October 8, 2025 • 34 mins
“If you’re not willing to look dumb, you’re not going to accomplish anything.”
Notable Moments
00:10:05 – A trip that sparked Matthew’s dream to design roller coasters.
00:16:28 – How moving into an empty office turned an internship into a full-time role.
00:23:24 – The two-step mindset behind innovation: believe it’s possible and learn from others.
00:27:58 – Matthew’s “job application” to ask his future wife out on a date.
00:32:58 – Advice on taking bold, wise risks and being the main character in your own story.
The most creative people aren’t waiting for permission. They just start. For Matthew Miller, America’s Theme Park Technologist, that meant sneaking into an opportunity, which has led him to designing his dream career.
Read the blog for more from this episode.
Connect with Matthew
Website - ThemeParkMiller.com
LinkedIn - @matthew-miller-theme-parks
IMDB - Matthew Miller
Instagram - @Wewamiller
Connect with Jody
About Jody - https://jodymaberry.com/about-jody-maberry/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sugarjmaberry
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodymaberry/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/sugarjmaberry/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jodymaberry
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
Mayberry Show. This episode, I'm going to
introduce you to somebody who I have tried to get on this
show for years and just could not make it happen. I think
he was ignoring me or avoiding me, but our guest is
Matthew Miller. He is the director of creative strategy
(00:24):
and portfolio at Innovated Studios.
But he's also known. This is what I really like. He's also known as
America's theme park technologist. Matthew, it's
so good to finally get you on the show. Jody, I'm so happy to be
here, and I apologize for sending all your calls to voicemail. I won't do it
next time, but thank you for having me. Well, maybe we need to reconcile
(00:46):
this first. We've known each other for so long, and
I've asked you many times to be on the show, and. And I get
elusive responses all the while you are making
appearances on other shows. I mean, how. How do we
reconcile that? Well, Jody, I like to think as a true artist, you
know, I really wanted to perfect my craft, and honestly, I just didn't want to
(01:07):
come on the show until I felt like I was ready for it. So it
took me a little while longer, you know, to get ready, but I'm finally here.
Well, all right. At least he's here. So here's what's
interesting about Matthew. He is unlike anyone
else you're. You're ever going to meet. His approach
to anything he's done is pretty
(01:28):
innovative, which is. Makes it interesting that he
now is a director with Innovated Studios because he is the most
innovated fellow I know. And that goes from
how he got his start at Universal Studios, how
he found a way to get an introduction to the woman
that would eventually become his wife. And, I mean, this guy does
(01:50):
not take the approach any rational
person would take. And here we are. All right, so, Matthew, we've got a lot
of ground to cover, and one of the stories I like to tell,
and we don't have to get too deep into this because I have other stuff
I want to talk about, but I always love to tell the story of, and
it is a bit of an exaggeration, how Lee Cockrell nearly got you
(02:12):
fired at Universal. That's always a good story to tell.
Lee Cockrell and I used to do. And we should start doing this
again. We used to do a monthly giveaway, and one month we were giving
away a coaching call with Lee Cockrell,
and it was won by someone who had a Universal Studios
email address. But when we emailed him, we didn't hear back
(02:34):
for many, many weeks. And when we did, it was
Matthew Miller. And Matthew said, hey, rather than a call,
can I take you out to lunch? And Lee doesn't normally say yes
to that, but he did with Matthew and then Matthew posted a photo
and that's where it almost happened. Right, Matthew?
That's true, that's true. One, it was a great way to meet Lee, but
(02:57):
you as well, right? If I had not have won the sweepstakes,
maybe I would have never met you or met you a different way. But no,
it's true. I was living in Japan at the time,
helping. I was on the Mario Kart attraction for Super Nintendo World at
Universe Studio Japan. At that time I was actually working with Universal,
was a team member there, working with the Universal creative team. And it's true,
(03:18):
I applied and I won. And you didn't hear back from me because I was
on a different time zone for several days and I made it back and you
know, you said, hey, we're going to have a call. And I said, well, I
live locally. Can we get dinner, lunch instead? And it worked out great.
And we took a photo and I shared it on LinkedIn, which
was great. And, and to be fair, I have lots of friends at
Universal. I still to this day, even, even the people that brought this up at
(03:41):
the time. But that photo had made it made its way around the office and
I didn't know it and I got called into an HR meeting and they said,
hey, listen, you know, you know, you're not in trouble yet, I'm just kidding.
But I was going through a process of they have different classes and
things that you can take when you are on your way to becoming an executive.
And at that time I was at the manager, senior manager level and
(04:03):
it was the know, presumably the, the next jump and they, they take you to
these training courses and, and they're like, hey, you know, we just want to make
sure you're going to be around. Right? You know, you know, I plan on leaving
in the middle of the courses and I said, no, no, no, I, I plan
on sticking around. But yeah, they printed out and everything had a couple of smiley
faces on the side of it, so it was all in good fun. But no,
that, that is a very true story and a fun
(04:26):
introduction to both you and Lee. Yeah, that's right. That's how,
how it started. And after that, Matthew reached out to me and
said, next time you're in Orlando, would you be willing to go out to lunch?
And we did. And the Rest is just taken off. We've had
a fierce mini golf rivalry for years now.
But I just love your story, Matthew,
(04:50):
and it just keeps getting better. I mean, Matthew
in his. And hopefully I'm not giving away anything that you
don't want, Matthew, but in the small town he grew up
in, he was known as the miracle baby. And
he has remained just in the spotlight ever since.
And it just takes. Originally, it wasn't
(05:12):
deliberate. Since then, it certainly has been. And I just love your
approach to everything, Matthew. And I know
when I said you had an innovative way that you
got your job at Universal, that you met your wife, maybe we can
share those stories. But what I'm really interested in
is the thought process behind this. So
(05:34):
most people, if they want to work on roller coasters, go about
it a certain way. Most people, if they want to meet a pretty girl,
they go about it a certain way. When you are faced with
something that you want, though, tell me about this
process that you go through, because I've just picked up
that you don't think like a normal person. Well, first,
(05:57):
Jody, thank you. Those are very kind words. And, you know,
I would like to think that the things that I do, really
anybody can do. It's just kind of a matter of, are you
willing to make the decision that you're going to do it? And, you know, like
you said, when I was growing up, you know, grew up in a little town
of. We were Hitchcock, Florida, up in Panhandle. Love that place. And when
(06:17):
I was in school, you know, I did pretty good. I was like
fifth, sixth in my class. That sounds great. But the class only had like
40, 50 kids in it, right? So I was like top 10%. But, you know,
you would hear things like, oh, you know, this person is a genius or
this person is a whatever. And when I would hear others say that about
other people, you know, I always kind of thought, well, gosh, I don't really look
(06:39):
at myself that way, but I really feel like
if I want to achieve something, I could just
do it. Like, there's not this. Well, you were born in, you know,
a certain way, so you can only do a certain thing. And, you know, honestly,
I think a lot of that comes from my parents. You know, another story I'll
share. When I was growing up, my dad, he was a game warden and, you
(07:01):
know, worked a lot out in the wildlife. I know you love national parks.
And he was not an artist by any means. I mean, he just wasn't.
And he built a house in our town and There was a oak
tree there in the middle of the lot, and he cut it down and he
had it cut into slabs. And he decided one day he was going to
make a mantle for a fireplace. Never done it before. Never
(07:22):
done anything like that. And he took two rifles, leaned up against
the wall, and every night for, like three years, he'd take a Dremel
tool and he would just carve these guns into this mantle.
And as a kid, I would see that, and I would think, that's really cool,
because my dad is just figuring out how to do it. He didn't know how
to do it, didn't know what he was doing. And over the course of the
years, he just never gave up. And. And he figured it out, and
(07:45):
it's beautiful. We still have this mantle today. So things like that. When I was
growing up, it was more of a not that I can't do something, it's just
I haven't done it yet. And, you know, I've always believed that success leaves
clues. And I've tried to model, you know, my success around other
successful people, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in just a moment. But, yeah,
that's. That's really just kind of been my. My thought process.
