In this moving episode of the Early Accountability Podcast, host Kimi Walker sits down with award-winning financial educator and author Matt Paradise to explore his powerful story of redemption, resilience, and purpose. Matt takes listeners on a deeply personal journey, from facing homelessness and addiction in his teenage years to overcoming a rare and life-threatening cancer diagnosis in adulthood. Along the way, he shares how mentors, recovery, and a spiritual foundation helped him not only survive but thrive, eventually dedicating over two decades to financial education and launching his own mission-driven business.
Matt and Kimi dive into the concept of whole health wealth, a holistic approach to financial wellness that prioritizes mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being alongside money management. Matt unpacks societal myths around money, explains how trauma and behavioral patterns influence our financial choices, and emphasizes the power of taking the next best step, even in times of uncertainty. With warmth and wisdom, Matt reminds listeners that no matter where they start, healing, growth, and hope are always within reach.
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- Transforming trauma into purpose through resilience and mentorship
- Breaking cycles of financial trauma and building whole health wealth
- The emotional side of money and why personal finance must stay personal
- How addiction, recovery, and spiritual growth shaped Matt’s journey
- Navigating uncertainty and taking the next best step with confidence
- Financial wellness as a foundation for emotional and relational well-being
About Matt Paradise
Matt Paradise is a Financial Wellness Speaker, award-winning author, and a living example of resilience. From homeless teen to millionaire, Matt now helps organizations reduce employee financial stress to boost focus, productivity, and performance. His inspiring story of survival and success, marked by overcoming bile duct cancer and a liver transplant, makes him relatable and memorable. Today, Matt's practical tools help leaders and teams overcome financial stress, resulting in stronger individuals and better business growth.
Connect with Matt
- Website: https://www.mattparadise.com/
- Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-paradise/
- Email: Matt@mattparadise.com
Connect with Kimi Walker:
· Visit: earlyaccountability.com
· LinkedIn: Kimi Walker
· Facebook: Kimi Walker
· Instagram: Kimi Walker
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:26):
All right, Kimi Walker here andwelcome back to the next episode of
the Early Accountability Podcast.
Today I'm very happy tohave my guest here today.
We have Matt.
He is a powerhouse ofresilience and transformation.
He is going to talktoday how he went from.
Homelessness battling addiction tobecoming award-winning financial educator.
(00:48):
He also is gonna talk aboutsurviving a rare cancer diagnosis.
Matt's story is nothingshort of extraordinary.
He's gonna teach others.
He's gonna teach others, us, everybodyhow to break cycles of financial trauma.
We're gonna redefine our successand he's gonna tell us about
how we can build what he calls.
Whole health wealth.
So we're gonna talk about living a lifein confidence, purpose, and wellbeing.
(01:10):
So Matt, first off, thank youso much for being here today.
I'm so excited to have you as a guest.
Thank you.
It's my pleasure.
I'm excited to be a guest.
I love having conversations likethese and I love the wellness.
US work that you do and the waysthat you help so many people.
Thank you so much.
Why don't you tell the audience, youhave a very dynamic story, so why don't
you just tell us about you, like start.
(01:31):
Beginning and tell us about Matt.
I really want to hear more aboutyour background and how you got
to doing the work you do today.
Sure.
And it, it is a long andwinding kind of road.
There's some people that just go straight.
My wife is much like that.
She was the best student anddid everything right and went to
college, got a job, career, and.
Never really got in trouble.
That just wasn't me.
(01:52):
I was the opposite.
We're polar opposites in a whole lotof ways, and ultimately we can look at
problems together and solve them togetheras a team, which is important that
we work with the people in our lives.
For me, a lot of thetrouble came in high school.
So before that I grew up inConnecticut, northeast Connecticut.
My parents actually moved us to a ruralarea to shield us, protect us from.
(02:17):
All the trouble thatmight happen in the world.
And ironically, the data backsthis up, but ironically, a lot of
people, young adults, teens in ruralareas get into drugs and alcohol.
'cause there's nothing else to do.
There's not a whole lot of arts andculture and different outlets that I think
it really critical to be able to explore.
(02:40):
Not just creative, but vocationaloutlets, variety of things.
There's farms in this beautiful land.
But I didn't appreciate that as a teen.
So come sophomore year, a lot ofthe different feelings of wondering
that identity work that mostsophomores in high school start to
think about, who am I in this world?
(03:01):
Where's my place?
What's my place going to be?
How am I gonna get bought?
All of the things really cametogether in depressive tendencies,
suicidal ideations, and ultimately.
Drinking and drugs and overdosed whenI was a sophomore in high school.
Barely got by.
So it really, by grace, survivednothing of my own doing.
(03:26):
Eventually, my parentsgave me an ultimatum.
I had two younger siblings.
They said Either get outor get sober, get right.
And for me, if only it were thateasy, first of all getting through
addictions, growing, changingon a dime, very difficult.
I. In the teen brain that's stilldeveloping in my frontal core,
cerebral, all of that stuff just
(03:48):
Yeah.
Change on a dime.
So I left and I became a homeless teen.
I bounced around.
There were times that I slept onthe streets, slept on friends floors
or couches, wherever I was able to.
Eventually was living in a house wherewe sold drugs out of and was raided by
the police frequently and was crazy.
So even in high school, friends wouldcome over after school and hang out and
(04:11):
be stopped by the police down the streetand interrogated and told, don't go in
that house because it's being watched.
And the life that I lived, I knewthat one, it was tearing me apart
inside because I knew that it wasbringing destruction to people's lives.
It was ruining relationships.
I also knew that personally it wasinevitable that the path that I was
on would lead to death, jail, orinsanity, knew that I needed to change.
(04:35):
So with a friend of a friend moved toMassachusetts to get away from that
whole life and the poor decisionsand the world that I was part of.
Anybody who's tried to go throughinternal change by moving.
Knows that wherever we go,our baggage comes with us.
Our baggage just is carried aroundand there's a lot of internal
work that needs to be done.
And within the world of addiction,there's the important two factors.
(04:59):
Intrinsic motivation andextrinsic motivation.
We need somebody who can guideus lovingly in a healthy path.
And for sometimes I needed a quick swiftkick in the pants to be able to get
on track and quote unquote tough love.
And other times I just needed a hug.
I also needed to have that internal,that intrinsic motivation to want to
(05:20):
change because if that desire's notthere and people from the outside.
Start trying to help.
Sometimes it just sounds like naggingand I think that's a difficult thing
that many encounter when helping andloving someone through an addiction.
