September 15, 2020 • 43 mins
Matt Pohlson is the co-founder and CEO of Omaze, the online fundraising platform that offers people the chance to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences while supporting nonprofits worldwide. Since founding in 2012, the company has raised more than $130 million for more than 350 charities and was recently named one of "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" by Fast Company magazine.
Matt joins us to discuss his origin story, Omaze's founding and big break, and the profound impact a near-death experience had on his philosophy—leading Matt to his deepen commitments to work, renew his relationship with himself, and double down on his belief that Optimism is a superpower.
Whether you want a double date with George and Amal Clooney in Lake Como or you're looking to win a rare luxury automobile, own a multi-million dollar new home, or have your student debt paid off, Omaze provides a democratized system giving anyone the chance to win their dream prize while raising much-needed funds for nonprofits spanning the globe.
Pohlson graduated from Stanford University and received his MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
This episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing my pal,
(00:23):
Matt Poulson. Matt is the co founder and CEO of
oh May's, the online fundraising platform that offers people a
chance to win once in a lifetime experiences while supporting
nonprofits around the world. Since founding it in two thousand twelve,
the company has raised more than a hundred and thirty
million dollars from more than three hundred and fifty charities.
Was recently named one of the fifty world's most Innovative
(00:44):
companies by Fast Company magazine. Matt was really considerate and
sharing his personal near death experience that tremendously changed his perspective,
and Matt broke down how he led oh May's from
a self funded, small startup to a global organization with
over a hundred employees. Please enjoy my interview with Matthew Polson. Matt,
(01:12):
Welcome to podcast, Jeff, Thanks for having me. Where are
you in the world today. Um, I am out in
Long Island. Cool and you're a West Coast guy. Originally correct,
You're you're born and raised West Coast. I am. I'm
from the Guna Beach. I live in Venice. I'm just
I'm out here in kind of a friend commune for
a little while. Love that. Love that. Im I'm in
(01:35):
the dad commune, um, you know, with the mother in
law and the wife and child. Um, I romance the
times that I was in the friend communes. Well, I'm
excited for the times when I get to be waiting
for a child and having a family around. Its sound
like a beautiful experience. It is fair enough. UM, I
(01:55):
appreciate that. Well. You as you know, I'm a huge
fan of you and Oh May's. You know, I really
am happy to call you a friend, and you know,
just to you know, I've done my little intro on May's,
but I would love for you to give the listeners
a little insight into the company. Yeah. Well, first of all,
I'm a big, huge fan of Jeff Rosenthal and Summit
(02:15):
and and honor to you a friend, Um, you have
given so much to our community of entrepreneurs around the world.
For so long um and not just driven driven business
creation but impact and in fact, you know, we got
the first investor for oh Mays on the Summit series
(02:36):
boat back in two thousand twelve is a two twelve eleven. Yeah, yeah, amazing.
So you guys played a role and that as as
as I'm sure you have in so many other partnerships
from business too. I met a couple of the other
night that admitted Summit and I'm sure that's happened a
hundred times. So in terms of what Amaze is, we
raise money and awareness for charity by offering the chance
(02:58):
to win once in a lifetime experiences. We've done everything
from being mentored by Michelle Obama to ride in a
tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger and crush things, to win a
l Grighini where Pope Francis hand you the keys, which
was probably the most extraordinary experience we've ever done. I
had to go to the Vatican and and pitch Pope
(03:21):
Francis of where we're different than most people that do
this is rather than make it so one high net
worth individual can pay twenty five or fifty thou dollars
to have one of these experiences, make it so that
anybody in the world can donate ten dollars for the
chance to win UM. And then we use our background
and content and storytelling and performance marketing to spread these
around the world. And as a result, we cannet to
(03:44):
to sometimes forty x for our charity partners versus alternative
fundraising and the word for profit company. When we take
a percentage of the proceeds incredible and that numbers. I
believe it's over a hundred million for over three hundred
fifty charities around the world. Correct, Yeah, we have, Yeah,
we have. Now we have now netted over a hundred
fifty million actually for charities. That's incredible. UM. And I
(04:08):
know that you guys were named one of fast companies,
you know, most innovative companies. And what I when I
especially love about your model is that it really democratizes
access to both these experiences but also being a part
of these impact stories. You know. For me, you know,
I guess when I was younger and I had, you know,
only a little bit of capital to my name to
(04:29):
go to like a charity I cared about and give
them ten dollars or twenty dollars, it felt like such
an also ran thing or perhaps I'm you know, I'm
partially interested in supporting a good cause, but I'm really
interested in having a great experience. I just love that
you've offered sort of this you know, branch to people
that aren't like, you know, the converted, to get involved
in these cause areas. Do that matter so much? Yeah?
(04:52):
Thank you? I mean, I totally you know, that was
obviously the core of our mission. I mean the we
were started with kind of a similar experience that you
had in that you know, me and my buddy were
at an event that Magic Johnson was hosting for the
Boys and Girls Club back when we were in grad school,
(05:12):
and he was auctioning off the chance to play basketball
with him and go to a Lakers game. But it
was only available to the high net worth individuals sitting
in the room, and we were in the room, but
not high net worth individuals. We're the guys who get
invited last minute to fill the table. And we sat
there and watched as the auction went up to fifteen
tho dollars and we couldn't afford to participate in. Magic
(05:34):
was our childhood hero. And when we were driving home
and I were like that just doesn't make any sense,
you know, like magic has fans around the world, not
just in that room. And in fact that people who
can't afford to be in that room it will probably
be more grateful to meet him than the people who can.
And so if we made it available to all of
them online for the chance to win and reinforce what
(05:56):
you just said about, you know, making them understand that
every every contribution matters, for even if it's five dollars,
you can have a massive ripple effect totally. And you
mentioned your background in storytelling before you found it om
is what were you doing? Yeah? So, um a co
founder right and I um we you know, we went
(06:17):
to college together, came down to l A to get
into entertainment, specifically focused on cause content. We had a
passion for using storytelling to inspire action because the beauty
of a story in its essence is that enables you
to connect with someone whose experiences are different than your own,
and when you do that, you want to help that person,
(06:39):
and when you do that, you feel more connected. So
it's a virtuous cycle and we wanted to help perpetuate
that cycle, and so we did a bunch of different
projects along those lines. Were the first directors on this
thing called Live Earth, which is the biggest concert ever thrown.
It was on seven continents and one night to raise
awareness for a climate change, and we everyone from the
(07:02):
Rolling Stones to Kanye Um. We were the early producers
on a documentary series called Girl Rising about girls education
and the developing world that was funded by Oprah and
Queen Reign of Jordan's and Meryl Street was narrator. We
spent a couple of years traveling around the world interviewing
the world's greatest thinkers, a couple hundred Noble Prize winners
in MacArthur Genius current recipients, and then we did the
Clinton Foundations big tenth anniversary global television concert event with
(07:25):
everybody from Bono and Jay Z to Bill Gates and
Lady Gaga, and so we were doing that work, and
you know, we're working with these people that were obviously
like very influential and authentically wanted to do good, but
we just didn't feel like we were doing that much good.
You know, we felt like we were creating a lot
of awareness around these projects, but we weren't necessarily creating
(07:45):
a lot of impact. And that was kind of endemic
to the cost content space. So that so we decided
we need to figure out a better model to do.
We were passion out de stided to go to business
school and try to surround ourselves with people smarter than us.
And then when we were in school we went to
that J. Johnson event. For me, I'm just so fascinated
with how you chose as a path. Perhaps there should
(08:07):
just be more things like oh, May is out in
the world, But you guys have really utilized the twenty
one century tech platforms and a p I s and
performance marketing programs and combined it with such like a
practical approach to getting cash to these organizations that need it.
So take us through those initial days, like what was
(08:28):
what was it like when you guys were raising the
first money? Is it the same company now as it
was then in terms of the theme or in terms
of what the intention was? Yeah, that's a good question. Um,
I would say it is very much the same company
in terms of the intention. I mean we articulated a
little bit differently now, but the spirit is the same
(08:49):
and what we set out to do is very much
the same, you know that. I think the big difference is,
like we had no idea what we're doing at the beginning.
Like literally we're very bad at what we were doing
a long across like almost every dimension, you know. And
I think part of it is like I think we,
like a lot of people don't realize when they go
to being like doing a startup, is that everyone is scared.
(09:11):
And we were scared. Ryan and I when we left
business school. Neither of us like you know, we had
done documentaries and those those you know, cause content before school,
but like you don't make much money doing that. And
so we came we both left school, you know, two debt.
I mean we had you know, not worked really and
so you know, we came out with and we both
passed up. He passed up a job at Golden and
(09:31):
I passed up a job at McKenzie. I mean, to
do this, and so we were definitely, Wow, this is
like pretty irrational. Um. And then you know, I think
I always thought like entrepreneurs like you think about like
Musk or Brandson, and they're like they're just like courageous
and they they're they're bold and they see every you know,
every step with courage impressions, and anytime they fail, that's
(09:55):
just a launching path to success and then so I
remember being like some spending so many nights like sleepless
because like, oh me didn't work at all for like
the first year, Like our first experience raised seven eighty dollars,
you know, and it would be the Guest Judge and
Cupcake Wars, and like you know, we were we were
about um, you know, after we had raised our seed
round and we had to go out and raise again.
