cellular level is
just so incredibly powerful. You talked about boundaries
a little bit and having to set boundaries. I want to explore
(22:13):
that a little bit and sort of how you learn to establish those boundaries for
Um, if you don't mind, can I comment on that dissociation piece
real quick? Because this was a big, I mean, this was huge for
me. Like dissociation is what happens, you
know, if somebody is going through a traumatic episode, you're being, um, intensely
(22:35):
physically violated. We do dissociate and
it is a form of protection. Like you are escaping the
pain of your body. And I learned that, like,
I think that the connotation might be like, Oh, dissociation is
bad. I mean, It's not ideal
to be in a place where you're having to dissociate, but dissociation saves
(22:58):
It's a coping mechanism, right? In the moment, it is saving you,
but long term, it's not effective. Right.
Well, and then I mean, along with setting boundaries, your question, it's like
getting yourself in a situation where you're not having to dissociate ever
and boundaries. I mean, you know, I had a friend say
(23:19):
this to me many years ago. She said something like life is a
constant, like, I wish I remember the exact verbiage, but it's
like life is a constant. It's
all about setting boundaries. I mean, it's just like they're like, there's never
a place in your life where you're like, Oh, I've set all my boundaries. I'm good. You
know? Yeah. It's and I don't know how
(23:41):
else to do it other than to start, you know, get support
for sure. You know, read your books, listen to people, talk to your friends. But
you start small, you know, when you're at dinner with somebody and,
you know, I'm just making this up, but like you don't drink and somebody ordered
$300 bottle of wine and you're splitting the check several ways and you can't afford it. Hey, guys,
(24:01):
you know, I really can't afford this right now. I think one
of the ways to set boundaries is through vulnerability. You know, really
just being honest about what you can handle. Don't start off like setting your
boundary with some narcissistic boss that flies
off the handle at everything small. That is not the place to start setting boundaries.
But you get there, you know, and you get to where I
(24:23):
am right now. And I'm not, I mean, like I said, you're not done setting boundaries
ever. But I remember there being situations, you
know, professional situations where I
let things happen to me that I would not let happen
to me now. like, things where somebody's raised their voice and
done something, you know, that's really been unprofessional and
(24:46):
uncompassionate, forget the unprofessional, uncompassionate. And
now, like, I've gotten to the place where I would, you know, I'd be
able to just, you know, say, I'm leaving. And no,
and if that costs me my job, that's, that's okay, at
this point, you know, obviously, that's a privileged place to be able to say that. But
um, boundary, I mean, boundaries are
(25:08):
like, It's not an isolated area. It's part of
the whole equation. As you set these boundaries, you start honoring
your truth. You do get to a place where you are comfortable
with the consequences of those boundaries, because you
don't want people in your life that are not respecting
your boundaries. That's not to mean there's not compromise sometimes, but
(25:31):
like Boundaries, you just
keep practicing and talking about them in therapy, talking about
them with friends. You know, a lot of people are struggling with
It's so interesting, and I agree with you. I hear it
so often, especially in the clients that I work with. I think part
(25:52):
of it is nobody explicitly taught us
how to set boundaries growing up, I think for the most part, right? Some
of us may have been fortunate enough to have that role modeled
in our families, but even then, as a child, you're
not thinking, oh, that's how you set a boundary, right? So
part of it is, learning to
(26:14):
set boundaries. But I think you really touched upon a critical
concept, which is accepting the consequences. I
think we're so afraid of what happens when
we set a boundary, that it deters us from setting the
boundary to protect ourselves. And so once
you get to a place where you can say, I'm okay with
(26:35):
whatever's on the other side of this, Right. I'm okay
if I set a boundary and somebody is not respecting it and I need
to walk away from that relationship. That's okay. And
it's really, really, really hard. Right. And a lot of
the ingrained fears and conditioning comes
up for us in terms of the fear of judgment. Right.
(26:56):
The fear of losing a friendship, the fear of vulnerability and
being able to share what you need and what you actually
want. And so, you know, I always like you said, start small. I
always encourage people to figure out where they're feeling that tension in
their lives, where they're feeling the discomfort. when they feel like
they have to do something or should do something versus they
(27:19):
want to be somewhere or with someone, exploring what
that feeling is and really looking at what's bringing that up
and where do they need to set or wanna set some boundaries in their lives. Yeah,
such an important topic. You are
writing a book. I know you mentioned that earlier. Talk
(27:45):
Thank you. So, you know, this book has been a
has been probably my biggest
modality for healing. You know, I don't
think I could have written the book if I didn't start the therapy and get
these thoughts out of me. But I mean, I like writing. I think that
and I'm not trying like when I mean, when I work with my clients, I
(28:07):
try to not mandate any sort of modality, you
know, if writing is not your thing. I think journaling is like one of the most accessible
and amazing things ever. You can just write a couple sentences, but
if that's not your thing, I don't preach that. But I have
found that writing is a place and
it's a place and a way for me to get thoughts out of my head and make
(28:30):
sense of them. So I started this book project.