And maybe listeners don't necessarilyrelate to drinking or using drugs,
but there are so many processaddictions that there's some say
(05:43):
everybody at some point suffers from.
And obviously there'severything from with my
Ooh.
Social media overworking,
Most definitely all ofthat, spending and their
Oh yeah.
Oh
anonymous and gamblers anonymousand all of that stuff, for sure.
So whatever that the device is, someof the brain chemistry is similar
ultimately, at the end of the day, and.
(06:06):
I think that it is something that is sopervasive in our society that some of it's
just more accepted than others, right?
We know that, okay, drugs.
Drugs, that's bad, but shopping.
That's what the economy's built on.
Of course, we go shopping, retail therapy.
I feel good.
I got those new shoes or new outfitand I'm looking feeling good, but
(06:28):
ultimately struggling to pay the bills.
Yeah.
And I think that it's an interestingthing that's a societal thing.
It's such a big deal.
So that's a little bit ofthat and that transformation.
Ultimately somebody, when I mentionedthe extrinsic motivation, somebody cared
enough about me and had a vision that myfuture could be better than what it was
because I didn't have that at the time.
(06:48):
There were whether suicidal ideationsand just my vision was clouded.
Right.
I didn't have hope for the future,and when we fail to have hope for a
better future, we tend not to makedecisions in our best interests today.
We need to have that hope is critical.
Fortunately I had some people,some mentors in my life that
helped to steer, guide me, openmy eyes to a world of possibility.
(07:11):
I didn't envisionsurviving to 20 years old.
So all this time I was like16, 17, 18, 19 years old.
I didn't necessarily seea clear future for myself.
And extremely grateful for thosepeople that were in my life as mentors
and guides, and people who again,helped to show the possibility of a
(07:33):
future and made a world of difference.
So I ended up getting into a Bible-baseddrug recovery program back in 1999.
Somebody reached out to me.
I was.
Musician, still am Love Percussion, gymBay and Congas and bongos and all of that.
It is fun.
So he had a band, went out, playedwith the band, but ultimately he
wanted to just help me be a mentor,be a friend and stuck with me.
(07:58):
And through that program, ended up sober.
I've been sober now 25 years by
Oh wow.
it continues to be one day at a time,
Oh, that's amazing.
Congratulations to you.
When in that part of your journey,when did you go through cancer?
So that was more recent.
Oh
So professionally I needed a job.
(08:19):
At that time I'd bounced around.
Not lots of people wanna hire a highschool dropout who sold drugs and it
doesn't look great on a resume though.
There are lots of transferable skills.
Yes, it's true.
It's true.
That's a lot of things.
There could be.
There's some thingsthat you could take out.
A lot of stuff.
It's so true, but forlisteners I don't condone that.
(08:41):
I'm not advocating, don't do that.
Don't go there.
I don't recommend it.
It's a world of hurt and pain butit doesn't look great on a resume.
So I just needed a job and ended upworking at this place called American
Consumer Credit Counseling and was anonprofit credit counseling agency.
It's now Forbes top.
A credit counseling agency in theUS and worked there for 20 years.
(09:03):
So they gave me, as a 19-year-old kidgave me a chance and had the opportunity
to grow with the organization, obtainmy GEDs, some education college, some
different certifications around creditcounseling and financial education.
Eventually was.
Went from basic customer service tocounseling one-on-one to eventually,
(09:24):
I had the idea to help peopleproactively rather than for if anybody's
familiar with credit counseling.
People call in to get help withtheir debt, essentially by and
large, and mostly credit card debt.
It was stressful like as a20-year-old, 21-year-old kid still.
I have a 15-year-old son.
He'd probably be upset thatI'm calling 21 year olds kids.
(09:46):
But my perspective is different now.
But I was a kid.
I thought I knew everything butreality, I knew like nothing.
So people would call just stressed outtalking about financial infidelity and
asking me as a kid whether or not theyshould divorce their spouse because of the
credit card debt that they were racked up.
And it was heavy.
It was heavy, it was emotionalwork because money and
(10:08):
personal finance is emotional.
It.
It takes a toll on lot millionsof people's mental health, which
affects the workplaces overall.
So seeing that I wanted to be proactiveand bring education rather than reactive
in providing critical counseling,which is still important to help
people before they got to that spot.
(10:28):
So started the educationoutreach group where we did.
Upwards of five or 600 differentworkshops in a given year.
And it was a small, it was me tobegin with, and then eventually
got some employees to get outand about and expand our work.
But went into homeless shelters,family shelters, domestic violence
shelters into public schools, innercity schools, places that wouldn't
otherwise receive the information,but was critical sometimes just for
(10:52):
getting into a safe, secure place.
Went into prisons, I worked with thefederal deposit insurance company, the
FDIC, to create a volunteer program wherewe had financial professionals go into and
work with the Department of Corrections,so pre-release as well as lifers, people
who were there for quite some time to talkabout not just money, dollars and cents.
(11:16):
How money and finances are part ofoverall wellbeing and thinking, not
just financial wellbeing and havingbills on, but also the ways that
impacts our mental health too, andthat too often is forgotten about.
It's I gotta get my money.
I need that money now and.
Ultimately some of the different mentalwellbeing is neglected or forgotten about.
(11:39):
So that being said, long-windedanswer to your short question
about the cancer I left.
That job that I loved in 2018, and themain reason my wife and I adopted a child
who had more needs than we had capacityto thrive emotionally and spiritually.
We were okay financially, butshe worked really long hours.
(12:00):
I worked long hours out and aboutspeaking and the administration
and overseeing other speakerswhere we came up with a plan that.
I would leave and create my ownbusiness, leverage some of the
relationships that I had built overthe years, and have flexibility
so that at that time he was in.
Second grade and neededjust more services.
(12:21):
So we worked with the school toget an IEP and eventually into a
daytime therapeutic school and madeall the difference in the world.
So I, I had the freedom to drivehim back and forth, and through that
transition made just a huge difference.
So when we think even againabout our financial health, and
yes, initially that took a hit.
(12:43):
But our spiritual health, ourmental wellbeing, that was more
important to us at the timeand is really a priority still.
So I left there.
Left that job and six months afterI started my LLCI was diagnosed
with cholangiocarcinoma, whichis called AKA bile duct cancer.
So went through chemo and radiation,and then in 2021 by Grace, survived and
(13:06):
had a liver transplant and was wild.
It's hard to fully describe
Wow.
that whole journey.
Wow.
But yeah.
So you had a donor.
A donor.
Yeah,
wow.
Oh my.
it was an intense journey.
Oh, I can imagine.