(08:07):
Well, from the stories I've heard, you were lucky enough to grow up
with some amazing parents, so it's good to hear
that you attribute a lot of your success to your father. And
Matthew's mother is an icon, and Matthew just lives in
her shadow. She is known as the Villages fishing lady.
Matthew, tell us a little bit about Mama Miller. Well, see, I was
(08:29):
right bringing her up because then, you know, it diverts the podcast and then, you
know, all the media. You know, I was finally getting my hour.
No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, mom is great. Is. Is
fantastic. Probably one of the smartest ladies I've ever met. You know,
she needs to be on Jeopardy. History, you name it. Trivia, she
knows it. And she loves the bass fish. And a few years ago, she started
(08:52):
catching bass and, well, she's doing her whole life, but a few years ago she
started doing it, posted on TikTok, and it basically overnight
blew up. She'll live stream bass fish into hundreds of
thousands of people. I mean, it's just. That's crazy to think about. Never been an
influencer before, nothing like that, but does something that she loves. And
obviously she's got the type of personality that people love to interact with and to
(09:13):
listen to. And it's just. It's amazing how it's taken off, and
I'm so proud of her. She stuck with it and. And she's having a ball.
Yeah. And she is wonderful. She is the sweetest,
nicest lady you'll ever meet. You meet her and then you wonder,
well, how could she be that sweet and Matthew turn out
the way he did? I don't know. I'm still. I'm still trying to figure
(09:35):
that out. Okay, so that also, by the way, is
why Mama Miller and I hit it off so well, because she
was married to a game warden. I was a park ranger. So
instant friends is the moment we met. All right. That's right.
So Matthew always wanted to be a
roller coaster designer, if I remember right. So
(09:58):
how he got involved in roller coasters, I think
is pretty fantastic. Give us that story, Matthew.
Yeah. So it all started with a. A trip to
Central Florida. When I was in the first grade, me and my parents came down
here. We spent a week. We did everything. Disney, Universal, Busch Gardens, you name it.
And I vividly, vividly remember that weekend. It was in the fall. I
(10:19):
can always tell you the exact day that it was in the year. And on
the way back, I told my parents, I said, this is what I'm going to
do with the rest of my life. I just knew it. During the middle of
that trip, something just clicked in my brain. And as a first grader, you
don't know what a career is. You don't know what a job was. At least
I didn't. But I knew that my life was going to revolve around this
thing. It was more than just a fun weekend. And, you know, obviously, you know,
(10:42):
people kind of laugh at you when you say something, especially when you're so young,
but never change my mind, right? Elementary school, middle, high school, that's
always been the dream. And so early on, it was trying
to find avenues of what is my North Star. My North Star is I want
to build roller coasters. I know of Universal, I know of Disney,
I know of these different places, but how do I make that happen? So
(11:03):
I started doing things that I thought someone that built roller
coasters would do. And the first thing is build things that move. Right? So
I joined a program called Odyssey of the Mind. Shout out if there's any
owners or anybody. Part of the Odyssey of Mine program that's listening to this. If
you're not and you have a child that is in
elementary, middle, high school, or even college, I would definitely suggest looking up
(11:26):
this, this program. It is a creative competition program, and they have
all Kinds of different ways that you can compete. But we always competed in problems
one and two, which were the vehicle and the technical problems. And that was
kind of my outlet in school. We would compete against China and Poland and
Mexico and other states in America. It was amazing. And that's
when I started kind of get know, cutting my teeth on, well, I can build
(11:48):
things that move. And that led to, well, mechanical
engineers build things that move. So I didn't be a mechanical engineer. So I went
to school for that and I did pretty well. Didn't do great, but I was
doing okay. And I went and I got my AA at Gulf
coast in Panama City. And then I moved to Orlando to go to
ucf. So go Knights. But as much as I love ucf, the main reason I
(12:09):
moved to Orlando was I wanted to be where the action was happening.
As I knew there were so many theme parks here in Orlando that if
I got down here I would meet somebody, I would just somehow
something would work out and I'd have a better chance of getting, you know,
getting this job. So, you know, as a high school then college student, don't really
have a resume. I tried doing some like technology related things.
(12:31):
Like I went to Best Buy and I told them my story and I was
like, I want to be a technologist. And you know, I started selling appliances. So
that wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, but it was great.
But anyway, so I did that and I started going around, you know, who do
you know, who do you know, who do you know? And a gentleman at my
church was actually a designer that he had
a garage and he was hired by Disney and Universal and he would do special
(12:54):
effects. They're working on a christening of the Disney dream cruise
ship. And he said, hey, you can come hang out. So really that was kind
of my first big break was this guy let me hang out in his shop
and you know, I was getting people coffee, whatever. But you know, I got to
meet some of the imagineers, I got to see the process. And
that Lynn led to an internship at
(13:15):
Universal, which I'm sure we will dive into more here in a moment.
Yeah, that, that is a great story because
how often do people dream of doing something when they're
younger and then actually make it happen? And I, I
did becoming a park ranger, but I did something else
first and then worked my way into it. So
(13:37):
Matthew is now got an internship at Universal,
wants to have a bigger role and in Matthew Miller Fashion
came up with an innovative approach to make it Happen. Tell
us that story. It's true. So I started in fall of 2011
and for anybody that knows anything about Universal, you know, they obviously have the Wizarding
World of Harry Potter. And not only did that change, know the TR director of
(14:00):
Universal Studios, it changed the directory of the theme park industry. I mean that, that's
just a major, major milestone. So I came in
roughly a year after Hogs Media opened at ONS
Adventure. And at that point they were like, hey, you know, we have this
influx of cash. We are now bringing in interns. And I was
the technology intern, like I said, in the fall of 2011. And what's really funny
(14:22):
about that is now they post, you know, them and Disney and others, they post
these internships and they'll have classes of 50 or more
like me. Let's say Universal creative may have 30, 40, 50 themselves and the
parts have another 50. And I can remember when I was in my internship, like
it was me, like, like I was the intern. And then like marketing
had an intern. There was just a small handful of us. And
(14:45):
for me, when I went to the interview, you know, they were like, hey, you
know, what do you want to do, lady? That interview? My name's Sharon Lohm. I
call her Mama Sharon because my, my mom is Sharon. And we still have a
great relationship today. But at that point we had not met yet, right? And I'm
interviewing and you know, she said, hey, you know, why do you want this? You
know, what's going to happen with your internship? And I looked her in the eyes
and I said, you know, I'm going to say this is as humbly as possible,
(15:08):
this is my life story. And I just shared with her the, you know, the
two minute version of what we've talked about so far. And I said, as
respectively as possible, if you give me a universal
team member id, I'm going to make it impossible for you to
get it back. I said, because like, this is what I was born to do.
And she kind of chuckled. And you know, I don't even mean that in a
(15:28):
bad way, like I was going to steal it or anything, but my goal was
I am going to be the absolute best intern
that anybody on this planet has ever seen. And
if that means I'm not going to have any friends, if that means I'm going
to work, you know, 27 hours a day, it does not matter. Because I had
resolved to, this was going to be my foot into the door.
(15:49):
So I got the internship. It was incredible. A lot of people,
when they get Internships, they talk about, oh, you know, they're not paid or people
aren't nice to you. I have nothing but great things to say about my
internship. I mean, it was. It was fantastic. Obviously, it started as the, you
know, can you sit in a meeting? Can you get us some, you know, can
you help get coffee or get printers? Right. I was just kind of bouncing off
(16:10):
the walls. But that original internship, it was for three months. It
was fall to December. And they said, hey, at the end of this December, you
know, we've got to get rid of you. And I believe them. You know, that
was going to happen. So a lady had came in and she was
quitting. She was not quitting, just moving on to another role. But in my
mind, that was crazy. You know, my whole life was around this. How could
(16:30):
you have a job like this and choose to go work somewhere else? Right? Like,
I couldn't fathom that. So what I did is the gentleman that I
was interning under, John, I said, hey, man, I don't want to get you in
trouble, but I just want to give you a heads up. I'm not going to
leave the office today. And he said, why not? I said, well, you know, this
has been my dream. I said, I want this. I feel like I need to
do something bold. I'm going to stay here all night, and I'm going to move
(16:53):
into this lady's office. And he kind of chuckled. He's like, oh,
you're being serious. I was. I'm being dead serious. So he said, I don't
have a problem with it. He said, if security or somebody calls, I'm just to
pretend like I didn't know anything about it. And I said, deal, you know,
brotherly handshake. So I did. I stayed all night. And that lady had
left her job and her office, and. And I moved in. And as
(17:15):
an intern, you know, I basically had a cup with two pencils in it to
move in. But, you know, I had. I had a place to sit. And obviously,
the next morning, the team comes in. Matthew, what are you doing? You know, you
can't have this, blah, blah, blah. And I said, if you'll let me stay here
until you find somebody, then I promise I'll give it back.