It's been 38 months, I guess, as of now. Wow.
And I hired a writing coach and I had no experience writing at
all. I didn't even like to read when I was a kid, which
is just crazy because I read probably a book a week now. If I could
read more, I absolutely would. But. Yeah,
(28:51):
so I started writing this book, really outlining my my
my healing journey in 2019, something sort of really
hard happened on my healing journey. My grandmother passed
away, which she was old and this wasn't like
the most traumatic thing ever. But As
I was trying to express my needs to my family, we
(29:16):
had a falling out that really kept us from speaking for about three
years. And this was during COVID and it
was painful for everybody involved. But at the same time, it
was absolutely needed for me to really get to know myself. and
to acknowledge that there were things that I needed that weren't provided
(29:36):
and explore the root of them. And
my book is really sort of takes
place during that time period from 2019 to
2022 as I progressed from these wake-up calls that
I was happening and then reflecting on childhood and
then kind of making sense of it and how I came out on top. You
(29:59):
know, I mean, COVID was a really interesting thing for
me. Talk about boundaries. I was probably the most careful
person of anybody I've met during COVID. I still am
not quite clear what that was about. I would say something like
I started, my life started getting good for the first time ever and
I didn't want to die, you know. where
(30:21):
I think like if I would have been enjoying my life all along the way, I
might have been a little bit more risk tolerant. But the
book really chronicles this journey to where, you
know, my partner and I ended up buying our dream home over here
in LA. And really, I gave myself the life that I wanted. And
through this time, Not to
(30:43):
give too much of a spoiler alert, but I had this general practitioner
who took an insanely abnormal
amount of interest in my mental well-being. And so I
saw him frequently, and we always did these assessments. And
then he's like, Hey, Matt, what's going on? You're not doing... And
(31:03):
one day I came in and he's like, Matt, you know, what's
going on? Like, you're you tested perfectly. And I just
kind of responded intuitively. And I said, I
don't hate myself anymore. And then he looked at me and he said,
Wow, Matt, he was like, if you could bottle that up, like that's worth billions of
And that's kind of the that's kind of the journey that I'm taking the
(31:25):
reader on through this book. And, you
know, it's just like, I just never knew that I was supposed to feel any of
these feelings. I never knew. I just I thought I was broken,
thought I was damaged. And I
came out the other side and I
want to show other people it's possible for them, too. You know, I
(31:46):
didn't I didn't like there weren't like
therapy sessions where I was just like screaming, crying
or anything. It was just like, oh, like it felt good.
Yeah. It's liberating, right? Yeah,
I think because we were taught to suppress
or hide our true feelings. Right. And we were also taught there's good feelings
(32:08):
and bad feelings. Right. So if a bad feeling came up, what
do you do with that? And so I think keep it to yourself. Keep
it to yourself. Right. Like don't don't inconvenience anyone else.
Nobody wants to hear about it. So I think that's
so powerful. And obviously, therapy can be a wonderful healing
modality to process, to go through those
(32:29):
emotions that you have not gone through. And
I love it sounds like such an incredible book, such an inspiring story.
And I can't wait to read it. And I'm sure that a lot of
this work that you do with your clients is
I'm assuming it ties into the mindset work that you do
Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, right now, like I
(32:51):
just, you know, I can't I mean, I'm careful to say this and
I know that life is not linear and there's going to be obstacles that come
my way. But like, I felt so horrible that
I I, you know, I like, I don't feel
anxiety or depression at all. And I haven't felt this for, I
mean, a year maybe. I think it's
(33:11):
possible that there might be some underneath, but I just am
so used to feeling horrible that this is like, it's just so tolerable.
But right now, I mean, my partner and I are starting our surrogacy journey.
You know, business has changed a little bit in my consulting business. The
economy has affected, you know, things. I just have
(33:32):
probably never had more, more
real stress on my on my plate. But I'm
sleeping better than ever. I just I trust that it will all work out
the way it's supposed to. And it's all order.
It's taken a while to get here. But you know, you
learn that like, you don't have to control everything. And I think that's the
(33:54):
effect of trauma. Like, you know, you think that you're Yeah, you
think that you're not good enough. And I could not describe this, like why
this perfectionism, why I was so hard on myself. But
it's like, you start to let that go eventually.