I can imagine.
It is a lot.
This is a lot.
So what does, what pivoted youto want to focus on finance?
(13:27):
As far as like coaching what made that'cause you, you've experienced so much.
What made that the niche for you?
So I think a couple things.
One, it's my professional background.
When I started it, I didn'tknow anything about money or
credit or anything like that.
Again, it started when I was 19years old with American Consumer
Credit Counseling I loved it.
(13:47):
I saw the importance of, just in timeeducation and information I saw the
transformative power of mindset shiftsfrom, there's a saying that's oftentimes
misquoted as money is the root of allevil, and that's not the actual quote.
The quote that actually camefrom the Bible is the love of
(14:08):
money is the root of all evil.
And when we put money above all things.
Our lives get twisted.
Things get turned upside down becausethen it gets stressful if something
doesn't go my way financially, and allof a sudden it feels like the world
is collapsing around me and gonna end.
But things like relationships, thingslike our health, which I learned all
the more with cancer, way more valuable.
(14:30):
There's no amount of money ultimatelythat can just buy health, right?
So when we.
Have our health, then it's easy totake it for granted and consider
so many other things important.
When our health is taken awayfrom us, nothing else matters.
We really only have one singular problem,and that's trying to get well, and that's.
At the end of the day, what we'rehyperfocused on the idea and the concept?
(14:53):
When I, and I wrote my book fromwhile I was in and out of the
hospital, so through that journeyof cancer treatments, I wasn't able
to get out and about on stages.
It was also through COVID.
I I did some things on Zoomwhen I was able to, but.
Someday.
I was intubated multiple times and Ikind of joke ' cause levity I important,
but I say it's really difficult totalk to people while you're intubated.
(15:17):
So it's like just not possible.
So when I was able to, I could situp and try to bang something out
on my keys and I wanted to give.
I wanted to serve.
I felt like that was part of my purpose.
Ultimately, the best of what I have toserve others with my journey is something
that I think is a gift in a lot of waysbecause I really, I shared a little bit
(15:40):
now, a lot more stories all in between,but really just by grace that I survived
to be here and grateful for that.
And my wife and I talk alot about not wasting that.
Not wasting the pain, the challenge, thedifficulty because in that there's a lot
of lessons that we've learned and grownthrough, whether it was my illness my
(16:01):
history, working through adoption of justall kinds of stuff that can help people.
And if we can help alleviate painand suffering from somebody else from
the lives that we've lived, then inone sense the first word that came
is shame on us for not doing it.
And I don't
It's true.
It's true from gate keeping.
You're gate keeping it.
(16:21):
You wanna Yeah, leave it empty,leave it, eat when you leave.
It's not about me.
It's not just yeah.
So ultimately I mean it, one of the, i'mfrom the Boston area and not to throw the
Celtics out there, but that could, I don'twanna start anything with listeners, but
Doc Rivers, back when the Celtics werelike winning everything with Doc Rivers I.
(16:43):
I didn't mean to say winningeverything, but come on.
They were good.
They were good.
Doc Rivers introduced the idea, he didn'tcreate it, but the idea of Ubuntu, I
am translated, I am because of you.
And the idea that as peoplewe're interconnected, dependent
on each other, and there's a lotof different perspectives and
(17:04):
philosophies to think about that, but.
Ultimately, at the end of the day,what I do affects the people around me.
And if I can bring some hope toother people, then I feel called.
I feel, because I'm able to do that andI consider that part of my purpose too.
Oh wow, that's really good.
(17:24):
Okay, so I wanna I guess I wanna pickyour brain a little bit about the
whole financial wellness and health.
So I do have a question.
So I know we are in kinda like differenttimes or different political times,
especially with, political climate,I'll just say political climate.
So what do you recommend for people asfar as having financial health and wealth?
Or just wellness.
(17:45):
If they're in a time where thingsare uncertain or they are dealing
with a hardship, like a loss of job,how can they prioritize that area?
When you are in a deficit or coming upon what you, bleep may be a deficit.
I think, a couple differentthoughts come to mind.
I think one, given that the audienceis diverse and there's more than
(18:08):
one person, obviously that's thehope more than one person listening.
Then we're all in different situations.
Even here sitting, you and I Kimi, wehave different situations and what's
best in our family here in Boston may bedifferent for you and your loved ones.
right,
when I think about personal finance.
I believe that it's critically importantto keep it personal, that we really
(18:30):
do figure out individually what'smost beneficial for us and our family.
So I think that's important andtoo often overlooked because I
think that there's not, I thinkI know, and I've worked with, I.
Organizations and people who saythat, okay, if you just follow this
specific scripted path, then everythingwill turn out all and life just
(18:50):
doesn't, in my experience, and overa hundred thousand people that I've
helped coached counsel and work with,that's not their experience either.
That life is so much bigger andmore unpredictable than that.
And I think that really is important.
Take the next best step, whatever that is.
I don't know what's gonna happenfive years or 10 years, or.
(19:13):
My wife and I were talking tonight evenjust about making plans through cancer.
Like it was minute by minute.
She would wake up in the middle ofthe night and check just to see if I
was breathing and didn't know if wewould survive to live another day.
And some of that trauma camethrough with my cancer experience.
Towards the beginning, before I was fullydiagnosed, I had an incident in 2019 of.
(19:37):
July where I had to call 9 1 1.
I was home alone, went in by ambulanceand coated on the table and they
told my wife that it's likely Iwouldn't survive the night and to
start planning and preparing for that.
And I had like bag, I had eightbags of blood that needed to be
transfused and main arterial linesand all of that kind of stuff.
(20:00):
So when I say take the next best step,and we don't necessarily know what's gonna
happen five, 10 years, I don't say thatin an ominous, like the sky is falling.
The world has never been worse.
And though sometimes it can feel that way.
So it's a balance of taking it one momentat a time, taking the next best step.
And also with the idea thatthings in the future will be
(20:24):
different than they are today.
And it's all together possiblethat they're way better than
what we can even imagine.
There's a book called Fact as even youbrought up, not to make it all political
Yeah.
There's a lot of strong feelingsthat friends of mine are,
have been out this weekend.
Wondering what's gonna happen, like
With any, yeah.
all of that.
(20:45):
So not to say one side this, one
Or the other just.
Yeah.
Like feeling like dire.
And the book Factful is alooks at the data extreme
poverty throughout history and.
Ultimately what it shares with thedata and a hopeful perspective that
things have never been better in thehistory of the world than they are now.
(21:08):
So when we think about violent warslike a thousand years ago, or death,
illness, disease, or a lot of crazystuff that even, crazy stuff before
the United States even existed.