(10:16):
We had like a month left of cash when we
got our big break. What was that? What was the
big break? It was Breaking Bad actually was our big
break ironically, but yeah, what had happened was there was
another company that had launched it was doing the same thing,
which I know, you know those those guys, and they
were really smart entrepreneurs, and we had to have this
thing set up with Brian Cranston around Breaking Bad. And
(10:36):
then they had done another campaign with Samuel Jackson that
raised like a hundred eighty thousand, and the most we've
ever raised at that point was eighteen thousand, So they
were literally ten x better than us, and they knew
we had this with Brian, and they went to Brian
to say like, hey, you know, you guys should you
should do this with us, like we're much more better,
which is very fair thing to say. And so that
(10:58):
we got the word from Brian's team of hey, you know,
Brian is actually gonna go to another platform, and we
were that was devastating because like that was our We
thought that was our last chance to prove that, like
we could like you know, get a case study to
go out in fundraise off of. And so you know,
we called back like the person on his team that
it like we were that we knew and we're close
(11:19):
with and and said like he's got to do with us.
She's like, I'm sorry. He's like, you know, but like
I don't know, like we have you know, he's gonna
go to the direction and he's you know, he's gonna
call him let them to tomorrow. And I was like, well,
where is he right now? Then she's like what are
you talking about? It was like I need to talk
to him right now, like and she's like, well, he's
at this charity event. And so we snuck into the
charity event. How did you do it? How did you
(11:39):
get in? You know? I found that you can sneak
in most places if you walk by just pretending like
you belong. So that's what we did. You know. We dressed,
we dressed the part, and we u it was at
this famous person's house and when they named the name,
but like and I had actually catered at that house
like three or not three, I don't know, many years earlier.
It's I kind of knew. I knew the house some way.
(11:59):
We got in there and then we found Brian and explained,
you know, like, hey, what are these guys from m
az and and you know you were going to do
this campaign together and now you're doing with someone else.
He's like, it's not the personal guys, but it's just
these guys raised a lot more money and it's really
about the charity. We said, we understand that. You know.
He's like, and he's saying, these guys, you know, so
(12:20):
they can raise a hundred and eighty thousand, and I said,
well we can raise two hundred thousand. And he's like, well,
what's the most you've ever raised? And I said eighteen thousand,
and he's like, well, how are you going to do that?
And it was like we have no choice, you know,
like literally, like we will do anything it takes. We
have a lot of creative ideas like we think we
can break through. We're gonna put our whole heart into
this thing and we and we will deliver. He kind
(12:41):
of just looked at us and maybe felt sorry for us.
I don't know what it is. He was like, all right,
like let's do it, and so he took the leap
on us. We ended up raising three hundred thousand with
that campaign, and then he introduced to Darren Paul and
we did the finale of Breaking Bad and that raised
one point seven million, and that's like what put us
on the map. Unbelievable. And I remember, are you telling
me about the Aaron Paul story. Did you guys take
(13:03):
the RV from the show to the finale? Yeah, with
with the winner of the Yeah with the winner, And
we like we had to do this like pyrotechnic thing
where we like let off the yellow smoke like they
do in the show. Nice. So it wasn't the actual
one from the show, because the actual one from the
show doesn't drive, but the but we went and found
one of Craigslist that looked identical to it that like
(13:25):
that Sony and everyone signed off on as like okay,
that will pass because it's literally like it was the
exact model. That's amazing. But I was so nervous that
we were going to blow the thing up, like because
we had to do this stunt. And we were like, yea,
we were so nervous. Incredible. We'll be back with more
out of the hustle after the break. You know, there's
(13:52):
so many directions I want to take this interview, but
you mentioned the Pope, and I have to ask. These
are such amazing stories. So wait a minute. So you
went to the Vatican to pitch the Pope. Yeah, I did.
I just don't even understand how that how that initiates. Yeah,
I mean the well that that's a crazy story too.
(14:15):
I can tell it. It's like a it's like a
five minute story, but I can. Yeah, I'm so Basically
the way that the way that, the way that that
happened actually started with we did this experience with Bono,
and basically what happened was, so to step back, there's this,
there's which led to the Pope. So to step back,
there's this. There's this young girl who at the time
(14:38):
was fifteen years old living up in northern California. Her
name was Chloe, and Chloe was born with a club foot,
and she went to high school and she was picked
off by a bunch of mean girls and then and
then escalated to one point they pinned her down during
(15:00):
lunch in front of the whole school. Six girls like
held her down on the lunch tables and pulled her
shoe off to show everyone what her deformed foot looked like.
She was obviously traumatized. She went back to her house.
Um she locked herself in her room. She wasn't coming out,
and her dad was obviously like very you know, concerned
(15:21):
about what she can hert herself, and so he tried
to talk to her, and he talked about how he
was this huge fan of you too, you know, maybe
she would like listening to them, And she like found
this one song called Invisible, which is an anthemic song
that basically says like you can't see me, but I'm here,
and she just like latched onto that song and she
started listening to it every single day on loop and
(15:44):
eventually like I went back to school and you know
and kind of like started to address what she was
working through with that song is inspiration. At the same time,
her dad, we had we had offered this campaign to
meet Bonto backstage to benefit Red and her dad day
and it had entered and he won, and so they
(16:05):
got to go meet Bono and so this is so awesome, okay, yeah,
and so and obviously we don't know any of this.
We get there and I'm and this is early and amaze,
so like I'm literally like flying to be there to
make sure this goes okay, because obviously gets a big deal.
It was our first campaign with Bono. And so we
go backstage. It's me and Chloe, who is a fifteen
and on crutches, and like you could tell she's got
(16:27):
this weight on her. I don't know any of this backstory.
I just can tell like there's something going on with
her and her dad. And when this like little room,
and then Bono comes in and the first thing he
does is there's this Red guitar because it has been
to benefit Red. So he signs the guitar, which bottom
point becomes important later and then and then he says
hello to the dad, and then he says, he says,
(16:49):
you know, tell me your story, and his dad, Dane, says,
you know, this isn't about my story, like this is
about my daughter, Chloe's story, and he says, well, what's
your story, Chloe, And she says, well, I was a
sault did and your song Invisible helped me get through it.
And Bonna said, you were insulted like that they called
you names, and she said, no, I was assaulted. And
(17:09):
the way that she said it like had this gravity
and again like like obviously I didn't know the backstory
of Corsebondo didn't know the backstory, but he's clearly a
very emotionally intelligent person and you could just feel it.
And so he said, well, how did this song Invisible
help you? And she said, you know, it gave me
the strength to not hurt myself, give me a strength
to go back to school, gave me the strength to
(17:31):
stand up to those girls, and gave me the strength
to stand up to my school to make sure it
doesn't happen to somebody else, you know. And he just
looked at her and he said, we know how you
were able to do that. He said, because the art
of the universe bends towards justice and love, and when
you have right on your side, it's like this big
fist not to hurt people with, but to fight for
what's right. And you could like see in that moment
(17:51):
like this, like the way he was saying it was
impacted here. And then he and he said, you know,
what's your passion, Chloe? And she said she kind of
got embarrassed against She said, I haven't figured it out,
you know, I don't know. And he said, well, that's okay.
He said, we have a prayer in my family, and
we're not a we're not a righteous family. We say
this prayer in the church, but we also say this
prayer and the pub and our prayer is I am
(18:12):
available for work. He said, make yourself available for work
and your passion will be revealed to you. And you
could literally see this weight just lifting off this girl.
Like it was so I mean, obviously, like Bono is
so much more poetic than I can never be in
recreating it, but like, literally the moment was so I've
never seen a moment like that in my life. You
(18:32):
could literally see this weight lifting off of her. You
could see this person transforming before your very eyes. So
then Chloe goes home, she decides, Okay, I'm gonna use
this for good. She starts telling other girls who've been
bullied about this story, and like what Bono told her,
and all that kind of stuff, and then work he
gets out about this and like a parent at another
school asks her to come talk to like some kids
(18:54):
who've been bullied at their school. And then another school
asks her, and then another school, and all of a sudden,
she's like going and like doing these like talks, and
she decides, I'm gonna I'm gonna name this thing. I'm
gonna call it like staying beautiful where people embrace their differences.
She then like it becomes such a thing that she
gets invited to do a ted X talk. So she
does a ted X talk about standing beautiful, embracing and
(19:14):
what Bono taught her. There's a publisher from Penguin Random
House there, they get a they give her a book
deal she gets. She then gets invited to go speak
around the world about what had happened. And she goes
on this tour helping people. And then one of the
tours she went to, there was someone from the Vatican
there and they heard the story and then they went
up to her and said, what's this amaze thing? And
(19:37):
she explained what it was, and then they asked if
they could she could put them in contact, and so
then the person from the Vatican reached out to us,
and that's how I ended up with the Vatican. One
other thing is just shows you like that the universe
inspires sometimes the you know, I said, there's the red
guitar the Bonno signed. As we were leaving um, the
dad said to Bono after the like magical moment of
(19:59):
like hug and whole thing, and said, you know, hey,
by the way, like, what's the story with his guitar?
When was the last time you played it? And Bonn
I was like, oh, man, I don't know. I I'm
not going to keep in track of those things. But
we have someone who's job it is to keep track
of those things, you know, and I'll make sure that
you can get in contact with them. So then like
the day and email the guy's name is Gary, and
Gary email back without having any context of the story,
(20:22):
saying the last time Bonno played this guitar was in
Dublin in the studio when he was writing the song
Invisible WHOA. Well, I just love that. I just loved it,
you know, and I want to talk more about oh Mays.