I won't cause any issues. But it would really mean a lot to me if
(17:35):
you let me kind of just look over her work. And they're like, you're an
intern. What are you going to do? Like, sure. And little did they know, she
had left a notebook of all the projects she was working on. And it just
had names and little bits of notes. And I just called and I.
Hello, list number one. Hello, my name is Matthew Middle. I'm the new project
manager. What can I do for you? And they're like, we're looking for xyz. And
I went through that whole list and I had no clue what they were asking
(17:57):
for. I'd never done any of this stuff, but it gave me a list of
things to start asking questions about. So I'd go through, you know, I get 10
things. I would go to my coworkers, hey, you know, what do you think about
this? Blah, blah, blah. And it just. It continued and continued and
continued to where, you know, in December, they're like, we can't
believe it. You know, this is the craziest thing we've ever seen, but we're going
to extend you for another. Another three months. And so really,
(18:21):
as an intern, that was how I made a name for myself, was going through
that notebook of the project manager that decided to leave. It's such
an incredible story, and it reminds me of
an interview I heard with Ed Sheeran. He was on
Conan o' Brien's podcast, and he told
stories when he was just starting out, how
(18:42):
he would find a way to book two shows a day just so he
could play. He wasn't the best. He just outworked everyone. He
came to the States, and I think my details could be
wrong, but the spirit of what I'm saying is right. I think he
ended up working with the same company that James Taylor
worked with for bookings, and he looked at
(19:05):
every show James Taylor had booked and he reached out and
made it. I mean, just this, the work ethic,
yes, it's innovative. But what I want you to get out of
Matthew's story is he finds a different approach, but
the time and pressure that he puts into it. I like.
Matthew does the work. So, yes, you need an innovative approach,
(19:26):
but you've. You've got to do the work. Matthew is one of the hardest
working people that I know. You just wouldn't know it when you meet him
because he's so nice and friendly and doesn't brag about how hard he's
working and tell you how busy he is. When he's busy, you just don't hear
back from him. At least that's what I've heard. Matthew. That's
true. And sometimes I'm bad about calling back, but you're right. And I
(19:48):
mean, and obviously this is a fun story. Right? Right. But One of the biggest
things that I left out was when I was growing up, you know, I really
admired Steven Spielberg. And one thing that I always said is
that if it worked for Steven Spielberg, it's got to work for Matthew Miller.
And what does that mean? You know, like, I'm not saying that I'm trying to
replace Steven Spielberg. I'm not even trying to say that I'm as good as Steven
(20:10):
Spielberg. All I'm saying is you see people that are successful
and they take chances in their life, and it has worked out,
and that has given me hope that these crazy ideas that I've had. And by
all means, I've had a lot of crazy ideas, and a lot of them haven't
worked out. So this is not a, you know, I'm some, you know, you're the
oracle and you know all the answers. It's not. But if you're willing to bet
on yourself. When I was growing up and I was studied these Gibbons for Birch
(20:32):
stories during his summer when, you know, he's in high school, in between
school, he would get, you know, he would go to the parks, he'd have a
day pass, whatever. And then he found ways to basically sneak around the lower lot
at Universal and was making friends. And there's some really great
interviews from Access Hollywood and others where he's talking about this. And it'll be like,
hey, you know, I had an ID badge, and the next day they just remembered
(20:53):
my face and they let me in. And by no means am I telling you,
if you're listening to this, that you should go sneak into Universal. I'm. I'm not
saying that at all. But what I'm saying is, once I had the
internship, I felt like I had more leverage than a
person that was external to the company. The same as if I would have had
an internship at Disney or it's Cisco, or I love Dr. Pepper, or
Dr. Pepper, whatever the company is. And I knew that once I was in,
(21:17):
I had more access than a person that didn't. So that was
really the turning point for me, was I didn't just get any. Like, a lot
of people see it as an internship of, well, I, you know, I'm building my
resume and I'm getting paid. I would have paid them to have the resume. I
mean, it wasn't about that for me. It was about. I had a
badge that gave me access to people and things that
(21:37):
I never had had access to before. And I wanted to
leverage that as much as possible. Yeah, this is. You
will find that the more Matthew talks, the more you want to
hear. And we've glanced over pieces that I think are
really important to his story. And
Matthew, maybe another day we can come back to some of those. Because what I
(21:59):
want to get into is how someone can
get a more innovative approach to problem solving. So
usually when we see a problem, we
go about solving them our own way or how we've seen other
people do them. But you break it down in different ways.
I've even seen Matt playing mini golf. I'm going to give this as
(22:22):
an example. Matthew and I were playing against, I think
three or four other people. There was a quite a big group.
And everybody approaches the hole the same way. And then
Matthew looks at a hole and says, well, if instead of
going straight for it, if I shoot it back up this pipe,
I think it'll come down. And Matthew does it and it comes down, goes right
(22:44):
in the hole. That was one of the first times I noticed, Matthew,
that you just don't see things the way other people
see things. We all tried to solve that problem the
same way just by doing it a little better than the person
that putted right in front of us. And you saw us all do it and
said, well, I'm going to do it completely different. And you approach all
(23:06):
your problems that way. So tell us about
an innovative approach. If we've got a problem or some, let's
just say it's something we want to accomplish. How do we take an
innovative approach and do something
differently that we may not have thought of doing before? So, great
question. I think the very first step
(23:28):
is realizing that whatever the thing is that you want
to do, 99.99% of the
time, it is absolutely possible. I think a lot of people, when they're starting
out, if they're trying to build a new theme park ride or they're just trying
to pass a class in college, they can psych themselves up. They get in
their mind and they think, I'm not good at math, so
(23:49):
I'm never going to pass this class or I'm not good at
walking, so I'm never going to be able to run a mirror, like whatever that
thing is on earth. My belief is there's
basically nothing you can't figure out. If
one, if you just will say, hey, I'm going to give myself some grace
and I may not be good at it today, but I'm going to be able
to figure it out. And two, I'm not going to stop
(24:13):
until I figure it out. And I think that, that I'm going to write a
book, I'm going to write a song, whatever. People try two or three times,
you know, they try two test and math, whatever, and they fail.
And they, oh, I, I just. It just wasn't meant to be. No, no, no.
You are going to decide to do the thing and you're going to say,
no matter what, I am going to do this thing. So
(24:33):
I think that is step one. I think step two, like you mentioned earlier as
we were talking, success leaves clues. Anything that you want to
do, for the most part, somebody has already done. You know,
you want to become a speechwriter, there's already
speechwriters. You want to design a roller coaster, there's already people that design roller
coasters. You don't have to do it the same way that they do
(24:55):
it, but you should at least study how they're doing it. One of
my favorite things to do, especially for starting the new project, is I will look
and see who are the top five, six people most successful in doing
that thing. Especially now with AI, you know, you open up, ChatGPT,
Grok, whatever, Bing, and, you know, you can talk to it and you can say,
hey, who are the top 10 people that do this thing and what
(25:17):
are their traits? You know, because, you know, I don't necessarily want to be a
Steve Jobs, but I may really like one or two qualities about a Steve
Jobs. You know, I could never be a Jody Mayberry, but I may really like
one or two things about Jody Mayberry, and I start to combine the way
that they solve problems, and I try to see
my issue, my life, through those lenses, and then
(25:39):
you just have fun with it. If you're not willing to look
dumb, you're not going to be able to accomplish anything. But if you say, you
know what I'm going to. Let's use an example. I'm going to learn how to
run a marathon. People are going to laugh at me for six months. I don't
care, because I know eventually I am going to finish
this marathon. And that feeling of completion
(26:00):
is so much more powerful than any sneaker, you know,
confronted me. Whatever. I'm going to be able to see it through. And honestly, for
me on the theme parks, that's what drove me, is it's hard for me to
put into words how I feel when I walk into a theme park.