And also looking at the fact thatthings are still really bad, that
segregation today is greater than itwas pre segregation in the sixties.
(21:29):
When we think about academics,institutions, and schools, and we
talk about prison like schools toprison, pipelines, and a lot of
different things that are horrible.
Most every account.
We look at the Uyghurs in Chinaand being completely suppressed
in like over a million people thatare there, or wars in Gaza, Israel.
(21:50):
And all around the world,things are really difficult.
And the way that they propose the dataand looking at the past, and again,
looking at extreme poverty like thepeople who are living less than a
dollar a day and starving to death.
That's improved over the past severaldecades and rather than, or, but
(22:14):
things have improved greatly and theystill need to improve significantly.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I agree with that.
Gratify never satisfied type of athing that you're grateful what you
have, there's always that push to domore to exceed acce and keep excelling
and within reasonable, parameters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's, there are peoplewho are struggling to survive today.
(22:37):
It's 2025.
As we record this and have thisconversation, people who are wondering
whether or not, like the mortgage isgonna be foreclosed on, or whether
or not there's gonna be food for kidson and being able just to get by.
Not even build crazy wealth.
So when I, with my book.
It's called FinanciallyCapable, A Friendly Guide to
(22:57):
Building Whole Health Wealth.
It's really broken downinto three sections.
So the first section is the environmentin which we live, and in this crazy world,
we operate within a system that we don'thave individually full control over.
So that includes whether it's financialregulation and different systems like
that, that includes systemic racism from.
(23:19):
Education to looking back throughouthistory, within finance, things like
redlining, things like exclusion act,things that systemically prevented
certain parts of the population fromaccessing tools and vehicles for wells
that other people had, and that systemicracism is part of the history in the
United States and affects people today.
(23:42):
That's not long distant past.
Yeah.
I'll leave it there.
We could talk about that for a long time.
But strong feelings.
But I that, so that first sectionof the book is about all of that.
And it's important because it affectsall of us when we think about just
getting by just another day as wellas trying to improve our lives, being
economically mobile for ourselves, ourneighbors, our friends, our families.
(24:05):
It's important to understand allof that from a historical context,
but also of where we are today,legislation and a variety of things.
The middle section of the book,the second section is about.
Behavioral and economic psychology.
So it gets into, we talked a littlebit about addiction in some of my
past, but it gets into as well theprocess addictions that we touched
(24:27):
on and the ways that impacts people.
And without resolving and workingthrough those, thinking about.
A budget is outta touch.
I wrote a LinkedIn post this pastweek about starting with why is
not necessarily best for everybody.
It comes from a place ofprivilege and opportunity.
If I say I. Start with why.
(24:49):
That means that I already have enoughstability that I can think deeper than
my survival mode if I'm in survival mode.
Starting with why is a few steps beyondbecause I need to get from survival
into being, it just stability inbeing able, knowing that I'll have a
meal, knowing that I'll have safetyand security and my own wellbeing,
(25:13):
and the wellbeing of my loved ones.
All of those things is what beliefsystems and value and coming from a
perspective of being financially well froma system of values is really important.
And that again, ties into theimportance that I mentioned.
Personal finance beingpersonal because my system of.
Beliefs and values is different frommy neighbor down the street, and it's
(25:35):
not me to judge or condone or lift upwhat, whatever that it's the system
that I believe, and that's part of theUnited States and the freedoms that we
have the freedom to be able to seek thisprosperity ultimately in, wellbeing.
That's what, yeah that's theideal that we're working towards.
(25:56):
Ultimately, the third section of the bookis really nuts and bolts, so understanding
budgeting, and even as I say, I named thechapter the dirty B word, 'cause budget,
all of a sudden people got feelings, even
Oh yeah.
word.
It's budget, come on.
That tells me how much moneyI don't have the bills I gotta
pay, how much fun I wanna have,
(26:16):
The anxiety.
Yeah.
All of that.
So the nuts and bolts of personalfinance and ultimately the whole health
wealth aspect of really building wealthis that it's like in my mind when I
consider and everybody defines wealthand success differently, in my mind
(26:36):
it really is about holistic wellbeing.
And wealth is being able to liveunencumbered, to have freedom,
to live, express love, buildthe lives that we want to.
And I know that's an ideal, that'snot always possible for everybody,
but wealth in my mind is not justwho's got the biggest pile of cash.
(27:01):
There's so many people that get bigpiles of cash that are miserable.
True.
Yeah.
My mind.
Wealth is something thatis a domain of wellbeing.
So within the eight differentdomains of wellbeing.
One is financial wellbeing, certainly, andthat's part of my professional background,
but physical wellbeing, emotional,relational, environmental, occupational,
(27:26):
psychological, the different domainsof wellbeing come together ultimately
in building whole health wealth.
And in my mind, that's far moreimportant than just a pile of cash
because when someone's unhealthy.
Sick.
We'll use cancer as a specific example.
Money in the bank doesn't really
If you're laying in a hospital bed,who cares how many stacks you have?
(27:48):
It doesn't matter.
right.
That's a good point.
That's a super good point.
Matt, you so many great things.
You have a lot of Jims, youhave drop dropped on us.
So where can the audience go tolearn more about you, stay connected,
purchase the book, tell us all of it.
Sure.
I do have a website.
Easy to remember.
Matt Paradise.
Com.
(28:08):
So just my name, no dashes,slashes, none of that.
Just M-A-T-T-P-A-R-A-D-I-S-E,map paradise.com.
There are a lot of different freeresources on the website and through
that people can also connect with me ifthey'd like on LinkedIn or find my book.
It's on Amazon or Barnes and Noble andall the places where books are sold.
But yeah I'm happy to be a resource.
(28:31):
And re and remind me.
The name of the title of your book,
Financially capable, A friendly guideto building whole health wealth?
Yeah.
Cool.
Okay, Matt, tell us what aresome words that you live by?
Do you have a daily mantrathat you use to guide you?
Yeah, I think there's two thingsand they're tied together.
So one, I don't know if a mantra as muchas an ethos, but I. Gratitude to maintain
(28:54):
an attitude of gratitude always, and Iknow what it's like to have very little
and not know where my next meal is comingfrom and go days without eating, and
not sure when that will come around.
I also know what it's like to eat in someof the best restaurants in the world, but
my happiness is not dependent on thosethings either way, because my joy is.
(29:16):
Intrinsic is deeper than whateverhappens to me and around me, and
I can find joy in everything, evenin suffering, in my suffering.