But it's kind of a perfect transition because you know,
one of the other I'd say magic surrealism, that that
(20:44):
has touched your life, um, and that the yield the
saying is one of the things I've heard you say before,
is it optimism is a superpower. And you had a
personal life experience and your death experience that I'd love
for you to share with the listeners because I know
it had a huge impact on you. This. So what
happened in me is UM when I was born, so
basically two years ago last week, I was declared dead
(21:06):
and they brought me back to life. And the background
is when I was born, my stomach was twisted and
and not and I was supposed to die when I
was born, and then they did this crazy surgery that
saved me, obviously, and then the scar tissue from the
surgery broke off all these years later, um, creating this
(21:26):
ball obstruction. But I didn't know that at the time.
All I knew that my stomach was hurting my stomach,
you know, that's just part of what I've lived with
my whole life. But this felt like particularly acute. And
so I called my friend who's a doctor, and I said, Hey,
you know, I'm hosting this dinner party tonight. I really
want to do it, but my stomach is hurting, like,
(21:47):
do you think I need to go to the hospital.
And he's like, yeah, this could be your appendix burst thing.
I'm not sure, but better safe and sorry. So he
tells me to go to hospital. So go to the
hospital and it gets a lot worse and and I'm
in this kind of crazy pain, but we can't figure
out what's going on. And the CEO of a maze comes.
Her name is Helen because I was supposed to be
meeting her at the time. And then my parents come
(22:08):
and they do all these tests. It's inconclusive. So they
about like ten thirty at night, they say to Helen
and my parents, right, you guys go home. We're gonna
keep mad overnight and if he's not better by the morning,
then we'll do surgery then. And so Helen drives home
to her house. She pulls into her driveway. You know,
at this point it's about eleven o'clock at night, and
(22:31):
you know she something is telling her not to get
out of the car, something is telling her to go
back to the hospital. And you know, Helen is British
in a ceo and very serious. She's not like a venice.
You know, listened to the Cosmos type of person. But
the voice was undeniable, and so she decided that to
(22:54):
go back to the hospital. And and if she had
not driven back to the spittal, I would have probably
died forty five minutes later because my blood pressure had plummeted.
It was down to over fifty, which it's like, you
really shouldn't be getting oxygen to your brain. But the
machine somehow had not alerted the nurses, and so I
(23:14):
was literally just fading away. So she came in. She
saw the machine. She had been in the hospital with
her grandmother like for a while a couple of months earlier,
so she kind of knew her way around. And so
she went and got the nurse and said, look at this.
This this looks really bad. And he's like, that can't
be right. He wouldn't he wouldn't be getting oxygen to
his brain. So then he went to do and get
(23:36):
do another test out the same result. He was going
to do another test and she's like, no more tests, like,
get the doctor. She went and got the doctor. Doctor
came in, she took one look and called in the
crash team. They rushed me down to surgery. What's what's
the crash team. It's like the like when someone's they
think someone's dying. They like said, they have these teams
that are like swat teams essentially, that are on call
(23:58):
that like you'll you'll see like people rush into a
room like on Gray's Anatomy or whatever. You know, it's
like when just like all these people converge and they're
equipped to like transport you real fast and like address
whatever the cute thing is. So they all rush in
the room. They rushed me down into surgery. Come out
of surgery, and they say to my mom, the good
(24:19):
news is we figured out what it is. It's about obstruction.
The bad news is his heart rate is continuing to
plummet and we don't know why, and he's in critical condition.
And so then and your mom, your mom is a nurse, correct,
My mom, she works at a hospital. She's not a
nurse works. He knows her way, she's you know, she
knows where around the hospital. And so yeah, so yeah,
(24:42):
then a couple hours passed and she goes down to
get my dad and my brother, and she comes back
upstairs and she hears over the loudspeaker code blue in
room seven and um, as you mentioned, my mom works
in the hospital, but so she knows that means flatline,
and she knows that's my room. So she rushes upstairs
and she gets to the door and the nurse says,
(25:05):
I'm sorry, you can't come in. This is really serious.
And she said, look, I was there when he came
in this world. If he's leaving this world right now,
I'm gonna be in that room. So she led her
in the room and they were doing the compressions and
they were doing the electric shock treatment, but my body
wasn't responding. I was flatlining. And so my mom at
(25:26):
first she started to crumble. You know, it's it's one
thing to lose a child, it's another thing to be
in the room when it's happening. Um. And then at
the same time, my dad was outside with my brother,
and this doctor came out and said to another doctor
in front of my brother, not knowing was my brother, Hey,
we lost this guy. He's gone. And so my brother
(25:46):
pushed my dad in the room. So you need to
be there with mom. And so when my dad came in,
you can kind of picture of my mom's face to
the right towards me, and my dad comes in from
her left, and he's crying so loudly as he enters
the room. It causes her to turn away from me
to say, like, Garrett, you know you gotta be quieter.
They're gonna kick us out of this room. You know.
My dad's like if I can't cry right now, like
(26:07):
when do I get to cry? But you know she's
when she turned to say that to him, she said
she saw something that she'd never seen before in a hospital.
She said, every nurse and every staff member and every
doctor and the I C you had just gravitated outside
the window and there was like forty of them. And
(26:29):
she said they looked like this silent church choir just
sending in this positive energy. And she was so moved
by these people that were sending love to someone that
they didn't even know. It was like this transcendent spiritual
experience for her, and it just kind of filled her
up with strength, and she kind of took a deep
(26:49):
breath and she started coaching me. You know, she turned
back and she just said, Matthew David Poulson, these people
are fighting to save your life. They're fighting so hard
to bring you back, but you're not fighting hard enough.
You to show them you're a fighter. They're fighting to
save your life. And you know, they said it was
this surreal experience watching because here's this sixty five year
(27:10):
old mom who's in this room that you're not what
no one's supposed to be in except for the medical staff.
And you know, the flat line went on for four
and a half minutes, which is a long time and
they don't usually keep fighting that long, but because she
was there fighting, they kept fighting. But at one point,
you know, my mom said, you know, she just realized,
(27:32):
like this has been going on a long time. And she,
you know, because she works on hospital, she knows how
long these things usually go. And so she starts to think, oh,
my god, like I cannot believe this. We're gonna lose him.
And if I lose him, like I'm gonna lose my husband,
and how's this happening? You know, and her mind started
to go there. And you know, right as it was
going there, the main doctor who was administering the CPR
(27:56):
and the shocks, you know, he uh, he started shake
his head as if to say like, oh, this is
this is done, and you know as he did that,
she said no, no, no, please, like please don't call it,
and as she said that, he said, wait a second,
and he turned back. He said, I think we have
a pulse. And all of a sudden, my eyes just
opened up and I popped up, and then I looked
(28:22):
over at my mom, and then I looked over my dad,
and I was on my side, and I kind of
just like slowly lifted my right arm and gave a
thumbs up. Oh my god, what a story, dude. First
and foremost, happy resurrection anniversary. Thank you. Secondly, your mom
(28:48):
deserves like the mom equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was a superhero. She's a force of nature, art
of the hustle. Will be right back after this short break,
(29:10):
and I want to, you know, get into you know,
optimism is a superpower, and you know how it applies
to your work today. But like you know, now it's
been two years since this has happened, and I'm sure
it changed your perspective on everything. Yeah, it really has,
you know, It's I mean, it's still like I learned.
I think about it every day. I learned from it.
(29:31):
The lessons are still revealing themselves to me. I think
one of the things that, like it changed my perspective
on are just like, is like what it means to
be a best friend to yourself, you know, Like I
used to be so much more ego driven. Then I realized,
you know, not in a I don't. I mean, you
knew me obviously before. I don't. I hope that you
(29:52):
wouldn't describe me as like egotistical or like an asshole
or you know, but I would have said Debonair, hilarious, Talton,
I appreciated that I was fishing for compliments that you know,
I used to care so much about what people think
in an unhealthy way, and I used to compare myself
two people all the time. You know, you and I
(30:13):
are surrounded by extraordinary people, and I would compare myself
to them and remind myself of why I didn't stack up,
you know, and that frame of reference was just so unhealthy.
And so that like this helped change that in a
fundamental way. And part of the reason it did was
because you know, I had this kind of like come
back to the light experience that just made me realize
how interconnected we all are, and I could feel the
(30:36):
love that people were sending me, and it just made me,
you know, I have such a broader perspective on these
things and also recognized that, like, you know, like when
I left the hospital, the doctor, you know, he sat
at the edge of my bed and and he was like,
look when I he was guys are a world renowned surgeon.
He's like, look, when I finished my career thirty years
from now, and I'm talking about the most extraordinary case
(30:58):
I've ever seen, this is gonna be it. You know,
we had you had zero percent chance of survival for
two days, and the fact that we have you going
home with your full faculties. We have no medical explanation
for that. And I said, well, do you have a guess?
You know, he said, look, we were inspired by your mom.
That there was a whole another day and a half
after they resuscitated me where I was, they had me
(31:19):
a zero percent chance of revival still, and they had
to do these other surgeries. And before like the second surgery,
my mom was grabbing the doctors by the cheek and
she was saying, look, this is my son, but today
this is your son, and this is your brother, and
his company is trying to do good in the world.