I've been into them thousands and thousands of thousands of times.
And even like tonight, if I was to go to the Magic Kingdom, I'm going
(26:21):
to feel the same way. I did as that first grader when I first went
in, you know, 30 or 40 years ago. And to me, that
feeling was great. You know, I had people make fun of me all the time,
oh, you're not going to make it. You know, whatever, you know, I was never
driven to be like, I need to make them look bad. It was just, okay,
like, you can say what you want to, but I'm not going to give up
until it happens. This is an approach I think you can use
(26:43):
to solve anything. If you want something to happen,
listen to what Matthew has told you and it will work. And he
gave us basically two steps. One is, I'm going to do this
no matter what. You have to have that mindset and decide
this is going to happen. And two, success leaves clues. Find
five people that have done it. Do what you can, Learn from them. There's
(27:06):
also a little more. Matthew is being a little modest because
Matthew finds a way to add flair or do things
the way other people aren't doing. As an example, staying
overnight in Universal so he can move into someone's office. That's
not an approach you likely have seen other people do. And I
mentioned earlier, Matthew even had an innovative
(27:29):
approach to asking a pretty girl out. And I think Matthew will
admit. And if, if he won't admit it, then we'll talk about it right here
on the show. Matthew married, way out of his league.
His wife is really incredible. Way better looking than
Matthew, and somehow he ended up marrying her. And the story
of how he asked her out wasn't, gosh, that
(27:52):
girl's pretty. I like her. I'm going to ask her out. Matthew had to do
it in Matthew's way. Do you mind sharing that story, Matthew? Sure.
Jody. We're opening up a can of worms here. So this. And I, I got
to get it right because my wife listens to this, right? And if I, if
I get a detail wrong, I'm going to be in trouble with it. You know,
shout out to Ms. Gabriella Miller, the Sourdough queen.
But yeah, so the story, oh, man, I didn't know we were going to go
(28:14):
here, but this is wonderful. The story goes like this, that
I was still working at Universal at the time, and as I mentioned, when I
first got my start into the theme parks, it was through my church. So, you
know, been a, been a Christian for the majority of my life. Faith is a
big part of my life. So, you know, the Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, you know,
I'm, I'm at the church all the time. If I'm not at a theme park.
(28:35):
And I started going to a college program,
used college protector, adult, young adults thing.
And I met my wife and she was awesome. They were
doing a cookie party where the young ladies would cook
desserts and then they invited all the guys to come over and have the cookies.
And I met her there. Another guy named Matt introduced us and lo and behold
(28:57):
we found out that we both worked at Universal and we've been there for quite
some time now. For people that may not know this, there are tens and
tens and tens of thousands of people that work at these
theme parks, right? You, if it's Disney, if it's Six Flags Universal,
wherever, there are way more people than you can fathom, not just operating the
rides, but working back a house, legal, IT marketing, you name it.
(29:19):
And she was, she was working there and our paths had never crossed and
you know, I just thought for sure I was going to be a shoe in,
right? And it was, it was, that wasn't the case. She was nice to
me, but she didn't seem very interested at the time. And so, you know,
I tried and I said, hey, you know, and so, you know, she'd
be nice to me but I said, man, I gotta, you know, I, like you
(29:40):
said, I gotta do something to stand out because you know, obviously I'm sure some
of the other guys in the college group trying to get her to go to
dinner too. And you know, so I was like, man, you know, what am I
going to do here? So she did work in the HR department
and I had some friends that were co workers of her sort of thing,
they worked in the area. So what we did is we put together
(30:00):
a resume and slash job wreck
for her boyfriend. So the role of being her boyfriend. And
I knew that if I don't know what day it was, Tuesdays
or something, she'd be doing a lot of paperwork, you know, that sort of thing.
And obviously I wasn't going to do anything to get her in trouble or, you
know, mess up anything at Universal. But there was a stack of papers
(30:21):
and envelopes and I, you know, and, and when she went to the
restroom she, you know, I guess I remember she was on break, whatever she had
finished what she was doing. And I just happened to come by while she wasn't
there and leave an envelope on her desk and, and she thought that it was
a job, you know, one that she had missed. And she opened it up and
it says, you know, this is a, you know, to fill the position of being
(30:42):
your boyfriend. And Want to take you out dinner. And we had the
resumes. I mean, I had all of my prior work. I mean,
we'd put a lot of work in this. So obviously she calls like, I don't
know who you are. I mean, I met you, but, like, what is going on?
But she got a huge laugh out of it. And for me, it worked out.
It got me a dinner date. And then, as they say, the rest is history.
(31:04):
And we've been married for eight years now. We have two beautiful
young little girls, and life couldn't be better. That is one of
my favorite Matthew Miller stories, because it's just the
essence of who Matthew is. He said, I'm going to do this no matter what.
I'm going to find a way to do it that other people aren't doing. And
that's how Matthew's done it. Now. We just glanced over
(31:27):
a lot of Matthew Miller stuff. So I think at some point we need to
have him back. He started at Universal. We never even talked about all the
wonderful things he accomplished at Orlando Informer.
We barely talked about the move to Innovated
studios and the work you're doing there. So, Matthew, I think at some point, we
have to have you back on the show to talk about more of this. Jody,
(31:48):
it would be an honor to come back and talk about it. You know, I've
even answered the questions. And by the way, one last thing I want to say
for anybody that's listening to this, I've shared some crazy stories, right? If it's been
the. The resume or, you know, the dinner with Lee or the office thing,
I just want to make sure anybody that's listening to this, I want you to
do things that cause you to stand out. I want you to do things that
help you build the story in your life. Because my thought
(32:12):
is you need to be the main character in your life. Like,
don't wear pants or shirt with somebody else's name on it.
Make your own name, right? You are the main character in your life.
But all that being said, also be wise in the decision
that you make. You know, we're here telling these crazy stories, but it's things
like, you know, when I was there overnight, you know, I was already working
(32:34):
there. I had talked to my coworkers. You know, we knew that security
wasn't going to upset. I just want to make sure, you know, sometimes you hear
these things, people think, oh, my gosh, I need to go to do something that
is just so crazy and put my life in danger or put my
finances in danger or whatever. I'm not advocating for that at all. All
I'm saying is if you've got a goal that you want to accomplish,
realize you can do it. Especially if you say, like, I'm going to do
(32:57):
this no matter what. And then if you'll think through how to be
successful in the thing that you want to do, how to do it without, you
know, getting in trouble or minimal impacts, you can have some really cool stories in
your own life soon. Oh, that's great advice, Matthew. And
Lee Cockrell will sometimes he'll say that if
something needs to be done, then he's going to get in. If you
(33:19):
don't let him in the front door, he'll try the back door, he'll try getting
in the chimney, he'll break in a window, he will get in. And I
always say I'm as tenacious as Lee. It's just
that I'm going to build a relationship with your grandmother and she's going to invite
me in for tea. That's how I'm going to get into your house. And Matthew
takes the same approach. So much of what he has accomplished
(33:40):
is built on relationships. Getting to know people,
getting to know patterns. Because he mentioned he checked with
coworkers, he checked with security. He knew nothing would happen. Right.
That is from building relationships, not just
being bold and taking a big swing, not
understanding how it might impact other people. So that is great
(34:02):
ending advice, Matthew. Now, Matthew
doesn't take an approach you would expect, including here.