That joy producesperseverance and perseverance.
Character and character hope.
And hope never disappoints.
And that's the last word that I wannaleave with people is there's always, hope.
(29:36):
No matter how difficult, how frustrating,when it feels like the sky is
falling and politically the world iscollapsing and hatred might be abound.
There is always hope and love never fails.
I love it.
Thank you so much, Matt.
I'm so excited that you were here.
I love wellness is, if you knowme, you know I love wellness.
So when a wellness word comes onthe show, I'm always like, yes.
(29:59):
Wellness people.
Wellness people.
So I thank you for this and I lovefinancial wellness is definitely something
I think that's important, criticalfor people to, to look at and examine.
So definitely check out.
Matt, you also, in the shownotes, we're gonna have everything
linked, matt paradise.com.
But we'll make sure to have LinkedInwhere you can go to buy his book.
We're gonna have all of itlinked so you can get to it, but
it'll all be in the show notes.
And thank you so mad for gracing uswith your presence into the audience.
(30:21):
Until next time.
All right, Kimi Walker here andwelcome back to the next episode of
the Early Accountability Podcast.
Today I'm very happy tohave my guest here today.
We have Matt.
He is a powerhouse ofresilience and transformation.
He is going to talktoday how he went from.
Homelessness battling addiction tobecoming award-winning financial educator.
(00:48):
He also is gonna talk aboutsurviving a rare cancer diagnosis.
Matt's story is nothingshort of extraordinary.
He's gonna teach others.
He's gonna teach others, us, everybodyhow to break cycles of financial trauma.
We're gonna redefine our successand he's gonna tell us about
how we can build what he calls.
Whole health wealth.
So we're gonna talk about living a lifein confidence, purpose, and wellbeing.
(01:10):
So Matt, first off, thank youso much for being here today.
I'm so excited to have you as a guest.
Thank you.
It's my pleasure.
I'm excited to be a guest.
I love having conversations likethese and I love the wellness.
US work that you do and the waysthat you help so many people.
Thank you so much.
Why don't you tell the audience, youhave a very dynamic story, so why don't
you just tell us about you, like start.
(01:31):
Beginning and tell us about Matt.
I really want to hear more aboutyour background and how you got
to doing the work you do today.
Sure.
And it, it is a long andwinding kind of road.
There's some people that just go straight.
My wife is much like that.
She was the best student anddid everything right and went to
college, got a job, career, and.
Never really got in trouble.
That just wasn't me.
(01:52):
I was the opposite.
We're polar opposites in a whole lotof ways, and ultimately we can look at
problems together and solve them togetheras a team, which is important that
we work with the people in our lives.
For me, a lot of thetrouble came in high school.
So before that I grew up inConnecticut, northeast Connecticut.
My parents actually moved us to a ruralarea to shield us, protect us from.
(02:17):
All the trouble thatmight happen in the world.
And ironically, the data backsthis up, but ironically, a lot of
people, young adults, teens in ruralareas get into drugs and alcohol.
'cause there's nothing else to do.
There's not a whole lot of arts andculture and different outlets that I think
it really critical to be able to explore.
(02:40):
Not just creative, but vocationaloutlets, variety of things.
There's farms in this beautiful land.
But I didn't appreciate that as a teen.
So come sophomore year, a lot ofthe different feelings of wondering
that identity work that mostsophomores in high school start to
think about, who am I in this world?
(03:01):
Where's my place?
What's my place going to be?
How am I gonna get bought?
All of the things really cametogether in depressive tendencies,
suicidal ideations, and ultimately.
Drinking and drugs and overdosed whenI was a sophomore in high school.
Barely got by.
So it really, by grace, survivednothing of my own doing.
(03:26):
Eventually, my parentsgave me an ultimatum.
I had two younger siblings.
They said Either get outor get sober, get right.
And for me, if only it were thateasy, first of all getting through
addictions, growing, changingon a dime, very difficult.
I. In the teen brain that's stilldeveloping in my frontal core,
cerebral, all of that stuff just
(03:48):
Yeah.
Change on a dime.
So I left and I became a homeless teen.
I bounced around.
There were times that I slept onthe streets, slept on friends floors
or couches, wherever I was able to.
Eventually was living in a house wherewe sold drugs out of and was raided by
the police frequently and was crazy.
So even in high school, friends wouldcome over after school and hang out and
(04:11):
be stopped by the police down the streetand interrogated and told, don't go in
that house because it's being watched.
And the life that I lived, I knewthat one, it was tearing me apart
inside because I knew that it wasbringing destruction to people's lives.
It was ruining relationships.
I also knew that personally it wasinevitable that the path that I was
on would lead to death, jail, orinsanity, knew that I needed to change.
(04:35):
So with a friend of a friend moved toMassachusetts to get away from that
whole life and the poor decisionsand the world that I was part of.
Anybody who's tried to go throughinternal change by moving.
Knows that wherever we go,our baggage comes with us.
Our baggage just is carried aroundand there's a lot of internal
work that needs to be done.
And within the world of addiction,there's the important two factors.
(04:59):
Intrinsic motivation andextrinsic motivation.
We need somebody who can guideus lovingly in a healthy path.
And for sometimes I needed a quick swiftkick in the pants to be able to get
on track and quote unquote tough love.
And other times I just needed a hug.
I also needed to have that internal,that intrinsic motivation to want to
(05:20):
change because if that desire's notthere and people from the outside.
Start trying to help.
Sometimes it just sounds like naggingand I think that's a difficult thing
that many encounter when helping andloving someone through an addiction.
And maybe listeners don't necessarilyrelate to drinking or using drugs,
but there are so many processaddictions that there's some say
(05:43):
everybody at some point suffers from.
And obviously there'severything from with my
Ooh.
Social media overworking,
Most definitely all ofthat, spending and their
Oh yeah.
Oh
anonymous and gamblers anonymousand all of that stuff, for sure.
So whatever that the device is, someof the brain chemistry is similar
ultimately, at the end of the day, and.
(06:06):
I think that it is something that is sopervasive in our society that some of it's
just more accepted than others, right?
We know that, okay, drugs.
Drugs, that's bad, but shopping.
That's what the economy's built on.
Of course, we go shopping, retail therapy.
I feel good.
I got those new shoes or new outfitand I'm looking feeling good, but
(06:28):
ultimately struggling to pay the bills.
Yeah.
And I think that it's an interestingthing that's a societal thing.
It's such a big deal.
So that's a little bit ofthat and that transformation.
Ultimately somebody, when I mentionedthe extrinsic motivation, somebody cared
enough about me and had a vision that myfuture could be better than what it was
because I didn't have that at the time.