You need to help them. He said. So we were
(31:39):
motivated by that, but outside of that there were larger
forces of play. And I said, well, was a man
of science, how do you define those larger forces? And
he said it was love and it was optimism that
brought you back. And I really believe that to be true,
you know. And so what I believe is possible now,
like in terms of kind of shaping your own future,
(32:01):
and I get careful of like the world's manifestation, or
like you can get into the world of the world
of like the Secret and some of these things that
I think lack acknowledgement of. It's not just about thoughts,
it's about actions. But do you believe that your thoughts
and your intentions travel much farther and can shape and
can change the trajectory of things and can change you
(32:22):
know that that that energy is like we feel that
and it's powerful and we don't have great scientific explanation
for it just yet, but I think we will, but
we all know it's there and so um And so
when I got let rid of the ego a lot
of the stuff that would hold me back, I think
I'm able to express more love now. And being able
to express more love comes from getting rid of fear,
(32:44):
because the opposite of love is not hate, it's fear
and so and I had some to fear. And then
as a result of expressing more love, you start to
also realize the power of optimism and like what can
change in the world. And you know, and I think
we're feeling in that more never right now. Definitely there
is some scientific credence to this that you know, it
is not that widely read, but there was a great
(33:05):
book called Synchronicity. It was all about the birthplace of
scenario planning in the Royal Dutch Shell Corporation, and the
idea being that, you know, if they had to take
the spice through through regions that we're going to have
some kind of upheaval, then they needed a doctrine plan
for that's what the US military calls it for how
(33:27):
to deal with both negative and positive scenarios. And then
you get to invest, over a long period of time
along those you know, potential outcomes. And what they realized
is that when they tacked towards the more optimistic outcome,
it happened more often. And you know, I'm certainly a
(33:48):
believer that if you think you can't, you're right, you know,
And I'm curious for you you know, and I feel
you and you could feel the love of your friends,
Like it sounds like it turned on some faculties for you.
Literal sensitivity is that you might not have had how
did it manifest inside of like you know, in a company,
(34:09):
it's not just friendships, it's also you know, how you lead,
how you manage. Did it change the way that you
operate in that fashion as well? Yeah? Absolutely, I learned
to kind of with our team almost love more and
care less. And so what I mean by that is
like I'm more, I'm less afraid to express my gratitude
for people. I do that. I actually make that a
(34:30):
regular to practice, Like I send an email to a
different person on our team every single week and to
a different friend. I sent a video every single week
saying like this is why I'm grateful for you. So
I do that more. It's awesome. But at the same time,
I used to in some ways, I think, care so
much about what our team thought of me because I
cared so much about them, and they're so grateful that
(34:51):
people even go on this journey, you know, Like I mean,
you know how it is you at the beginning of
an entrepreneurial journey, and you're doing every job and then
sometimes you every once while you wake up, you're like, wow,
there's like a hundred and thirty people that work here,
and like that's just I can't believe they work here,
you know, Like, yeah, I remember when like there was
two of us. But what I I I assess my
leadership and like my impact is a leader over I'm
(35:15):
much longer to mention now, So like, I know there's
certain things that can maybe make people feel uncomfortable or
challenged or or a short term discomfort for them, or
or that I'm willing to push more because I think
with down the road, like they'll recognize that this was
in their interests in the longer term. And as long
(35:37):
as I feel like I'm operating from that place, I
can like I'm much better absorbing that I don't I
don't worry as much about being liked as much as
I do about feeling like that I'm actually serving them
and then serving this greater vision, you know, um, And
so I think it's changed me in that way. And
and then also like my big capacity to you know,
(36:00):
get above the level of the problem. You and I
both have a teacher that we love named Jim George
that like talks a lot about that is a problem
can never be solved at the level of the problem.
So I think I used to overweight every single thing,
and I have my identity so tied up in a
maze that with this broader perspective that I have now,
it enables you to kind of process through things much quickler,
see decisions much more quickly, recognize what really matters and
(36:23):
what doesn't on on an easier capacity. I do want
to transition a little bit, you know, back to Oh
May is and just because I think it's really important,
like you said, like you know, you are working on
something that is in service of this greater good. And
you know, I think it's also really important that it's
a it's a for profit business, you know, that has
investors and that has capital to spin to scale. And
(36:44):
I think that there's an ongoing debate about you know, impact,
and like about altruism, like the selflessness of altruism in
a sense, so that you know, appropriate philanthropy is when
you receive nothing in return, whereas you know, you know,
one of the things I told you, you know, in
inviting you to the Pond asks is that I really
do want to. I think it's really important that people
understand the good that OMAS is able to do because
(37:07):
of how you harness you know, modern technology, how you
harness the tools that are at our disposal at this
moment in time. So maybe you could talk to us
a little bit about you know, the future of Omens,
like where you guys are going, what are the ambitions? Yeah? Absolutely, um, well,
thank you for seeing that. You know, the vision is
to dream the world better. We we feel very lucky
(37:29):
that we get to make dreams come true every single day,
not just for the people that win the experiences, but
for the beneficiaries the causes and so you know, people
getting resources and opportunities that weren't previously available to them.
And you know, we believe that optimism is a fuel
for dreams and as we discussed optimism as a superpower,
optimism makes you realize that what you thought was impossible
(37:50):
is actually possible. And we want to we not only
want to be impactful from a fundraising perspective, but from
scaling optimism. You know, in our kind of north Star,
there is to be the first for profit company and
give a billion dollars to charity in a single year.
You know, as I mean, we've already netted a hundred
and fifty million for charity. If we had chosen to
be a nonprofit and we're limited by that, we would
(38:12):
have we would have you know, we would have netted
five millions. So um, that's very much around poor profit
and it's important for us. You know, we care a
lot about being a highly impactful, highly profitable company because
we think we can not only help people, but we
can be a beacon for other entrepreneurs that realize that
(38:35):
that's a false choice, Like choosing between doing well and
doing good hurts the nonprofit sector. And I can go
all through the history of why that is and this
different social maorias that we have governed the nonprofit sector,
that we don't have government for profit sector, and and
what that how that hurts us as a society. But
you know, we believe that's part of our role is
breaking through those norms. And so it creates another burden.
(38:57):
You know. You you don't just have to be a
any that like develops a model that's really impactful. You
you have to you know, or impactful of business perspective,
but you have to go through all these other things.
Part of what we're doing in terms of like expanding
that is like we've expanded from doing just celebrity experiences too.
We're offering stuff like travel the world or a country
(39:18):
in a sprinter van or when a you know, we're
about to do when a four million pounds penthouse in London.
And part of our vision for that is like when
we do something like that, you know house in London,
it'll go build a soccer field and a poor area
in London, or or art center in the poor area
in London, and that will be the Amaze Art Center.
(39:38):
And if you donated, it would say Jeff Rosenthal on
the bricks um and and so then you'll see you'll
feel a connection to that impact. You know, you'll learn
that or just like we did with you, you know,
you guys can give power and the great work that
you're doing. We've we've helped build a couple of solar
water farms and and so the donors names will be
on the bricks and so they'll feel that connection and
they'll they'll see how far they're all our goes in
(40:00):
addition to also getting a chance to win something amazing
um and we think that'll add back to the ripple
effect that we were talking about earlier. A lot of
our listeners are earlier in their careers. There their their
startup founders and entrepreneurs, you know, like anything that comes
to mind for you as advice as takeaways, just like
for those that are in that you know zero to
(40:21):
one or one two, you know, leg of the race. Yeah,
I mean I think one of them I kind of
mentioned earlier is that everyone is scared. And so if
you feel scared about what you're gonna do or what
you're taking on, and you feel like maybe you don't
have the you know, the constitution to be an entrepreneur
(40:42):
because you're something like that, just know that that's okay,
especially now, like things where it's it's hard, and there
were so many moments where I, you know, I thought
it was going to fall apart and sleepless nights and
and it almost did. And so so give yourself permission,
you know, be a bet, be a best friend to yourself,
and that, um, I think that's and I would also
recognize no matter like who you look up to, your
like you you see those stories of people in profiles
(41:04):
that you know are like seem like they've never made
a mistake. And I've always been so bold. You know,
we know some of those people that have those have
been written about and know their realities and it's just
so that like everyone is that, so you know, don't
try to conclure yourself and just give yourself permission there.
Another thing is like the greatest fuel for persistence is
serving others, you know, And so even if your company
(41:24):
is at mission driven um and it doesn't have to be,
you know, find ways to dedicate your your actions to
another and you'll just on tap of like a certain
reservoir of energy that may not be there if it's
just about yourself, you know, whether it's for your early
employees or whether it's for your doing this because maybe
you want to make a lot of money, but then
you want to use that money to help your parents
(41:46):
or whatever. It is like finding a daily a capacity
to think, you know, dedicate your actions like people dedicate
books is a is a good thing. And then like
I guess maybe the last one I would say, and
it took me a while to learn this was like
when you don't know what to do, sometimes the best
thing to do is do nothing. What I say about
that is like we've we constantly, like as entrepreneurs, like
(42:06):
there's this like sense you have to be like a
perpetual motion. If you're not moving, you're dying. If you're
not growing, you're dying. And so as a result, like
sometimes when like big inflection point decisions come, you know,
we're like, just like what can I do to move
this forward rather than like step back and like finding
your kind of inner voice. And you know, particularly if
it's a really bigger decision um fundraising or hiring whatever,
you're gonna get opinions from a lot of different people
(42:28):
who are smart people that are going to tell you
different things based off their own experiences. And sometimes if
you just stop and like find stillness, whether it's through
meditation or a workout or or however you access it,
you can get back in touch with your gut and
a lot of the best decisions get made that way.
That's great advice. Well, Matt, thank you so much. I
really appreciate you being on the podcast. Your story is unbelievable,
(42:51):
and thank you so much for being vulnerable and sharing
what you went through with us. Is just such a wonderful,
wonderful company. And you know, when we talk about what
our generations entrepreneurs have built and done. This is this
is prototypically what I hope can be held up as
an example of what we're able to do with both
our care for how we can change the world and
(43:13):
utilizing the technology that's at our fingertips. So thank you
again for being on the podcast, and man, keep doing
what you're doing. It's such important work. Thank you, my friend.