He's built up this reputation as America's theme park
technologist and doesn't even have a website yet. So where
can we connect with you, Matthew? That's true. So just go to
Google and you type in Matthew Miller Theme parks. It's a great way to
(34:23):
find me. But if you want to connect on social, like I said, I grew
up in Wewahitchka, so I'm Wewa Miller. W e W a
Miller across all social media. And that's the easiest way to find
me. All right, all right. Thank you so much, Matthew. It was great talking with
you. Thank you, Jody. I appreciate you having me. And I can't wait to chat
again. And thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry
(34:45):
Show.
He's off like a bride's dadie. It's Sugar J.
Foreign.
Mayberry Show. This episode, I'm going to
introduce you to somebody who I have tried to get on this
show for years and just could not make it happen. I think
he was ignoring me or avoiding me, but our guest is
Matthew Miller. He is the director of creative strategy
(00:24):
and portfolio at Innovated Studios.
But he's also known. This is what I really like. He's also known as
America's theme park technologist. Matthew, it's
so good to finally get you on the show. Jody, I'm so happy to be
here, and I apologize for sending all your calls to voicemail. I won't do it
next time, but thank you for having me. Well, maybe we need to reconcile
(00:46):
this first. We've known each other for so long, and
I've asked you many times to be on the show, and. And I get
elusive responses all the while you are making
appearances on other shows. I mean, how. How do we
reconcile that? Well, Jody, I like to think as a true artist, you
know, I really wanted to perfect my craft, and honestly, I just didn't want to
(01:07):
come on the show until I felt like I was ready for it. So it
took me a little while longer, you know, to get ready, but I'm finally here.
Well, all right. At least he's here. So here's what's
interesting about Matthew. He is unlike anyone
else you're. You're ever going to meet. His approach
to anything he's done is pretty
(01:28):
innovative, which is. Makes it interesting that he
now is a director with Innovated Studios because he is the most
innovated fellow I know. And that goes from
how he got his start at Universal Studios, how
he found a way to get an introduction to the woman
that would eventually become his wife. And, I mean, this guy does
(01:50):
not take the approach any rational
person would take. And here we are. All right, so, Matthew, we've got a lot
of ground to cover, and one of the stories I like to tell,
and we don't have to get too deep into this because I have other stuff
I want to talk about, but I always love to tell the story of, and
it is a bit of an exaggeration, how Lee Cockrell nearly got you
(02:12):
fired at Universal. That's always a good story to tell.
Lee Cockrell and I used to do. And we should start doing this
again. We used to do a monthly giveaway, and one month we were giving
away a coaching call with Lee Cockrell,
and it was won by someone who had a Universal Studios
email address. But when we emailed him, we didn't hear back
(02:34):
for many, many weeks. And when we did, it was
Matthew Miller. And Matthew said, hey, rather than a call,
can I take you out to lunch? And Lee doesn't normally say yes
to that, but he did with Matthew and then Matthew posted a photo
and that's where it almost happened. Right, Matthew?
That's true, that's true. One, it was a great way to meet Lee, but
(02:57):
you as well, right? If I had not have won the sweepstakes,
maybe I would have never met you or met you a different way. But no,
it's true. I was living in Japan at the time,
helping. I was on the Mario Kart attraction for Super Nintendo World at
Universe Studio Japan. At that time I was actually working with Universal,
was a team member there, working with the Universal creative team. And it's true,
(03:18):
I applied and I won. And you didn't hear back from me because I was
on a different time zone for several days and I made it back and you
know, you said, hey, we're going to have a call. And I said, well, I
live locally. Can we get dinner, lunch instead? And it worked out great.
And we took a photo and I shared it on LinkedIn, which
was great. And, and to be fair, I have lots of friends at
Universal. I still to this day, even, even the people that brought this up at
(03:41):
the time. But that photo had made it made its way around the office and
I didn't know it and I got called into an HR meeting and they said,
hey, listen, you know, you know, you're not in trouble yet, I'm just kidding.
But I was going through a process of they have different classes and
things that you can take when you are on your way to becoming an executive.
And at that time I was at the manager, senior manager level and
(04:03):
it was the know, presumably the, the next jump and they, they take you to
these training courses and, and they're like, hey, you know, we just want to make
sure you're going to be around. Right? You know, you know, I plan on leaving
in the middle of the courses and I said, no, no, no, I, I plan
on sticking around. But yeah, they printed out and everything had a couple of smiley
faces on the side of it, so it was all in good fun. But no,
that, that is a very true story and a fun
(04:26):
introduction to both you and Lee. Yeah, that's right. That's how,
how it started. And after that, Matthew reached out to me and
said, next time you're in Orlando, would you be willing to go out to lunch?
And we did. And the Rest is just taken off. We've had
a fierce mini golf rivalry for years now.
But I just love your story, Matthew,
(04:50):
and it just keeps getting better. I mean, Matthew
in his. And hopefully I'm not giving away anything that you
don't want, Matthew, but in the small town he grew up
in, he was known as the miracle baby. And
he has remained just in the spotlight ever since.
And it just takes. Originally, it wasn't
(05:12):
deliberate. Since then, it certainly has been. And I just love your
approach to everything, Matthew. And I know
when I said you had an innovative way that you
got your job at Universal, that you met your wife, maybe we can
share those stories. But what I'm really interested in
is the thought process behind this. So
(05:34):
most people, if they want to work on roller coasters, go about
it a certain way. Most people, if they want to meet a pretty girl,
they go about it a certain way. When you are faced with
something that you want, though, tell me about this
process that you go through, because I've just picked up
that you don't think like a normal person. Well, first,
(05:57):
Jody, thank you. Those are very kind words. And, you know,
I would like to think that the things that I do, really
anybody can do. It's just kind of a matter of, are you
willing to make the decision that you're going to do it? And, you know, like
you said, when I was growing up, you know, grew up in a little town
of. We were Hitchcock, Florida, up in Panhandle. Love that place. And when
(06:17):
I was in school, you know, I did pretty good. I was like
fifth, sixth in my class. That sounds great. But the class only had like
40, 50 kids in it, right? So I was like top 10%. But, you know,
you would hear things like, oh, you know, this person is a genius or
this person is a whatever. And when I would hear others say that about
other people, you know, I always kind of thought, well, gosh, I don't really look
(06:39):
at myself that way, but I really feel like
if I want to achieve something, I could just
do it. Like, there's not this. Well, you were born in, you know,
a certain way, so you can only do a certain thing. And, you know, honestly,
I think a lot of that comes from my parents. You know, another story I'll
share. When I was growing up, my dad, he was a game warden and, you
(07:01):
know, worked a lot out in the wildlife. I know you love national parks.
And he was not an artist by any means. I mean, he just wasn't.
And he built a house in our town and There was a oak
tree there in the middle of the lot, and he cut it down and he
had it cut into slabs. And he decided one day he was going to
make a mantle for a fireplace. Never done it before. Never
(07:22):
done anything like that. And he took two rifles, leaned up against
the wall, and every night for, like three years, he'd take a Dremel
tool and he would just carve these guns into this mantle.
And as a kid, I would see that, and I would think, that's really cool,
because my dad is just figuring out how to do it. He didn't know how
to do it, didn't know what he was doing. And over the course of the
years, he just never gave up. And. And he figured it out, and
(07:45):
it's beautiful. We still have this mantle today. So things like that. When I was
growing up, it was more of a not that I can't do something, it's just
I haven't done it yet. And, you know, I've always believed that success leaves
clues. And I've tried to model, you know, my success around other
successful people, which I'm sure we'll talk about here in just a moment. But, yeah,
that's. That's really just kind of been my. My thought process.
(08:07):
Well, from the stories I've heard, you were lucky enough to grow up
with some amazing parents, so it's good to hear
that you attribute a lot of your success to your father. And
Matthew's mother is an icon, and Matthew just lives in
her shadow. She is known as the Villages fishing lady.
Matthew, tell us a little bit about Mama Miller. Well, see, I was
(08:29):
right bringing her up because then, you know, it diverts the podcast and then, you
know, all the media. You know, I was finally getting my hour.