(06:48):
There were whether suicidal ideationsand just my vision was clouded.
Right.
I didn't have hope for the future,and when we fail to have hope for a
better future, we tend not to makedecisions in our best interests today.
We need to have that hope is critical.
Fortunately I had some people,some mentors in my life that
helped to steer, guide me, openmy eyes to a world of possibility.
(07:11):
I didn't envisionsurviving to 20 years old.
So all this time I was like16, 17, 18, 19 years old.
I didn't necessarily seea clear future for myself.
And extremely grateful for thosepeople that were in my life as mentors
and guides, and people who again,helped to show the possibility of a
(07:33):
future and made a world of difference.
So I ended up getting into a Bible-baseddrug recovery program back in 1999.
Somebody reached out to me.
I was.
Musician, still am Love Percussion, gymBay and Congas and bongos and all of that.
It is fun.
So he had a band, went out, playedwith the band, but ultimately he
wanted to just help me be a mentor,be a friend and stuck with me.
(07:58):
And through that program, ended up sober.
I've been sober now 25 years by
Oh wow.
it continues to be one day at a time,
Oh, that's amazing.
Congratulations to you.
When in that part of your journey,when did you go through cancer?
So that was more recent.
Oh
So professionally I needed a job.
(08:19):
At that time I'd bounced around.
Not lots of people wanna hire a highschool dropout who sold drugs and it
doesn't look great on a resume though.
There are lots of transferable skills.
Yes, it's true.
It's true.
That's a lot of things.
There could be.
There's some thingsthat you could take out.
A lot of stuff.
It's so true, but forlisteners I don't condone that.
(08:41):
I'm not advocating, don't do that.
Don't go there.
I don't recommend it.
It's a world of hurt and pain butit doesn't look great on a resume.
So I just needed a job and ended upworking at this place called American
Consumer Credit Counseling and was anonprofit credit counseling agency.
It's now Forbes top.
A credit counseling agency in theUS and worked there for 20 years.
(09:03):
So they gave me, as a 19-year-old kidgave me a chance and had the opportunity
to grow with the organization, obtainmy GEDs, some education college, some
different certifications around creditcounseling and financial education.
Eventually was.
Went from basic customer service tocounseling one-on-one to eventually,
(09:24):
I had the idea to help peopleproactively rather than for if anybody's
familiar with credit counseling.
People call in to get help withtheir debt, essentially by and
large, and mostly credit card debt.
It was stressful like as a20-year-old, 21-year-old kid still.
I have a 15-year-old son.
He'd probably be upset thatI'm calling 21 year olds kids.
(09:46):
But my perspective is different now.
But I was a kid.
I thought I knew everything butreality, I knew like nothing.
So people would call just stressed outtalking about financial infidelity and
asking me as a kid whether or not theyshould divorce their spouse because of the
credit card debt that they were racked up.
And it was heavy.
It was heavy, it was emotionalwork because money and
(10:08):
personal finance is emotional.
It.
It takes a toll on lot millionsof people's mental health, which
affects the workplaces overall.
So seeing that I wanted to be proactiveand bring education rather than reactive
in providing critical counseling,which is still important to help
people before they got to that spot.
(10:28):
So started the educationoutreach group where we did.
Upwards of five or 600 differentworkshops in a given year.
And it was a small, it was me tobegin with, and then eventually
got some employees to get outand about and expand our work.
But went into homeless shelters,family shelters, domestic violence
shelters into public schools, innercity schools, places that wouldn't
otherwise receive the information,but was critical sometimes just for
(10:52):
getting into a safe, secure place.
Went into prisons, I worked with thefederal deposit insurance company, the
FDIC, to create a volunteer program wherewe had financial professionals go into and
work with the Department of Corrections,so pre-release as well as lifers, people
who were there for quite some time to talkabout not just money, dollars and cents.
(11:16):
How money and finances are part ofoverall wellbeing and thinking, not
just financial wellbeing and havingbills on, but also the ways that
impacts our mental health too, andthat too often is forgotten about.
It's I gotta get my money.
I need that money now and.
Ultimately some of the different mentalwellbeing is neglected or forgotten about.
(11:39):
So that being said, long-windedanswer to your short question
about the cancer I left.
That job that I loved in 2018, and themain reason my wife and I adopted a child
who had more needs than we had capacityto thrive emotionally and spiritually.
We were okay financially, butshe worked really long hours.
(12:00):
I worked long hours out and aboutspeaking and the administration
and overseeing other speakerswhere we came up with a plan that.
I would leave and create my ownbusiness, leverage some of the
relationships that I had built overthe years, and have flexibility
so that at that time he was in.
Second grade and neededjust more services.
(12:21):
So we worked with the school toget an IEP and eventually into a
daytime therapeutic school and madeall the difference in the world.
So I, I had the freedom to drivehim back and forth, and through that
transition made just a huge difference.
So when we think even againabout our financial health, and
yes, initially that took a hit.
(12:43):
But our spiritual health, ourmental wellbeing, that was more
important to us at the timeand is really a priority still.
So I left there.
Left that job and six months afterI started my LLCI was diagnosed
with cholangiocarcinoma, whichis called AKA bile duct cancer.
So went through chemo and radiation,and then in 2021 by Grace, survived and
(13:06):
had a liver transplant and was wild.
It's hard to fully describe
Wow.
that whole journey.
Wow.
But yeah.
So you had a donor.
A donor.
Yeah,
wow.
Oh my.
it was an intense journey.
Oh, I can imagine.
I can imagine.
It is a lot.
This is a lot.
So what does, what pivoted youto want to focus on finance?
(13:27):
As far as like coaching what made that'cause you, you've experienced so much.
What made that the niche for you?
So I think a couple things.
One, it's my professional background.
When I started it, I didn'tknow anything about money or
credit or anything like that.
Again, it started when I was 19years old with American Consumer
Credit Counseling I loved it.
(13:47):
I saw the importance of, just in timeeducation and information I saw the
transformative power of mindset shiftsfrom, there's a saying that's oftentimes
misquoted as money is the root of allevil, and that's not the actual quote.
The quote that actually camefrom the Bible is the love of
(14:08):
money is the root of all evil.
And when we put money above all things.
Our lives get twisted.
Things get turned upside down becausethen it gets stressful if something
doesn't go my way financially, and allof a sudden it feels like the world
is collapsing around me and gonna end.
But things like relationships, thingslike our health, which I learned all
the more with cancer, way more valuable.