Thank you for having me. It was it was. I
really enjoyed the conversation, and thank you for continuing to
put the love out. Yes sir. For more podcasts for
(43:47):
my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Art of the Hustle is a production of I Heart Radio.
You're listening to the Art of the Hustle, the show
that breaks down how some of the world's most fascinating
people have hustled and learned their way into achieving great things.
This episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing my pal,
(00:23):
Matt Poulson. Matt is the co founder and CEO of
oh May's, the online fundraising platform that offers people a
chance to win once in a lifetime experiences while supporting
nonprofits around the world. Since founding it in two thousand twelve,
the company has raised more than a hundred and thirty
million dollars from more than three hundred and fifty charities.
Was recently named one of the fifty world's most Innovative
(00:44):
companies by Fast Company magazine. Matt was really considerate and
sharing his personal near death experience that tremendously changed his perspective,
and Matt broke down how he led oh May's from
a self funded, small startup to a global organization with
over a hundred employees. Please enjoy my interview with Matthew Polson. Matt,
(01:12):
Welcome to podcast, Jeff, Thanks for having me. Where are
you in the world today. Um, I am out in
Long Island. Cool and you're a West Coast guy. Originally correct,
You're you're born and raised West Coast. I am. I'm
from the Guna Beach. I live in Venice. I'm just
I'm out here in kind of a friend commune for
a little while. Love that. Love that. Im I'm in
(01:35):
the dad commune, um, you know, with the mother in
law and the wife and child. Um, I romance the
times that I was in the friend communes. Well, I'm
excited for the times when I get to be waiting
for a child and having a family around. Its sound
like a beautiful experience. It is fair enough. UM, I
(01:55):
appreciate that. Well. You as you know, I'm a huge
fan of you and Oh May's. You know, I really
am happy to call you a friend, and you know,
just to you know, I've done my little intro on May's,
but I would love for you to give the listeners
a little insight into the company. Yeah. Well, first of all,
I'm a big, huge fan of Jeff Rosenthal and Summit
(02:15):
and and honor to you a friend, Um, you have
given so much to our community of entrepreneurs around the world.
For so long um and not just driven driven business
creation but impact and in fact, you know, we got
the first investor for oh Mays on the Summit series
(02:36):
boat back in two thousand twelve is a two twelve eleven. Yeah, yeah, amazing.
So you guys played a role and that as as
as I'm sure you have in so many other partnerships
from business too. I met a couple of the other
night that admitted Summit and I'm sure that's happened a
hundred times. So in terms of what Amaze is, we
raise money and awareness for charity by offering the chance
(02:58):
to win once in a lifetime experiences. We've done everything
from being mentored by Michelle Obama to ride in a
tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger and crush things, to win a
l Grighini where Pope Francis hand you the keys, which
was probably the most extraordinary experience we've ever done. I
had to go to the Vatican and and pitch Pope
(03:21):
Francis of where we're different than most people that do
this is rather than make it so one high net
worth individual can pay twenty five or fifty thou dollars
to have one of these experiences, make it so that
anybody in the world can donate ten dollars for the
chance to win UM. And then we use our background
and content and storytelling and performance marketing to spread these
around the world. And as a result, we cannet to
(03:44):
to sometimes forty x for our charity partners versus alternative
fundraising and the word for profit company. When we take
a percentage of the proceeds incredible and that numbers. I
believe it's over a hundred million for over three hundred
fifty charities around the world. Correct, Yeah, we have, Yeah,
we have. Now we have now netted over a hundred
fifty million actually for charities. That's incredible. UM. And I
(04:08):
know that you guys were named one of fast companies,
you know, most innovative companies. And what I when I
especially love about your model is that it really democratizes
access to both these experiences but also being a part
of these impact stories. You know. For me, you know,
I guess when I was younger and I had, you know,
only a little bit of capital to my name to
(04:29):
go to like a charity I cared about and give
them ten dollars or twenty dollars, it felt like such
an also ran thing or perhaps I'm you know, I'm
partially interested in supporting a good cause, but I'm really
interested in having a great experience. I just love that
you've offered sort of this you know, branch to people
that aren't like, you know, the converted, to get involved
in these cause areas. Do that matter so much? Yeah?
(04:52):
Thank you? I mean, I totally you know, that was
obviously the core of our mission. I mean the we
were started with kind of a similar experience that you
had in that you know, me and my buddy were
at an event that Magic Johnson was hosting for the
Boys and Girls Club back when we were in grad school,
(05:12):
and he was auctioning off the chance to play basketball
with him and go to a Lakers game. But it
was only available to the high net worth individuals sitting
in the room, and we were in the room, but
not high net worth individuals. We're the guys who get
invited last minute to fill the table. And we sat
there and watched as the auction went up to fifteen
tho dollars and we couldn't afford to participate in. Magic
(05:34):
was our childhood hero. And when we were driving home
and I were like that just doesn't make any sense,
you know, like magic has fans around the world, not
just in that room. And in fact that people who
can't afford to be in that room it will probably
be more grateful to meet him than the people who can.
And so if we made it available to all of
them online for the chance to win and reinforce what
(05:56):
you just said about, you know, making them understand that
every every contribution matters, for even if it's five dollars,
you can have a massive ripple effect totally. And you
mentioned your background in storytelling before you found it om
is what were you doing? Yeah? So, um a co
founder right and I um we you know, we went
(06:17):
to college together, came down to l A to get
into entertainment, specifically focused on cause content. We had a
passion for using storytelling to inspire action because the beauty
of a story in its essence is that enables you
to connect with someone whose experiences are different than your own,
and when you do that, you want to help that person,
(06:39):
and when you do that, you feel more connected. So
it's a virtuous cycle and we wanted to help perpetuate
that cycle, and so we did a bunch of different
projects along those lines. Were the first directors on this
thing called Live Earth, which is the biggest concert ever thrown.
It was on seven continents and one night to raise
awareness for a climate change, and we everyone from the
(07:02):
Rolling Stones to Kanye Um. We were the early producers
on a documentary series called Girl Rising about girls education
and the developing world that was funded by Oprah and
Queen Reign of Jordan's and Meryl Street was narrator. We
spent a couple of years traveling around the world interviewing
the world's greatest thinkers, a couple hundred Noble Prize winners
in MacArthur Genius current recipients, and then we did the
Clinton Foundations big tenth anniversary global television concert event with
(07:25):
everybody from Bono and Jay Z to Bill Gates and
Lady Gaga, and so we were doing that work, and
you know, we're working with these people that were obviously
like very influential and authentically wanted to do good, but
we just didn't feel like we were doing that much good.
You know, we felt like we were creating a lot
of awareness around these projects, but we weren't necessarily creating
(07:45):
a lot of impact. And that was kind of endemic
to the cost content space. So that so we decided
we need to figure out a better model to do.
We were passion out de stided to go to business
school and try to surround ourselves with people smarter than us.
And then when we were in school we went to
that J. Johnson event. For me, I'm just so fascinated
with how you chose as a path. Perhaps there should
(08:07):
just be more things like oh, May is out in
the world, But you guys have really utilized the twenty
one century tech platforms and a p I s and
performance marketing programs and combined it with such like a
practical approach to getting cash to these organizations that need it.
So take us through those initial days, like what was
(08:28):
what was it like when you guys were raising the
first money? Is it the same company now as it
was then in terms of the theme or in terms
of what the intention was? Yeah, that's a good question. Um,
I would say it is very much the same company
in terms of the intention. I mean we articulated a
little bit differently now, but the spirit is the same
(08:49):
and what we set out to do is very much
the same, you know that. I think the big difference is,
like we had no idea what we're doing at the beginning.
Like literally we're very bad at what we were doing
a long across like almost every dimension, you know. And
I think part of it is like I think we,
like a lot of people don't realize when they go
to being like doing a startup, is that everyone is scared.
(09:11):
And we were scared. Ryan and I when we left
business school. Neither of us like you know, we had
done documentaries and those those you know, cause content before school,
but like you don't make much money doing that. And
so we came we both left school, you know, two debt.
I mean we had you know, not worked really and
so you know, we came out with and we both
passed up. He passed up a job at Golden and
(09:31):
I passed up a job at McKenzie. I mean, to
do this, and so we were definitely, Wow, this is
like pretty irrational. Um. And then you know, I think
I always thought like entrepreneurs like you think about like
Musk or Brandson, and they're like they're just like courageous
and they they're they're bold and they see every you know,
every step with courage impressions, and anytime they fail, that's
(09:55):
just a launching path to success and then so I
remember being like some spending so many nights like sleepless
because like, oh me didn't work at all for like
the first year, Like our first experience raised seven eighty dollars,
you know, and it would be the Guest Judge and
Cupcake Wars, and like you know, we were we were
about um, you know, after we had raised our seed
round and we had to go out and raise again.
(10:16):
We had like a month left of cash when we
got our big break. What was that? What was the
big break? It was Breaking Bad actually was our big
break ironically, but yeah, what had happened was there was
another company that had launched it was doing the same thing,
which I know, you know those those guys, and they
were really smart entrepreneurs, and we had to have this
thing set up with Brian Cranston around Breaking Bad. And
(10:36):
then they had done another campaign with Samuel Jackson that
raised like a hundred eighty thousand, and the most we've
ever raised at that point was eighteen thousand, So they
were literally ten x better than us, and they knew
we had this with Brian, and they went to Brian
to say like, hey, you know, you guys should you
should do this with us, like we're much more better,
which is very fair thing to say. And so that
(10:58):
we got the word from Brian's team of hey, you know,
Brian is actually gonna go to another platform, and we
were that was devastating because like that was our We
thought that was our last chance to prove that, like
we could like you know, get a case study to
go out in fundraise off of. And so you know,
we called back like the person on his team that
it like we were that we knew and we're close
(11:19):
with and and said like he's got to do with us.