No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, mom is great. Is. Is
fantastic. Probably one of the smartest ladies I've ever met. You know,
she needs to be on Jeopardy. History, you name it. Trivia, she
knows it. And she loves the bass fish. And a few years ago, she started
(08:52):
catching bass and, well, she's doing her whole life, but a few years ago she
started doing it, posted on TikTok, and it basically overnight
blew up. She'll live stream bass fish into hundreds of
thousands of people. I mean, it's just. That's crazy to think about. Never been an
influencer before, nothing like that, but does something that she loves. And
obviously she's got the type of personality that people love to interact with and to
(09:13):
listen to. And it's just. It's amazing how it's taken off, and
I'm so proud of her. She stuck with it and. And she's having a ball.
Yeah. And she is wonderful. She is the sweetest,
nicest lady you'll ever meet. You meet her and then you wonder,
well, how could she be that sweet and Matthew turn out
the way he did? I don't know. I'm still. I'm still trying to figure
(09:35):
that out. Okay, so that also, by the way, is
why Mama Miller and I hit it off so well, because she
was married to a game warden. I was a park ranger. So
instant friends is the moment we met. All right. That's right.
So Matthew always wanted to be a
roller coaster designer, if I remember right. So
(09:58):
how he got involved in roller coasters, I think
is pretty fantastic. Give us that story, Matthew.
Yeah. So it all started with a. A trip to
Central Florida. When I was in the first grade, me and my parents came down
here. We spent a week. We did everything. Disney, Universal, Busch Gardens, you name it.
And I vividly, vividly remember that weekend. It was in the fall. I
(10:19):
can always tell you the exact day that it was in the year. And on
the way back, I told my parents, I said, this is what I'm going to
do with the rest of my life. I just knew it. During the middle of
that trip, something just clicked in my brain. And as a first grader, you
don't know what a career is. You don't know what a job was. At least
I didn't. But I knew that my life was going to revolve around this
thing. It was more than just a fun weekend. And, you know, obviously, you know,
(10:42):
people kind of laugh at you when you say something, especially when you're so young,
but never change my mind, right? Elementary school, middle, high school, that's
always been the dream. And so early on, it was trying
to find avenues of what is my North Star. My North Star is I want
to build roller coasters. I know of Universal, I know of Disney,
I know of these different places, but how do I make that happen? So
(11:03):
I started doing things that I thought someone that built roller
coasters would do. And the first thing is build things that move. Right? So
I joined a program called Odyssey of the Mind. Shout out if there's any
owners or anybody. Part of the Odyssey of Mine program that's listening to this. If
you're not and you have a child that is in
elementary, middle, high school, or even college, I would definitely suggest looking up
(11:26):
this, this program. It is a creative competition program, and they have
all Kinds of different ways that you can compete. But we always competed in problems
one and two, which were the vehicle and the technical problems. And that was
kind of my outlet in school. We would compete against China and Poland and
Mexico and other states in America. It was amazing. And that's
when I started kind of get know, cutting my teeth on, well, I can build
(11:48):
things that move. And that led to, well, mechanical
engineers build things that move. So I didn't be a mechanical engineer. So I went
to school for that and I did pretty well. Didn't do great, but I was
doing okay. And I went and I got my AA at Gulf
coast in Panama City. And then I moved to Orlando to go to
ucf. So go Knights. But as much as I love ucf, the main reason I
(12:09):
moved to Orlando was I wanted to be where the action was happening.
As I knew there were so many theme parks here in Orlando that if
I got down here I would meet somebody, I would just somehow
something would work out and I'd have a better chance of getting, you know,
getting this job. So, you know, as a high school then college student, don't really
have a resume. I tried doing some like technology related things.
(12:31):
Like I went to Best Buy and I told them my story and I was
like, I want to be a technologist. And you know, I started selling appliances. So
that wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, but it was great.
But anyway, so I did that and I started going around, you know, who do
you know, who do you know, who do you know? And a gentleman at my
church was actually a designer that he had
a garage and he was hired by Disney and Universal and he would do special
(12:54):
effects. They're working on a christening of the Disney dream cruise
ship. And he said, hey, you can come hang out. So really that was kind
of my first big break was this guy let me hang out in his shop
and you know, I was getting people coffee, whatever. But you know, I got to
meet some of the imagineers, I got to see the process. And
that Lynn led to an internship at
(13:15):
Universal, which I'm sure we will dive into more here in a moment.
Yeah, that, that is a great story because
how often do people dream of doing something when they're
younger and then actually make it happen? And I, I
did becoming a park ranger, but I did something else
first and then worked my way into it. So
(13:37):
Matthew is now got an internship at Universal,
wants to have a bigger role and in Matthew Miller Fashion
came up with an innovative approach to make it Happen. Tell
us that story. It's true. So I started in fall of 2011
and for anybody that knows anything about Universal, you know, they obviously have the Wizarding
World of Harry Potter. And not only did that change, know the TR director of
(14:00):
Universal Studios, it changed the directory of the theme park industry. I mean that, that's
just a major, major milestone. So I came in
roughly a year after Hogs Media opened at ONS
Adventure. And at that point they were like, hey, you know, we have this
influx of cash. We are now bringing in interns. And I was
the technology intern, like I said, in the fall of 2011. And what's really funny
(14:22):
about that is now they post, you know, them and Disney and others, they post
these internships and they'll have classes of 50 or more
like me. Let's say Universal creative may have 30, 40, 50 themselves and the
parts have another 50. And I can remember when I was in my internship, like
it was me, like, like I was the intern. And then like marketing
had an intern. There was just a small handful of us. And
(14:45):
for me, when I went to the interview, you know, they were like, hey, you
know, what do you want to do, lady? That interview? My name's Sharon Lohm. I
call her Mama Sharon because my, my mom is Sharon. And we still have a
great relationship today. But at that point we had not met yet, right? And I'm
interviewing and you know, she said, hey, you know, why do you want this? You
know, what's going to happen with your internship? And I looked her in the eyes
and I said, you know, I'm going to say this is as humbly as possible,
(15:08):
this is my life story. And I just shared with her the, you know, the
two minute version of what we've talked about so far. And I said, as
respectively as possible, if you give me a universal
team member id, I'm going to make it impossible for you to
get it back. I said, because like, this is what I was born to do.
And she kind of chuckled. And you know, I don't even mean that in a
(15:28):
bad way, like I was going to steal it or anything, but my goal was
I am going to be the absolute best intern
that anybody on this planet has ever seen. And
if that means I'm not going to have any friends, if that means I'm going
to work, you know, 27 hours a day, it does not matter. Because I had
resolved to, this was going to be my foot into the door.
(15:49):
So I got the internship. It was incredible. A lot of people,
when they get Internships, they talk about, oh, you know, they're not paid or people
aren't nice to you. I have nothing but great things to say about my
internship. I mean, it was. It was fantastic. Obviously, it started as the, you
know, can you sit in a meeting? Can you get us some, you know, can
you help get coffee or get printers? Right. I was just kind of bouncing off
(16:10):
the walls. But that original internship, it was for three months. It
was fall to December. And they said, hey, at the end of this December, you
know, we've got to get rid of you. And I believe them. You know, that
was going to happen. So a lady had came in and she was
quitting. She was not quitting, just moving on to another role. But in my
mind, that was crazy. You know, my whole life was around this. How could
(16:30):
you have a job like this and choose to go work somewhere else? Right? Like,
I couldn't fathom that. So what I did is the gentleman that I
was interning under, John, I said, hey, man, I don't want to get you in
trouble, but I just want to give you a heads up. I'm not going to
leave the office today. And he said, why not? I said, well, you know, this
has been my dream. I said, I want this. I feel like I need to
do something bold. I'm going to stay here all night, and I'm going to move
(16:53):
into this lady's office. And he kind of chuckled. He's like, oh,
you're being serious. I was. I'm being dead serious. So he said, I don't
have a problem with it. He said, if security or somebody calls, I'm just to
pretend like I didn't know anything about it. And I said, deal, you know,
brotherly handshake. So I did. I stayed all night. And that lady had
left her job and her office, and. And I moved in. And as
(17:15):
an intern, you know, I basically had a cup with two pencils in it to
move in. But, you know, I had. I had a place to sit. And obviously,
the next morning, the team comes in. Matthew, what are you doing? You know, you
can't have this, blah, blah, blah. And I said, if you'll let me stay here
until you find somebody, then I promise I'll give it back.