(14:30):
There's no amount of money ultimatelythat can just buy health, right?
So when we.
Have our health, then it's easy totake it for granted and consider
so many other things important.
When our health is taken awayfrom us, nothing else matters.
We really only have one singular problem,and that's trying to get well, and that's.
At the end of the day, what we'rehyperfocused on the idea and the concept?
(14:53):
When I, and I wrote my book fromwhile I was in and out of the
hospital, so through that journeyof cancer treatments, I wasn't able
to get out and about on stages.
It was also through COVID.
I I did some things on Zoomwhen I was able to, but.
Someday.
I was intubated multiple times and Ikind of joke ' cause levity I important,
but I say it's really difficult totalk to people while you're intubated.
(15:17):
So it's like just not possible.
So when I was able to, I could situp and try to bang something out
on my keys and I wanted to give.
I wanted to serve.
I felt like that was part of my purpose.
Ultimately, the best of what I have toserve others with my journey is something
that I think is a gift in a lot of waysbecause I really, I shared a little bit
(15:40):
now, a lot more stories all in between,but really just by grace that I survived
to be here and grateful for that.
And my wife and I talk alot about not wasting that.
Not wasting the pain, the challenge, thedifficulty because in that there's a lot
of lessons that we've learned and grownthrough, whether it was my illness my
(16:01):
history, working through adoption of justall kinds of stuff that can help people.
And if we can help alleviate painand suffering from somebody else from
the lives that we've lived, then inone sense the first word that came
is shame on us for not doing it.
And I don't
It's true.
It's true from gate keeping.
You're gate keeping it.
(16:21):
You wanna Yeah, leave it empty,leave it, eat when you leave.
It's not about me.
It's not just yeah.
So ultimately I mean it, one of the, i'mfrom the Boston area and not to throw the
Celtics out there, but that could, I don'twanna start anything with listeners, but
Doc Rivers, back when the Celtics werelike winning everything with Doc Rivers I.
(16:43):
I didn't mean to say winningeverything, but come on.
They were good.
They were good.
Doc Rivers introduced the idea, he didn'tcreate it, but the idea of Ubuntu, I
am translated, I am because of you.
And the idea that as peoplewe're interconnected, dependent
on each other, and there's a lotof different perspectives and
(17:04):
philosophies to think about that, but.
Ultimately, at the end of the day,what I do affects the people around me.
And if I can bring some hope toother people, then I feel called.
I feel, because I'm able to do that andI consider that part of my purpose too.
Oh wow, that's really good.
(17:24):
Okay, so I wanna I guess I wanna pickyour brain a little bit about the
whole financial wellness and health.
So I do have a question.
So I know we are in kinda like differenttimes or different political times,
especially with, political climate,I'll just say political climate.
So what do you recommend for people asfar as having financial health and wealth?
Or just wellness.
(17:45):
If they're in a time where thingsare uncertain or they are dealing
with a hardship, like a loss of job,how can they prioritize that area?
When you are in a deficit or coming upon what you, bleep may be a deficit.
I think, a couple differentthoughts come to mind.
I think one, given that the audienceis diverse and there's more than
(18:08):
one person, obviously that's thehope more than one person listening.
Then we're all in different situations.
Even here sitting, you and I Kimi, wehave different situations and what's
best in our family here in Boston may bedifferent for you and your loved ones.
right,
when I think about personal finance.
I believe that it's critically importantto keep it personal, that we really
(18:30):
do figure out individually what'smost beneficial for us and our family.
So I think that's important andtoo often overlooked because I
think that there's not, I thinkI know, and I've worked with, I.
Organizations and people who saythat, okay, if you just follow this
specific scripted path, then everythingwill turn out all and life just
(18:50):
doesn't, in my experience, and overa hundred thousand people that I've
helped coached counsel and work with,that's not their experience either.
That life is so much bigger andmore unpredictable than that.
And I think that really is important.
Take the next best step, whatever that is.
I don't know what's gonna happenfive years or 10 years, or.
(19:13):
My wife and I were talking tonight evenjust about making plans through cancer.
Like it was minute by minute.
She would wake up in the middle ofthe night and check just to see if I
was breathing and didn't know if wewould survive to live another day.
And some of that trauma camethrough with my cancer experience.
Towards the beginning, before I was fullydiagnosed, I had an incident in 2019 of.
(19:37):
July where I had to call 9 1 1.
I was home alone, went in by ambulanceand coated on the table and they
told my wife that it's likely Iwouldn't survive the night and to
start planning and preparing for that.
And I had like bag, I had eightbags of blood that needed to be
transfused and main arterial linesand all of that kind of stuff.
(20:00):
So when I say take the next best step,and we don't necessarily know what's gonna
happen five, 10 years, I don't say thatin an ominous, like the sky is falling.
The world has never been worse.
And though sometimes it can feel that way.
So it's a balance of taking it one momentat a time, taking the next best step.
And also with the idea thatthings in the future will be
(20:24):
different than they are today.
And it's all together possiblethat they're way better than
what we can even imagine.
There's a book called Fact as even youbrought up, not to make it all political
Yeah.
There's a lot of strong feelingsthat friends of mine are,
have been out this weekend.
Wondering what's gonna happen, like
With any, yeah.
all of that.
(20:45):
So not to say one side this, one
Or the other just.
Yeah.
Like feeling like dire.
And the book Factful is alooks at the data extreme
poverty throughout history and.
Ultimately what it shares with thedata and a hopeful perspective that
things have never been better in thehistory of the world than they are now.
(21:08):
So when we think about violent warslike a thousand years ago, or death,
illness, disease, or a lot of crazystuff that even, crazy stuff before
the United States even existed.
And also looking at the fact thatthings are still really bad, that
segregation today is greater than itwas pre segregation in the sixties.
(21:29):
When we think about academics,institutions, and schools, and we
talk about prison like schools toprison, pipelines, and a lot of
different things that are horrible.
Most every account.
We look at the Uyghurs in Chinaand being completely suppressed
in like over a million people thatare there, or wars in Gaza, Israel.
(21:50):
And all around the world,things are really difficult.
And the way that they propose the dataand looking at the past, and again,
looking at extreme poverty like thepeople who are living less than a
dollar a day and starving to death.
That's improved over the past severaldecades and rather than, or, but
(22:14):
things have improved greatly and theystill need to improve significantly.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I agree with that.
Gratify never satisfied type of athing that you're grateful what you
have, there's always that push to domore to exceed acce and keep excelling
and within reasonable, parameters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's, there are peoplewho are struggling to survive today.
(22:37):
It's 2025.