She's like, I'm sorry. He's like, you know, but like
I don't know, like we have you know, he's gonna
go to the direction and he's you know, he's gonna
call him let them to tomorrow. And I was like, well,
where is he right now? Then she's like what are
you talking about? It was like I need to talk
to him right now, like and she's like, well, he's
at this charity event. And so we snuck into the
charity event. How did you do it? How did you
(11:39):
get in? You know? I found that you can sneak
in most places if you walk by just pretending like
you belong. So that's what we did. You know. We dressed,
we dressed the part, and we u it was at
this famous person's house and when they named the name,
but like and I had actually catered at that house
like three or not three, I don't know, many years earlier.
It's I kind of knew. I knew the house some way.
(11:59):
We got in there and then we found Brian and explained,
you know, like, hey, what are these guys from m
az and and you know you were going to do
this campaign together and now you're doing with someone else.
He's like, it's not the personal guys, but it's just
these guys raised a lot more money and it's really
about the charity. We said, we understand that. You know.
He's like, and he's saying, these guys, you know, so
(12:20):
they can raise a hundred and eighty thousand, and I said,
well we can raise two hundred thousand. And he's like, well,
what's the most you've ever raised? And I said eighteen thousand,
and he's like, well, how are you going to do that?
And it was like we have no choice, you know,
like literally, like we will do anything it takes. We
have a lot of creative ideas like we think we
can break through. We're gonna put our whole heart into
this thing and we and we will deliver. He kind
(12:41):
of just looked at us and maybe felt sorry for us.
I don't know what it is. He was like, all right,
like let's do it, and so he took the leap
on us. We ended up raising three hundred thousand with
that campaign, and then he introduced to Darren Paul and
we did the finale of Breaking Bad and that raised
one point seven million, and that's like what put us
on the map. Unbelievable. And I remember, are you telling
me about the Aaron Paul story. Did you guys take
(13:03):
the RV from the show to the finale? Yeah, with
with the winner of the Yeah with the winner, And
we like we had to do this like pyrotechnic thing
where we like let off the yellow smoke like they
do in the show. Nice. So it wasn't the actual
one from the show, because the actual one from the
show doesn't drive, but the but we went and found
one of Craigslist that looked identical to it that like
(13:25):
that Sony and everyone signed off on as like okay,
that will pass because it's literally like it was the
exact model. That's amazing. But I was so nervous that
we were going to blow the thing up, like because
we had to do this stunt. And we were like, yea,
we were so nervous. Incredible. We'll be back with more
out of the hustle after the break. You know, there's
(13:52):
so many directions I want to take this interview, but
you mentioned the Pope, and I have to ask. These
are such amazing stories. So wait a minute. So you
went to the Vatican to pitch the Pope. Yeah, I did.
I just don't even understand how that how that initiates. Yeah,
I mean the well that that's a crazy story too.
(14:15):
I can tell it. It's like a it's like a
five minute story, but I can. Yeah, I'm so Basically
the way that the way that, the way that that
happened actually started with we did this experience with Bono,
and basically what happened was, so to step back, there's this,
there's which led to the Pope. So to step back,
there's this. There's this young girl who at the time
(14:38):
was fifteen years old living up in northern California. Her
name was Chloe, and Chloe was born with a club foot,
and she went to high school and she was picked
off by a bunch of mean girls and then and
then escalated to one point they pinned her down during
(15:00):
lunch in front of the whole school. Six girls like
held her down on the lunch tables and pulled her
shoe off to show everyone what her deformed foot looked like.
She was obviously traumatized. She went back to her house.
Um she locked herself in her room. She wasn't coming out,
and her dad was obviously like very you know, concerned
(15:21):
about what she can hert herself, and so he tried
to talk to her, and he talked about how he
was this huge fan of you too, you know, maybe
she would like listening to them, And she like found
this one song called Invisible, which is an anthemic song
that basically says like you can't see me, but I'm here,
and she just like latched onto that song and she
started listening to it every single day on loop and
(15:44):
eventually like I went back to school and you know
and kind of like started to address what she was
working through with that song is inspiration. At the same time,
her dad, we had we had offered this campaign to
meet Bonto backstage to benefit Red and her dad day
and it had entered and he won, and so they
(16:05):
got to go meet Bono and so this is so awesome, okay, yeah,
and so and obviously we don't know any of this.
We get there and I'm and this is early and amaze,
so like I'm literally like flying to be there to
make sure this goes okay, because obviously gets a big deal.
It was our first campaign with Bono. And so we
go backstage. It's me and Chloe, who is a fifteen
and on crutches, and like you could tell she's got
(16:27):
this weight on her. I don't know any of this backstory.
I just can tell like there's something going on with
her and her dad. And when this like little room,
and then Bono comes in and the first thing he
does is there's this Red guitar because it has been
to benefit Red. So he signs the guitar, which bottom
point becomes important later and then and then he says
hello to the dad, and then he says, he says,
(16:49):
you know, tell me your story, and his dad, Dane, says,
you know, this isn't about my story, like this is
about my daughter, Chloe's story, and he says, well, what's
your story, Chloe, And she says, well, I was a
sault did and your song Invisible helped me get through it.
And Bonna said, you were insulted like that they called
you names, and she said, no, I was assaulted. And
(17:09):
the way that she said it like had this gravity
and again like like obviously I didn't know the backstory
of Corsebondo didn't know the backstory, but he's clearly a
very emotionally intelligent person and you could just feel it.
And so he said, well, how did this song Invisible
help you? And she said, you know, it gave me
the strength to not hurt myself, give me a strength
to go back to school, gave me the strength to
(17:31):
stand up to those girls, and gave me the strength
to stand up to my school to make sure it
doesn't happen to somebody else, you know. And he just
looked at her and he said, we know how you
were able to do that. He said, because the art
of the universe bends towards justice and love, and when
you have right on your side, it's like this big
fist not to hurt people with, but to fight for
what's right. And you could like see in that moment
(17:51):
like this, like the way he was saying it was
impacted here. And then he and he said, you know,
what's your passion, Chloe? And she said she kind of
got embarrassed against She said, I haven't figured it out,
you know, I don't know. And he said, well, that's okay.
He said, we have a prayer in my family, and
we're not a we're not a righteous family. We say
this prayer in the church, but we also say this
prayer and the pub and our prayer is I am
(18:12):
available for work. He said, make yourself available for work
and your passion will be revealed to you. And you
could literally see this weight just lifting off this girl.
Like it was so I mean, obviously, like Bono is
so much more poetic than I can never be in
recreating it, but like, literally the moment was so I've
never seen a moment like that in my life. You
(18:32):
could literally see this weight lifting off of her. You
could see this person transforming before your very eyes. So
then Chloe goes home, she decides, Okay, I'm gonna use
this for good. She starts telling other girls who've been
bullied about this story, and like what Bono told her,
and all that kind of stuff, and then work he
gets out about this and like a parent at another
school asks her to come talk to like some kids
(18:54):
who've been bullied at their school. And then another school
asks her, and then another school, and all of a sudden,
she's like going and like doing these like talks, and
she decides, I'm gonna I'm gonna name this thing. I'm
gonna call it like staying beautiful where people embrace their differences.
She then like it becomes such a thing that she
gets invited to do a ted X talk. So she
does a ted X talk about standing beautiful, embracing and
(19:14):
what Bono taught her. There's a publisher from Penguin Random
House there, they get a they give her a book
deal she gets. She then gets invited to go speak
around the world about what had happened. And she goes
on this tour helping people. And then one of the
tours she went to, there was someone from the Vatican
there and they heard the story and then they went
up to her and said, what's this amaze thing? And
(19:37):
she explained what it was, and then they asked if
they could she could put them in contact, and so
then the person from the Vatican reached out to us,
and that's how I ended up with the Vatican. One
other thing is just shows you like that the universe
inspires sometimes the you know, I said, there's the red
guitar the Bonno signed. As we were leaving um, the
dad said to Bono after the like magical moment of
(19:59):
like hug and whole thing, and said, you know, hey,
by the way, like, what's the story with his guitar?
When was the last time you played it? And Bonn
I was like, oh, man, I don't know. I I'm
not going to keep in track of those things. But
we have someone who's job it is to keep track
of those things, you know, and I'll make sure that
you can get in contact with them. So then like
the day and email the guy's name is Gary, and
Gary email back without having any context of the story,
(20:22):
saying the last time Bonno played this guitar was in
Dublin in the studio when he was writing the song
Invisible WHOA. Well, I just love that. I just loved it,
you know, and I want to talk more about oh Mays.
But it's kind of a perfect transition because you know,
one of the other I'd say magic surrealism, that that
(20:44):
has touched your life, um, and that the yield the
saying is one of the things I've heard you say before,
is it optimism is a superpower. And you had a
personal life experience and your death experience that I'd love
for you to share with the listeners because I know
it had a huge impact on you. This. So what
happened in me is UM when I was born, so
basically two years ago last week, I was declared dead
(21:06):
and they brought me back to life. And the background
is when I was born, my stomach was twisted and
and not and I was supposed to die when I
was born, and then they did this crazy surgery that
saved me, obviously, and then the scar tissue from the
surgery broke off all these years later, um, creating this
(21:26):
ball obstruction. But I didn't know that at the time.