I won't cause any issues. But it would really mean a lot to me if
(17:35):
you let me kind of just look over her work. And they're like, you're an
intern. What are you going to do? Like, sure. And little did they know, she
had left a notebook of all the projects she was working on. And it just
had names and little bits of notes. And I just called and I.
Hello, list number one. Hello, my name is Matthew Middle. I'm the new project
manager. What can I do for you? And they're like, we're looking for xyz. And
I went through that whole list and I had no clue what they were asking
(17:57):
for. I'd never done any of this stuff, but it gave me a list of
things to start asking questions about. So I'd go through, you know, I get 10
things. I would go to my coworkers, hey, you know, what do you think about
this? Blah, blah, blah. And it just. It continued and continued and
continued to where, you know, in December, they're like, we can't
believe it. You know, this is the craziest thing we've ever seen, but we're going
to extend you for another. Another three months. And so really,
(18:21):
as an intern, that was how I made a name for myself, was going through
that notebook of the project manager that decided to leave. It's such
an incredible story, and it reminds me of
an interview I heard with Ed Sheeran. He was on
Conan o' Brien's podcast, and he told
stories when he was just starting out, how
(18:42):
he would find a way to book two shows a day just so he
could play. He wasn't the best. He just outworked everyone. He
came to the States, and I think my details could be
wrong, but the spirit of what I'm saying is right. I think he
ended up working with the same company that James Taylor
worked with for bookings, and he looked at
(19:05):
every show James Taylor had booked and he reached out and
made it. I mean, just this, the work ethic,
yes, it's innovative. But what I want you to get out of
Matthew's story is he finds a different approach, but
the time and pressure that he puts into it. I like.
Matthew does the work. So, yes, you need an innovative approach,
(19:26):
but you've. You've got to do the work. Matthew is one of the hardest
working people that I know. You just wouldn't know it when you meet him
because he's so nice and friendly and doesn't brag about how hard he's
working and tell you how busy he is. When he's busy, you just don't hear
back from him. At least that's what I've heard. Matthew. That's
true. And sometimes I'm bad about calling back, but you're right. And I
(19:48):
mean, and obviously this is a fun story. Right? Right. But One of the biggest
things that I left out was when I was growing up, you know, I really
admired Steven Spielberg. And one thing that I always said is
that if it worked for Steven Spielberg, it's got to work for Matthew Miller.
And what does that mean? You know, like, I'm not saying that I'm trying to
replace Steven Spielberg. I'm not even trying to say that I'm as good as Steven
(20:10):
Spielberg. All I'm saying is you see people that are successful
and they take chances in their life, and it has worked out,
and that has given me hope that these crazy ideas that I've had. And by
all means, I've had a lot of crazy ideas, and a lot of them haven't
worked out. So this is not a, you know, I'm some, you know, you're the
oracle and you know all the answers. It's not. But if you're willing to bet
on yourself. When I was growing up and I was studied these Gibbons for Birch
(20:32):
stories during his summer when, you know, he's in high school, in between
school, he would get, you know, he would go to the parks, he'd have a
day pass, whatever. And then he found ways to basically sneak around the lower lot
at Universal and was making friends. And there's some really great
interviews from Access Hollywood and others where he's talking about this. And it'll be like,
hey, you know, I had an ID badge, and the next day they just remembered
(20:53):
my face and they let me in. And by no means am I telling you,
if you're listening to this, that you should go sneak into Universal. I'm. I'm not
saying that at all. But what I'm saying is, once I had the
internship, I felt like I had more leverage than a
person that was external to the company. The same as if I would have had
an internship at Disney or it's Cisco, or I love Dr. Pepper, or
Dr. Pepper, whatever the company is. And I knew that once I was in,
(21:17):
I had more access than a person that didn't. So that was
really the turning point for me, was I didn't just get any. Like, a lot
of people see it as an internship of, well, I, you know, I'm building my
resume and I'm getting paid. I would have paid them to have the resume. I
mean, it wasn't about that for me. It was about. I had a
badge that gave me access to people and things that
(21:37):
I never had had access to before. And I wanted to
leverage that as much as possible. Yeah, this is. You
will find that the more Matthew talks, the more you want to
hear. And we've glanced over pieces that I think are
really important to his story. And
Matthew, maybe another day we can come back to some of those. Because what I
(21:59):
want to get into is how someone can
get a more innovative approach to problem solving. So
usually when we see a problem, we
go about solving them our own way or how we've seen other
people do them. But you break it down in different ways.
I've even seen Matt playing mini golf. I'm going to give this as
(22:22):
an example. Matthew and I were playing against, I think
three or four other people. There was a quite a big group.
And everybody approaches the hole the same way. And then
Matthew looks at a hole and says, well, if instead of
going straight for it, if I shoot it back up this pipe,
I think it'll come down. And Matthew does it and it comes down, goes right
(22:44):
in the hole. That was one of the first times I noticed, Matthew,
that you just don't see things the way other people
see things. We all tried to solve that problem the
same way just by doing it a little better than the person
that putted right in front of us. And you saw us all do it and
said, well, I'm going to do it completely different. And you approach all
(23:06):
your problems that way. So tell us about
an innovative approach. If we've got a problem or some, let's
just say it's something we want to accomplish. How do we take an
innovative approach and do something
differently that we may not have thought of doing before? So, great
question. I think the very first step
(23:28):
is realizing that whatever the thing is that you want
to do, 99.99% of the
time, it is absolutely possible. I think a lot of people, when they're starting
out, if they're trying to build a new theme park ride or they're just trying
to pass a class in college, they can psych themselves up. They get in
their mind and they think, I'm not good at math, so
(23:49):
I'm never going to pass this class or I'm not good at
walking, so I'm never going to be able to run a mirror, like whatever that
thing is on earth. My belief is there's
basically nothing you can't figure out. If
one, if you just will say, hey, I'm going to give myself some grace
and I may not be good at it today, but I'm going to be able
to figure it out. And two, I'm not going to stop
(24:13):
until I figure it out. And I think that, that I'm going to write a
book, I'm going to write a song, whatever. People try two or three times,
you know, they try two test and math, whatever, and they fail.
And they, oh, I, I just. It just wasn't meant to be. No, no, no.
You are going to decide to do the thing and you're going to say,
no matter what, I am going to do this thing. So
(24:33):
I think that is step one. I think step two, like you mentioned earlier as
we were talking, success leaves clues. Anything that you want to
do, for the most part, somebody has already done. You know,
you want to become a speechwriter, there's already
speechwriters. You want to design a roller coaster, there's already people that design roller
coasters. You don't have to do it the same way that they do
(24:55):
it, but you should at least study how they're doing it. One of
my favorite things to do, especially for starting the new project, is I will look
and see who are the top five, six people most successful in doing
that thing. Especially now with AI, you know, you open up, ChatGPT,
Grok, whatever, Bing, and, you know, you can talk to it and you can say,
hey, who are the top 10 people that do this thing and what
(25:17):
are their traits? You know, because, you know, I don't necessarily want to be a
Steve Jobs, but I may really like one or two qualities about a Steve
Jobs. You know, I could never be a Jody Mayberry, but I may really like
one or two things about Jody Mayberry, and I start to combine the way
that they solve problems, and I try to see
my issue, my life, through those lenses, and then
(25:39):
you just have fun with it. If you're not willing to look
dumb, you're not going to be able to accomplish anything. But if you say, you
know what I'm going to. Let's use an example. I'm going to learn how to
run a marathon. People are going to laugh at me for six months. I don't
care, because I know eventually I am going to finish
this marathon. And that feeling of completion
(26:00):
is so much more powerful than any sneaker, you know,
confronted me. Whatever. I'm going to be able to see it through. And honestly, for
me on the theme parks, that's what drove me, is it's hard for me to
put into words how I feel when I walk into a theme park.