As we record this and have thisconversation, people who are wondering
whether or not, like the mortgage isgonna be foreclosed on, or whether
or not there's gonna be food for kidson and being able just to get by.
Not even build crazy wealth.
So when I, with my book.
It's called FinanciallyCapable, A Friendly Guide to
(22:57):
Building Whole Health Wealth.
It's really broken downinto three sections.
So the first section is the environmentin which we live, and in this crazy world,
we operate within a system that we don'thave individually full control over.
So that includes whether it's financialregulation and different systems like
that, that includes systemic racism from.
(23:19):
Education to looking back throughouthistory, within finance, things like
redlining, things like exclusion act,things that systemically prevented
certain parts of the population fromaccessing tools and vehicles for wells
that other people had, and that systemicracism is part of the history in the
United States and affects people today.
(23:42):
That's not long distant past.
Yeah.
I'll leave it there.
We could talk about that for a long time.
But strong feelings.
But I that, so that first sectionof the book is about all of that.
And it's important because it affectsall of us when we think about just
getting by just another day as wellas trying to improve our lives, being
economically mobile for ourselves, ourneighbors, our friends, our families.
(24:05):
It's important to understand allof that from a historical context,
but also of where we are today,legislation and a variety of things.
The middle section of the book,the second section is about.
Behavioral and economic psychology.
So it gets into, we talked a littlebit about addiction in some of my
past, but it gets into as well theprocess addictions that we touched
(24:27):
on and the ways that impacts people.
And without resolving and workingthrough those, thinking about.
A budget is outta touch.
I wrote a LinkedIn post this pastweek about starting with why is
not necessarily best for everybody.
It comes from a place ofprivilege and opportunity.
If I say I. Start with why.
(24:49):
That means that I already have enoughstability that I can think deeper than
my survival mode if I'm in survival mode.
Starting with why is a few steps beyondbecause I need to get from survival
into being, it just stability inbeing able, knowing that I'll have a
meal, knowing that I'll have safetyand security and my own wellbeing,
(25:13):
and the wellbeing of my loved ones.
All of those things is what beliefsystems and value and coming from a
perspective of being financially well froma system of values is really important.
And that again, ties into theimportance that I mentioned.
Personal finance beingpersonal because my system of.
Beliefs and values is different frommy neighbor down the street, and it's
(25:35):
not me to judge or condone or lift upwhat, whatever that it's the system
that I believe, and that's part of theUnited States and the freedoms that we
have the freedom to be able to seek thisprosperity ultimately in, wellbeing.
That's what, yeah that's theideal that we're working towards.
(25:56):
Ultimately, the third section of the bookis really nuts and bolts, so understanding
budgeting, and even as I say, I named thechapter the dirty B word, 'cause budget,
all of a sudden people got feelings, even
Oh yeah.
word.
It's budget, come on.
That tells me how much moneyI don't have the bills I gotta
pay, how much fun I wanna have,
(26:16):
The anxiety.
Yeah.
All of that.
So the nuts and bolts of personalfinance and ultimately the whole health
wealth aspect of really building wealthis that it's like in my mind when I
consider and everybody defines wealthand success differently, in my mind
(26:36):
it really is about holistic wellbeing.
And wealth is being able to liveunencumbered, to have freedom,
to live, express love, buildthe lives that we want to.
And I know that's an ideal, that'snot always possible for everybody,
but wealth in my mind is not justwho's got the biggest pile of cash.
(27:01):
There's so many people that get bigpiles of cash that are miserable.
True.
Yeah.
My mind.
Wealth is something thatis a domain of wellbeing.
So within the eight differentdomains of wellbeing.
One is financial wellbeing, certainly, andthat's part of my professional background,
but physical wellbeing, emotional,relational, environmental, occupational,
(27:26):
psychological, the different domainsof wellbeing come together ultimately
in building whole health wealth.
And in my mind, that's far moreimportant than just a pile of cash
because when someone's unhealthy.
Sick.
We'll use cancer as a specific example.
Money in the bank doesn't really
If you're laying in a hospital bed,who cares how many stacks you have?
(27:48):
It doesn't matter.
right.
That's a good point.
That's a super good point.
Matt, you so many great things.
You have a lot of Jims, youhave drop dropped on us.
So where can the audience go tolearn more about you, stay connected,
purchase the book, tell us all of it.
Sure.
I do have a website.
Easy to remember.
Matt Paradise.
Com.
(28:08):
So just my name, no dashes,slashes, none of that.
Just M-A-T-T-P-A-R-A-D-I-S-E,map paradise.com.
There are a lot of different freeresources on the website and through
that people can also connect with me ifthey'd like on LinkedIn or find my book.
It's on Amazon or Barnes and Noble andall the places where books are sold.
But yeah I'm happy to be a resource.
(28:31):
And re and remind me.
The name of the title of your book,
Financially capable, A friendly guideto building whole health wealth?
Yeah.
Cool.
Okay, Matt, tell us what aresome words that you live by?
Do you have a daily mantrathat you use to guide you?
Yeah, I think there's two thingsand they're tied together.
So one, I don't know if a mantra as muchas an ethos, but I. Gratitude to maintain
(28:54):
an attitude of gratitude always, and Iknow what it's like to have very little
and not know where my next meal is comingfrom and go days without eating, and
not sure when that will come around.
I also know what it's like to eat in someof the best restaurants in the world, but
my happiness is not dependent on thosethings either way, because my joy is.
(29:16):
Intrinsic is deeper than whateverhappens to me and around me, and
I can find joy in everything, evenin suffering, in my suffering.
That joy producesperseverance and perseverance.
Character and character hope.
And hope never disappoints.
And that's the last word that I wannaleave with people is there's always, hope.
(29:36):
No matter how difficult, how frustrating,when it feels like the sky is
falling and politically the world iscollapsing and hatred might be abound.
There is always hope and love never fails.
I love it.
Thank you so much, Matt.
I'm so excited that you were here.
I love wellness is, if you knowme, you know I love wellness.
So when a wellness word comes onthe show, I'm always like, yes.
(29:59):
Wellness people.
Wellness people.
So I thank you for this and I lovefinancial wellness is definitely something
I think that's important, criticalfor people to, to look at and examine.
So definitely check out.
Matt, you also, in the shownotes, we're gonna have everything
linked, matt paradise.com.
But we'll make sure to have LinkedInwhere you can go to buy his book.
We're gonna have all of itlinked so you can get to it, but
it'll all be in the show notes.
And thank you so mad for gracing uswith your presence into the audience.
(30:21):
Until next time.
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