All I knew that my stomach was hurting my stomach,
you know, that's just part of what I've lived with
my whole life. But this felt like particularly acute. And
so I called my friend who's a doctor, and I said, Hey,
you know, I'm hosting this dinner party tonight. I really
want to do it, but my stomach is hurting, like,
(21:47):
do you think I need to go to the hospital.
And he's like, yeah, this could be your appendix burst thing.
I'm not sure, but better safe and sorry. So he
tells me to go to hospital. So go to the
hospital and it gets a lot worse and and I'm
in this kind of crazy pain, but we can't figure
out what's going on. And the CEO of a maze comes.
Her name is Helen because I was supposed to be
meeting her at the time. And then my parents come
(22:08):
and they do all these tests. It's inconclusive. So they
about like ten thirty at night, they say to Helen
and my parents, right, you guys go home. We're gonna
keep mad overnight and if he's not better by the morning,
then we'll do surgery then. And so Helen drives home
to her house. She pulls into her driveway. You know,
at this point it's about eleven o'clock at night, and
(22:31):
you know she something is telling her not to get
out of the car, something is telling her to go
back to the hospital. And you know, Helen is British
in a ceo and very serious. She's not like a venice.
You know, listened to the Cosmos type of person. But
the voice was undeniable, and so she decided that to
(22:54):
go back to the hospital. And and if she had
not driven back to the spittal, I would have probably
died forty five minutes later because my blood pressure had plummeted.
It was down to over fifty, which it's like, you
really shouldn't be getting oxygen to your brain. But the
machine somehow had not alerted the nurses, and so I
(23:14):
was literally just fading away. So she came in. She
saw the machine. She had been in the hospital with
her grandmother like for a while a couple of months earlier,
so she kind of knew her way around. And so
she went and got the nurse and said, look at this.
This this looks really bad. And he's like, that can't
be right. He wouldn't he wouldn't be getting oxygen to
his brain. So then he went to do and get
(23:36):
do another test out the same result. He was going
to do another test and she's like, no more tests, like,
get the doctor. She went and got the doctor. Doctor
came in, she took one look and called in the
crash team. They rushed me down to surgery. What's what's
the crash team. It's like the like when someone's they
think someone's dying. They like said, they have these teams
that are like swat teams essentially, that are on call
(23:58):
that like you'll you'll see like people rush into a
room like on Gray's Anatomy or whatever. You know, it's
like when just like all these people converge and they're
equipped to like transport you real fast and like address
whatever the cute thing is. So they all rush in
the room. They rushed me down into surgery. Come out
of surgery, and they say to my mom, the good
(24:19):
news is we figured out what it is. It's about obstruction.
The bad news is his heart rate is continuing to
plummet and we don't know why, and he's in critical condition.
And so then and your mom, your mom is a nurse, correct,
My mom, she works at a hospital. She's not a
nurse works. He knows her way, she's you know, she
knows where around the hospital. And so yeah, so yeah,
(24:42):
then a couple hours passed and she goes down to
get my dad and my brother, and she comes back
upstairs and she hears over the loudspeaker code blue in
room seven and um, as you mentioned, my mom works
in the hospital, but so she knows that means flatline,
and she knows that's my room. So she rushes upstairs
and she gets to the door and the nurse says,
(25:05):
I'm sorry, you can't come in. This is really serious.
And she said, look, I was there when he came
in this world. If he's leaving this world right now,
I'm gonna be in that room. So she led her
in the room and they were doing the compressions and
they were doing the electric shock treatment, but my body
wasn't responding. I was flatlining. And so my mom at
(25:26):
first she started to crumble. You know, it's it's one
thing to lose a child, it's another thing to be
in the room when it's happening. Um. And then at
the same time, my dad was outside with my brother,
and this doctor came out and said to another doctor
in front of my brother, not knowing was my brother, Hey,
we lost this guy. He's gone. And so my brother
(25:46):
pushed my dad in the room. So you need to
be there with mom. And so when my dad came in,
you can kind of picture of my mom's face to
the right towards me, and my dad comes in from
her left, and he's crying so loudly as he enters
the room. It causes her to turn away from me
to say, like, Garrett, you know you gotta be quieter.
They're gonna kick us out of this room. You know.
My dad's like if I can't cry right now, like
(26:07):
when do I get to cry? But you know she's
when she turned to say that to him, she said
she saw something that she'd never seen before in a hospital.
She said, every nurse and every staff member and every
doctor and the I C you had just gravitated outside
the window and there was like forty of them. And
(26:29):
she said they looked like this silent church choir just
sending in this positive energy. And she was so moved
by these people that were sending love to someone that
they didn't even know. It was like this transcendent spiritual
experience for her, and it just kind of filled her
up with strength, and she kind of took a deep
(26:49):
breath and she started coaching me. You know, she turned
back and she just said, Matthew David Poulson, these people
are fighting to save your life. They're fighting so hard
to bring you back, but you're not fighting hard enough.
You to show them you're a fighter. They're fighting to
save your life. And you know, they said it was
this surreal experience watching because here's this sixty five year
(27:10):
old mom who's in this room that you're not what
no one's supposed to be in except for the medical staff.
And you know, the flat line went on for four
and a half minutes, which is a long time and
they don't usually keep fighting that long, but because she
was there fighting, they kept fighting. But at one point,
you know, my mom said, you know, she just realized,
(27:32):
like this has been going on a long time. And she,
you know, because she works on hospital, she knows how
long these things usually go. And so she starts to think, oh,
my god, like I cannot believe this. We're gonna lose him.
And if I lose him, like I'm gonna lose my husband,
and how's this happening? You know, and her mind started
to go there. And you know, right as it was
going there, the main doctor who was administering the CPR
(27:56):
and the shocks, you know, he uh, he started shake
his head as if to say like, oh, this is
this is done, and you know as he did that,
she said no, no, no, please, like please don't call it,
and as she said that, he said, wait a second,
and he turned back. He said, I think we have
a pulse. And all of a sudden, my eyes just
opened up and I popped up, and then I looked
(28:22):
over at my mom, and then I looked over my dad,
and I was on my side, and I kind of
just like slowly lifted my right arm and gave a
thumbs up. Oh my god, what a story, dude. First
and foremost, happy resurrection anniversary. Thank you. Secondly, your mom
(28:48):
deserves like the mom equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.
She was a superhero. She's a force of nature, art
of the hustle. Will be right back after this short break,
(29:10):
and I want to, you know, get into you know,
optimism is a superpower, and you know how it applies
to your work today. But like you know, now it's
been two years since this has happened, and I'm sure
it changed your perspective on everything. Yeah, it really has,
you know, It's I mean, it's still like I learned.
I think about it every day. I learned from it.
(29:31):
The lessons are still revealing themselves to me. I think
one of the things that, like it changed my perspective
on are just like, is like what it means to
be a best friend to yourself, you know, Like I
used to be so much more ego driven. Then I realized,
you know, not in a I don't. I mean, you
knew me obviously before. I don't. I hope that you
(29:52):
wouldn't describe me as like egotistical or like an asshole
or you know, but I would have said Debonair, hilarious, Talton,
I appreciated that I was fishing for compliments that you know,
I used to care so much about what people think
in an unhealthy way, and I used to compare myself
two people all the time. You know, you and I
(30:13):
are surrounded by extraordinary people, and I would compare myself
to them and remind myself of why I didn't stack up,
you know, and that frame of reference was just so unhealthy.
And so that like this helped change that in a
fundamental way. And part of the reason it did was
because you know, I had this kind of like come
back to the light experience that just made me realize
how interconnected we all are, and I could feel the
(30:36):
love that people were sending me, and it just made me,
you know, I have such a broader perspective on these
things and also recognized that, like, you know, like when
I left the hospital, the doctor, you know, he sat
at the edge of my bed and and he was like,
look when I he was guys are a world renowned surgeon.
He's like, look, when I finished my career thirty years
from now, and I'm talking about the most extraordinary case
(30:58):
I've ever seen, this is gonna be it. You know,
we had you had zero percent chance of survival for
two days, and the fact that we have you going
home with your full faculties. We have no medical explanation
for that. And I said, well, do you have a guess?
You know, he said, look, we were inspired by your mom.
That there was a whole another day and a half
after they resuscitated me where I was, they had me
(31:19):
a zero percent chance of revival still, and they had
to do these other surgeries. And before like the second surgery,
my mom was grabbing the doctors by the cheek and
she was saying, look, this is my son, but today
this is your son, and this is your brother, and
his company is trying to do good in the world.
