tell you about your vision? My vision? I had a vision where everybody knows their worth and
everybody knows how to ask for it and knows how to get out of situations where their worth is not
appreciated. I think, you know, I care about equality and I care about people so much. And
the fact is our world is getting more and more divided and the rich are only getting richer and
we need to advocate for ourselves and we need to be more creative than ever to make enough
money to have the resources to provide for ourselves. Tell me more about that. Well,
you know, I come from a very blue collar family and I learned that I started a business about
eight years ago and I probably had wake-up calls before this, but the stress that I was under was
like nothing I'd ever dealt with before. And it sent me down a journey to realize that I had
undiagnosed and unprocessed childhood trauma that really affected my ability to know my worth.
And I was, you know, I always did okay and better than okay. I was making a couple hundred thousand
dollars at the time, but I was also living in Manhattan and sadly that wasn't very much
compared to what the cost of living was and it's way less today than it was eight years ago.
And so I learned my worth. I strategized my business around people, around clients who
recognized my worth and I grew it to where I earned myself a million dollars a year by
advocating for myself and it wouldn't have been possible if I didn't do the work and heal and
correct all of the, and correct everything I was taught during childhood that I was broken,
that something was wrong with me. And I believe that once we learn our worth, we're able to
advocate for it and set boundaries to get ourselves out of situations where it's not
appreciated and we have a lot more power than we think we do. Thanks for sharing that, Matt.
That goes into my next question. Where did your vision exactly come from? Is that kind of what
you already talked about or something more you want to add to it? I'm just thinking about that.
It's a good question. I would say that looking back to when I was a child, I was always highly
sensitive. I remember being sad at sad things, seeing an unhoused person. I always was empathetic
towards what they were going through. I always felt that. And just as time's gone on, the older
that I get, I get more and more compassion and I just understand the complexities of life and of
surviving. And I think that it's no secret, but the past few years, the disparity between
what people earn at normal jobs and the cost of living has just grown massively. And I care about
it so much. Thanks for sharing that, Matt. That is absolutely true that there is a huge disparity
now with the cost of living and how much people earn. And there's a lot that can be done about it.
I'm not going to go into it, but I want to know more about you and why you said that. So tell me,
is that your why? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've, you know, like 10 years ago, eight years ago, I was
in the depths of despair. I mean, I was so anxious and depressed and didn't really feel like there was
any way out. I didn't believe that I was special. I didn't believe that I was worthy. And it's
absolutely my why. My life has changed so much. I'm going through some massive changes right now in
my career and my partner and I have started our surrogacy journey. And I'm just so happy that I
have started this journey. I'm 41 and I, even in the past couple of months, I mean, past few months
and getting comfortable with that, I've had to grow so much and believe that everything's going
to work out. And I would have never been able to do this if I didn't heal. And I just, I cannot
believe the obstacles that I face on a daily basis right now. I mean, these are things that, you know,
one-tenth of the intensity of this would have crippled me. And it's more than just financial
equality. It's just, I believe that people need to have the ability to advocate for themselves and
set boundaries. And by doing so, I mean, your life just absolutely changes and it's no version of the
old life anymore. I mean, I can't believe it, but like, I don't have anxiety and depression. It may
surface one day, maybe it's here and I just don't feel it because I know how to cope with it. I know
how to talk myself down and just realize that this moment right now is, it's all we have and we're
safe in this moment. Every one of us are safe right now in this moment. And when we feel safe,
we're able to change our lives. We're able to take the risks necessary to change our lives and make
them into what we'd like them to be. I'm just getting my thoughts because what you said is so
profound. There's so much detail. When you talk about equality and I guess financial equality or
even other aspects of it, what do you mean by that?
I would say that's a good question. I'm grateful that you asked that. I think that equality can be
looked at a lot of different ways. I think that it's giving everybody the same shot at life. It's
giving people the tools they need to have the same shot at life. And I mean, I look at people
like Elon Musk, like, you know, I mean, he is arguably like one of the world's smartest people.
I don't look at him anymore and think like he is 10,000 steps ahead of me. I mean, he's really,
I see when I look at him, I see that mainly he's just a heck of a lot more confident than the
average person. He has some skills that people like you and I may not have that can be gained.
And a lot of those, a lot of where he's at has come from confidence, from being confident to sit
at the table to being confident to ask people to give him things. And I think that we aren't,
when we don't have that confidence, we're not equal. We're operating at a deficit to people
like that. And when we can develop the emotional abundance, the emotional stability to be able to
to be able to enter a room confidently, to be able to enter a situation confidently,
we're not that much different than the other person that's there that we're looking up to.
So it's good. What you said, I look at it with two different aspects. You talked about Elon Musk
and his confidence level. There's a quote. Are you famous? I mean, are you, I forgot the word,
I can't get the word. Are you familiar with Alex Hermosy? Yeah, I am. Have you read or seen one
of his some books or things that he has done? I've seen his YouTube videos, but I haven't read any
of his books yet. So I, he's, he's given out those books for free, but he has tremendous values in
these books. But I'm going to go off of one thing he said. He said that your lack of confidence
comes with lack of preparation. So assuming, I mean, I'm going to give a presentation, right?
And I have like a thousand people in front of me, right? Maybe I have anxiety, maybe I have
some issue, maybe I have something else. I don't know. But if I put hours and hours and hours and
hours to just prepare, prepare, prepare, and have a load of them prepare. He said everything else
just will fade away. It will not matter. What do you think about that? I would say that I agree.
I would say that some of us, when we are, you know, when we're, I mean, some of us don't have
the same ability to prepare. Like we need to create, we need to heal. We need to do the growth
that's required of us to be able to be in that room. But yeah, I mean, I think that,
and I mean, in another aspect, like looking at healing and looking at growth, I mean,
that is a form of preparing. So I do, you know, tying that all back together,
I believe we are all capable of just about anything. And I think it's a conscious decision.
Like for me, like I actually really enjoy having a lot of free time. I love, I don't want to be
working. I don't know how many hours a day Elon Musk, just using that example works, but I can
promise you it is nowhere. I want to work nowhere near that amount of hours. And, but I think so
many of us look at situations and I don't know why I'm bringing up the Elon Musk. I'm not particularly
like a fan of his or anything, but it's just like, I think that like when I'm working with my clients,
like it's about like setting a goal and understanding what it takes to get there.
And I think that so many of us don't realize that we can prepare to achieve that goal. It's just like,
it's a conscious decision that we don't want to work that hard to put it in plain words,
which is fine. I mean, I think that's the beauty of life. And I think that so many of us
don't have the ability to make that conscious decision. Like we look at our neighbor and say,
oh, he has a boat. Like I'm a loser. I don't have one. We're not realizing we don't want a boat.
We don't want to work that hard to have a boat. And it's not lazy. It's that we have different
values in life. And, but I mean, anything is figure out a bowl. I don't know if you've heard
Marie Forleo say that, but like, I really believe that. I mean, we can figure out anything we want
to, but I like to sleep at my eight hours a night when I can. Thank you for being here today. I'm
really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as
these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more
engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for
giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.