I've been into them thousands and thousands of thousands of times.
And even like tonight, if I was to go to the Magic Kingdom, I'm going
(26:21):
to feel the same way. I did as that first grader when I first went
in, you know, 30 or 40 years ago. And to me, that
feeling was great. You know, I had people make fun of me all the time,
oh, you're not going to make it. You know, whatever, you know, I was never
driven to be like, I need to make them look bad. It was just, okay,
like, you can say what you want to, but I'm not going to give up
until it happens. This is an approach I think you can use
(26:43):
to solve anything. If you want something to happen,
listen to what Matthew has told you and it will work. And he
gave us basically two steps. One is, I'm going to do this
no matter what. You have to have that mindset and decide
this is going to happen. And two, success leaves clues. Find
five people that have done it. Do what you can, Learn from them. There's
(27:06):
also a little more. Matthew is being a little modest because
Matthew finds a way to add flair or do things
the way other people aren't doing. As an example, staying
overnight in Universal so he can move into someone's office. That's
not an approach you likely have seen other people do. And I
mentioned earlier, Matthew even had an innovative
(27:29):
approach to asking a pretty girl out. And I think Matthew will
admit. And if, if he won't admit it, then we'll talk about it right here
on the show. Matthew married, way out of his league.
His wife is really incredible. Way better looking than
Matthew, and somehow he ended up marrying her. And the story
of how he asked her out wasn't, gosh, that
(27:52):
girl's pretty. I like her. I'm going to ask her out. Matthew had to do
it in Matthew's way. Do you mind sharing that story, Matthew? Sure.
Jody. We're opening up a can of worms here. So this. And I, I got
to get it right because my wife listens to this, right? And if I, if
I get a detail wrong, I'm going to be in trouble with it. You know,
shout out to Ms. Gabriella Miller, the Sourdough queen.
But yeah, so the story, oh, man, I didn't know we were going to go
(28:14):
here, but this is wonderful. The story goes like this, that
I was still working at Universal at the time, and as I mentioned, when I
first got my start into the theme parks, it was through my church. So, you
know, been a, been a Christian for the majority of my life. Faith is a
big part of my life. So, you know, the Sunday mornings, Wednesday nights, you know,
I'm, I'm at the church all the time. If I'm not at a theme park.
(28:35):
And I started going to a college program,
used college protector, adult, young adults thing.
And I met my wife and she was awesome. They were
doing a cookie party where the young ladies would cook
desserts and then they invited all the guys to come over and have the cookies.
And I met her there. Another guy named Matt introduced us and lo and behold
(28:57):
we found out that we both worked at Universal and we've been there for quite
some time now. For people that may not know this, there are tens and
tens and tens of thousands of people that work at these
theme parks, right? You, if it's Disney, if it's Six Flags Universal,
wherever, there are way more people than you can fathom, not just operating the
rides, but working back a house, legal, IT marketing, you name it.
(29:19):
And she was, she was working there and our paths had never crossed and
you know, I just thought for sure I was going to be a shoe in,
right? And it was, it was, that wasn't the case. She was nice to
me, but she didn't seem very interested at the time. And so, you know,
I tried and I said, hey, you know, and so, you know, she'd
be nice to me but I said, man, I gotta, you know, I, like you
(29:40):
said, I gotta do something to stand out because you know, obviously I'm sure some
of the other guys in the college group trying to get her to go to
dinner too. And you know, so I was like, man, you know, what am I
going to do here? So she did work in the HR department
and I had some friends that were co workers of her sort of thing,
they worked in the area. So what we did is we put together
(30:00):
a resume and slash job wreck
for her boyfriend. So the role of being her boyfriend. And
I knew that if I don't know what day it was, Tuesdays
or something, she'd be doing a lot of paperwork, you know, that sort of thing.
And obviously I wasn't going to do anything to get her in trouble or, you
know, mess up anything at Universal. But there was a stack of papers
(30:21):
and envelopes and I, you know, and, and when she went to the
restroom she, you know, I guess I remember she was on break, whatever she had
finished what she was doing. And I just happened to come by while she wasn't
there and leave an envelope on her desk and, and she thought that it was
a job, you know, one that she had missed. And she opened it up and
it says, you know, this is a, you know, to fill the position of being
(30:42):
your boyfriend. And Want to take you out dinner. And we had the
resumes. I mean, I had all of my prior work. I mean,
we'd put a lot of work in this. So obviously she calls like, I don't
know who you are. I mean, I met you, but, like, what is going on?
But she got a huge laugh out of it. And for me, it worked out.
It got me a dinner date. And then, as they say, the rest is history.
(31:04):
And we've been married for eight years now. We have two beautiful
young little girls, and life couldn't be better. That is one of
my favorite Matthew Miller stories, because it's just the
essence of who Matthew is. He said, I'm going to do this no matter what.
I'm going to find a way to do it that other people aren't doing. And
that's how Matthew's done it. Now. We just glanced over
(31:27):
a lot of Matthew Miller stuff. So I think at some point we need to
have him back. He started at Universal. We never even talked about all the
wonderful things he accomplished at Orlando Informer.
We barely talked about the move to Innovated
studios and the work you're doing there. So, Matthew, I think at some point, we
have to have you back on the show to talk about more of this. Jody,
(31:48):
it would be an honor to come back and talk about it. You know, I've
even answered the questions. And by the way, one last thing I want to say
for anybody that's listening to this, I've shared some crazy stories, right? If it's been
the. The resume or, you know, the dinner with Lee or the office thing,
I just want to make sure anybody that's listening to this, I want you to
do things that cause you to stand out. I want you to do things that
help you build the story in your life. Because my thought
(32:12):
is you need to be the main character in your life. Like,
don't wear pants or shirt with somebody else's name on it.
Make your own name, right? You are the main character in your life.
But all that being said, also be wise in the decision
that you make. You know, we're here telling these crazy stories, but it's things
like, you know, when I was there overnight, you know, I was already working
(32:34):
there. I had talked to my coworkers. You know, we knew that security
wasn't going to upset. I just want to make sure, you know, sometimes you hear
these things, people think, oh, my gosh, I need to go to do something that
is just so crazy and put my life in danger or put my
finances in danger or whatever. I'm not advocating for that at all. All
I'm saying is if you've got a goal that you want to accomplish,
realize you can do it. Especially if you say, like, I'm going to do
(32:57):
this no matter what. And then if you'll think through how to be
successful in the thing that you want to do, how to do it without, you
know, getting in trouble or minimal impacts, you can have some really cool stories in
your own life soon. Oh, that's great advice, Matthew. And
Lee Cockrell will sometimes he'll say that if
something needs to be done, then he's going to get in. If you
(33:19):
don't let him in the front door, he'll try the back door, he'll try getting
in the chimney, he'll break in a window, he will get in. And I
always say I'm as tenacious as Lee. It's just
that I'm going to build a relationship with your grandmother and she's going to invite
me in for tea. That's how I'm going to get into your house. And Matthew
takes the same approach. So much of what he has accomplished
(33:40):
is built on relationships. Getting to know people,
getting to know patterns. Because he mentioned he checked with
coworkers, he checked with security. He knew nothing would happen. Right.
That is from building relationships, not just
being bold and taking a big swing, not
understanding how it might impact other people. So that is great
(34:02):
ending advice, Matthew. Now, Matthew
doesn't take an approach you would expect, including here.
He's built up this reputation as America's theme park
technologist and doesn't even have a website yet. So where
can we connect with you, Matthew? That's true. So just go to
Google and you type in Matthew Miller Theme parks. It's a great way to
(34:23):
find me. But if you want to connect on social, like I said, I grew
up in Wewahitchka, so I'm Wewa Miller. W e W a
Miller across all social media. And that's the easiest way to find
me. All right, all right. Thank you so much, Matthew. It was great talking with
you. Thank you, Jody. I appreciate you having me. And I can't wait to chat
again. And thank you for listening to the Jody Mayberry
(34:45):
Show.
He's off like a bride's dadie. It's Sugar J.
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