And you just do your best. And you have these boundaries. So
people aren't around that are making you feel bad anymore. And you're
(34:17):
just, you just believe that whatever you When
you believe that whatever you dream is possible, you look around and you
see like there's tens of millions of people who
have accomplished the things that you want to do. And they're
not smarter than you. They might know how to ask for help
better. They might. But it's all mindset. It's
(34:39):
all mindset and learning and learning that that
Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. So Matt,
tell us a little bit about, um, we talk about success on
this podcast and redefining success. Talk to me about how
you define success. What does success look like to you? What does it feel like
(34:59):
to you? And how has that changed? How has that
You know, I have a lot of like, I mean, this is, I
mean, I mean, it's not a hard question to answer, but it's just, I mean, it's a
big question. You know, I mean, I think that there was an, I
think that, like many people, success was mainly financial. When
(35:20):
we were younger, it was things. And
success for me, it still does involve financial safety.
I wouldn't use the word financial. It's
not to buy more things. I mean, it's to buy more things that make you feel
safe. Like I'd love to have a vacation home in the mountains right now.
Nothing fancy, but like I'm that's kind of on my shortlist, something
(35:43):
that I could go to and recharge to. I don't think that's extravagant. The
word that comes up for me, though, is peace. And
I am You know, when this when
this thing happened with my family a few years ago, I
remember just like I probably a therapist asked me and
I was kind of perplexed by the answer that I they're like, there's like
(36:05):
someone said, what do you want? And I just said, peace. And
that meant like internal peace. Yeah. And this this year I read
this book. This this probably changed me. I'm still this really changed
me in December. There was a book called The Velvet Rage.
It's it's a gay author. this book, it's probably
20 years old, or so maybe 30 years old, even I forget exactly. But
(36:27):
he gives like these, like these, these
recommendations, like 27 things to embrace to
live a, you know, fulfilling life. That's not verbatim
at all something like that. And I was just shocked. Like
he said, prioritize inner peace above
all else. And that just
(36:49):
changed everything for me since then. I have. I've
changed the way that I drink, the way that I use
marijuana. I mean, I really haven't. I had some the other day
and it was not what I remember it being, but. It
doesn't make I mean, it makes me feel peace. I mean, I'm eating better. You know, sugar
is not making me feel peaceful. Sorry, I'm giving a long answer, but it's
(37:11):
like it's peace. Yeah. Yeah.
calm, the calm and the peace, I think. And I think that also
relates back to your earlier point talking about Brene,
right? It also ties back to the vulnerability and the authenticity
of being true to who you are at your core. I
(37:33):
think there's such power in that. So, and that's different for
everybody, right? What brings you inner peace is going to be, might be different
than somebody else. So it's great advice. Matt, it's
such an inspiring story. Thanks so much for being here, for sharing your insights and
expertise. Where can our listeners more about, learn
Thank you. And thank you for having me. I love speaking with you and I love the work you're
(37:55):
doing in the world. And I mean, the trauma piece, like, you
know, I know this is a tall statement, but I think all of us
have something, you know, somebody said something
to us when we when we were a child that we never process. Right. There's
a limiting belief. Yeah. How many of us were told, you know, things
about money, like be grateful for what you have. The world is a completely different
(38:16):
place now where the cost of living is just astronomical.
And I believe that I'm very
grateful for a lot. I'm not grateful for a small paycheck that
can't provide me what I need to survive off
of. So thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you. My
website, I'd love for you to follow me. I have a weekly blog.
(38:37):
I'm all about vulnerability and talking about what I'm learning in my journey.
So mattgerlach.com. I'm very active on Instagram at
I am Matt Gerlach. I'm really putting
a lot out there for entrepreneurs right now. I have a mastermind that
I'm starting right now to help entrepreneurs learn their value
and create themselves a very abundant life by setting
(39:00):
boundaries and just everything that I've learned. I want to help other
entrepreneurs right now, but everybody, everybody
will benefit from facing this, this trauma and limiting beliefs.
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Matt. And of course, you can visit my website
at GiaLacqua.com. Reach out on Instagram at GiaLacqua. On
(39:20):
the homepage of my website, you can download your complimentary copy of From Chaos
to Clarity, a 30-day journal for self-discovery and healing. This
is Gia signing off with gratitude for your time and energy. Our
mic drops, but the movement continues. Until next time,
your next chapter is waiting. Take care. That
concludes another empowering episode of Your Future Starts Now.
(39:41):
Before we wrap up, I want to thank this incredible community of high-achieving women.
Your energy, resilience, and commitment to growth are the driving force
behind what we do. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate
it, leave a review, and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Your
feedback fuels our mission to empower high-achieving women just like
you. And of course, share Your Future Starts Now with the extraordinary women
(40:03):
in your life who are also on a journey of healing and empowerment. Connect
with us on social media, share your thoughts, let us know what topics you'd like to
explore in future episodes. Stay connected on Instagram at
Gia Lacqua. I encourage you to carry the energy of this conversation
into your day and keep on supporting the incredible women around you.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.