You need to help them. He said. So we were
(31:39):
motivated by that, but outside of that there were larger
forces of play. And I said, well, was a man
of science, how do you define those larger forces? And
he said it was love and it was optimism that
brought you back. And I really believe that to be true,
you know. And so what I believe is possible now,
like in terms of kind of shaping your own future,
(32:01):
and I get careful of like the world's manifestation, or
like you can get into the world of the world
of like the Secret and some of these things that
I think lack acknowledgement of. It's not just about thoughts,
it's about actions. But do you believe that your thoughts
and your intentions travel much farther and can shape and
can change the trajectory of things and can change you
(32:22):
know that that that energy is like we feel that
and it's powerful and we don't have great scientific explanation
for it just yet, but I think we will, but
we all know it's there and so um And so
when I got let rid of the ego a lot
of the stuff that would hold me back, I think
I'm able to express more love now. And being able
to express more love comes from getting rid of fear,
(32:44):
because the opposite of love is not hate, it's fear
and so and I had some to fear. And then
as a result of expressing more love, you start to
also realize the power of optimism and like what can
change in the world. And you know, and I think
we're feeling in that more never right now. Definitely there
is some scientific credence to this that you know, it
is not that widely read, but there was a great
(33:05):
book called Synchronicity. It was all about the birthplace of
scenario planning in the Royal Dutch Shell Corporation, and the
idea being that, you know, if they had to take
the spice through through regions that we're going to have
some kind of upheaval, then they needed a doctrine plan
for that's what the US military calls it for how
(33:27):
to deal with both negative and positive scenarios. And then
you get to invest, over a long period of time
along those you know, potential outcomes. And what they realized
is that when they tacked towards the more optimistic outcome,
it happened more often. And you know, I'm certainly a
(33:48):
believer that if you think you can't, you're right, you know,
And I'm curious for you you know, and I feel
you and you could feel the love of your friends,
Like it sounds like it turned on some faculties for you.
Literal sensitivity is that you might not have had how
did it manifest inside of like you know, in a company,
(34:09):
it's not just friendships, it's also you know, how you lead,
how you manage. Did it change the way that you
operate in that fashion as well? Yeah? Absolutely, I learned
to kind of with our team almost love more and
care less. And so what I mean by that is
like I'm more, I'm less afraid to express my gratitude
for people. I do that. I actually make that a
(34:30):
regular to practice, Like I send an email to a
different person on our team every single week and to
a different friend. I sent a video every single week
saying like this is why I'm grateful for you. So
I do that more. It's awesome. But at the same time,
I used to in some ways, I think, care so
much about what our team thought of me because I
cared so much about them, and they're so grateful that
(34:51):
people even go on this journey, you know, Like I mean,
you know how it is you at the beginning of
an entrepreneurial journey, and you're doing every job and then
sometimes you every once while you wake up, you're like, wow,
there's like a hundred and thirty people that work here,
and like that's just I can't believe they work here,
you know, Like, yeah, I remember when like there was
two of us. But what I I I assess my
leadership and like my impact is a leader over I'm
(35:15):
much longer to mention now, So like, I know there's
certain things that can maybe make people feel uncomfortable or
challenged or or a short term discomfort for them, or
or that I'm willing to push more because I think
with down the road, like they'll recognize that this was
in their interests in the longer term. And as long
(35:37):
as I feel like I'm operating from that place, I
can like I'm much better absorbing that I don't I
don't worry as much about being liked as much as
I do about feeling like that I'm actually serving them
and then serving this greater vision, you know, um, And
so I think it's changed me in that way. And
and then also like my big capacity to you know,
(36:00):
get above the level of the problem. You and I
both have a teacher that we love named Jim George
that like talks a lot about that is a problem
can never be solved at the level of the problem.
So I think I used to overweight every single thing,
and I have my identity so tied up in a
maze that with this broader perspective that I have now,
it enables you to kind of process through things much quickler,
see decisions much more quickly, recognize what really matters and
(36:23):
what doesn't on on an easier capacity. I do want
to transition a little bit, you know, back to Oh
May is and just because I think it's really important,
like you said, like you know, you are working on
something that is in service of this greater good. And
you know, I think it's also really important that it's
a it's a for profit business, you know, that has
investors and that has capital to spin to scale. And
(36:44):
I think that there's an ongoing debate about you know, impact,
and like about altruism, like the selflessness of altruism in
a sense, so that you know, appropriate philanthropy is when
you receive nothing in return, whereas you know, you know,
one of the things I told you, you know, in
inviting you to the Pond asks is that I really
do want to. I think it's really important that people
understand the good that OMAS is able to do because
(37:07):
of how you harness you know, modern technology, how you
harness the tools that are at our disposal at this
moment in time. So maybe you could talk to us
a little bit about you know, the future of Omens,
like where you guys are going, what are the ambitions? Yeah? Absolutely, um, well,
thank you for seeing that. You know, the vision is
to dream the world better. We we feel very lucky
(37:29):
that we get to make dreams come true every single day,
not just for the people that win the experiences, but
for the beneficiaries the causes and so you know, people
getting resources and opportunities that weren't previously available to them.
And you know, we believe that optimism is a fuel
for dreams and as we discussed optimism as a superpower,
optimism makes you realize that what you thought was impossible
(37:50):
is actually possible. And we want to we not only
want to be impactful from a fundraising perspective, but from
scaling optimism. You know, in our kind of north Star,
there is to be the first for profit company and
give a billion dollars to charity in a single year.
You know, as I mean, we've already netted a hundred
and fifty million for charity. If we had chosen to
be a nonprofit and we're limited by that, we would
(38:12):
have we would have you know, we would have netted
five millions. So um, that's very much around poor profit
and it's important for us. You know, we care a
lot about being a highly impactful, highly profitable company because
we think we can not only help people, but we
can be a beacon for other entrepreneurs that realize that
(38:35):
that's a false choice, Like choosing between doing well and
doing good hurts the nonprofit sector. And I can go
all through the history of why that is and this
different social maorias that we have governed the nonprofit sector,
that we don't have government for profit sector, and and
what that how that hurts us as a society. But
you know, we believe that's part of our role is
breaking through those norms. And so it creates another burden.
(38:57):
You know. You you don't just have to be a
any that like develops a model that's really impactful. You
you have to you know, or impactful of business perspective,
but you have to go through all these other things.
Part of what we're doing in terms of like expanding
that is like we've expanded from doing just celebrity experiences too.
We're offering stuff like travel the world or a country
(39:18):
in a sprinter van or when a you know, we're
about to do when a four million pounds penthouse in London.
And part of our vision for that is like when
we do something like that, you know house in London,
it'll go build a soccer field and a poor area
in London, or or art center in the poor area
in London, and that will be the Amaze Art Center.
(39:38):
And if you donated, it would say Jeff Rosenthal on
the bricks um and and so then you'll see you'll
feel a connection to that impact. You know, you'll learn
that or just like we did with you, you know,
you guys can give power and the great work that
you're doing. We've we've helped build a couple of solar
water farms and and so the donors names will be
on the bricks and so they'll feel that connection and
they'll they'll see how far they're all our goes in
(40:00):
addition to also getting a chance to win something amazing
um and we think that'll add back to the ripple
effect that we were talking about earlier. A lot of
our listeners are earlier in their careers. There their their
startup founders and entrepreneurs, you know, like anything that comes
to mind for you as advice as takeaways, just like
for those that are in that you know zero to
(40:21):
one or one two, you know, leg of the race. Yeah,
I mean I think one of them I kind of
mentioned earlier is that everyone is scared. And so if
you feel scared about what you're gonna do or what
you're taking on, and you feel like maybe you don't
have the you know, the constitution to be an entrepreneur
(40:42):
because you're something like that, just know that that's okay,
especially now, like things where it's it's hard, and there
were so many moments where I, you know, I thought
it was going to fall apart and sleepless nights and
and it almost did. And so so give yourself permission,
you know, be a bet, be a best friend to yourself,
and that, um, I think that's and I would also
recognize no matter like who you look up to, your
like you you see those stories of people in profiles
(41:04):
that you know are like seem like they've never made
a mistake. And I've always been so bold. You know,
we know some of those people that have those have
been written about and know their realities and it's just
so that like everyone is that, so you know, don't
try to conclure yourself and just give yourself permission there.
Another thing is like the greatest fuel for persistence is
serving others, you know, And so even if your company
(41:24):
is at mission driven um and it doesn't have to be,
you know, find ways to dedicate your your actions to
another and you'll just on tap of like a certain
reservoir of energy that may not be there if it's
just about yourself, you know, whether it's for your early
employees or whether it's for your doing this because maybe
you want to make a lot of money, but then
you want to use that money to help your parents
(41:46):
or whatever. It is like finding a daily a capacity
to think, you know, dedicate your actions like people dedicate
books is a is a good thing. And then like
I guess maybe the last one I would say, and
it took me a while to learn this was like
when you don't know what to do, sometimes the best
thing to do is do nothing. What I say about
that is like we've we constantly, like as entrepreneurs, like
(42:06):
there's this like sense you have to be like a
perpetual motion. If you're not moving, you're dying. If you're
not growing, you're dying. And so as a result, like
sometimes when like big inflection point decisions come, you know,
we're like, just like what can I do to move
this forward rather than like step back and like finding
your kind of inner voice. And you know, particularly if
it's a really bigger decision um fundraising or hiring whatever,
you're gonna get opinions from a lot of different people
(42:28):
who are smart people that are going to tell you
different things based off their own experiences. And sometimes if
you just stop and like find stillness, whether it's through
meditation or a workout or or however you access it,
you can get back in touch with your gut and
a lot of the best decisions get made that way.
That's great advice. Well, Matt, thank you so much. I
really appreciate you being on the podcast. Your story is unbelievable,
(42:51):
and thank you so much for being vulnerable and sharing
what you went through with us. Is just such a wonderful,
wonderful company. And you know, when we talk about what
our generations entrepreneurs have built and done. This is this
is prototypically what I hope can be held up as
an example of what we're able to do with both
our care for how we can change the world and
(43:13):
utilizing the technology that's at our fingertips. So thank you
again for being on the podcast, and man, keep doing
what you're doing. It's such important work. Thank you, my friend.
Thank you for having me. It was it was. I
really enjoyed the conversation, and thank you for continuing to
put the love out. Yes sir. For more podcasts for
(43:47):
my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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