⚾ Diamond to Dollars: Matt Morizio on Financial Freedom, Generational Wealth & Purpose

⚾ Diamond to Dollars: Matt Morizio on Financial Freedom, Generational Wealth & Purpose

👤 Guest Bio – Matt Morizio

Matt Morizio is a former professional baseball player turned wealth management entrepreneur, father of seven, and founder of Reconstructing Wealth. After spending five seasons in the Kansas City Royals minor league system, Matt faced a life-altering moment when he was released during spring training as a newlywed. That moment didn’t break him—it built him.

Today, Matt helps families redefine their relationship with money through faith, clarity, and emotional detachment. His mission is to empower others to become generational chain breakers and live lives of intention and impact.

🗣️ Episode Summary

In this inspiring episode of the Give A Heck Podcast, host Dwight Heck sits down with Matt Morizio to explore the journey from chasing a dream on the baseball diamond to building a legacy in the financial world. Matt shares how his upbringing, athletic discipline, and faith shaped his approach to wealth, parenting, and purpose.

Whether you’re navigating a career transition, raising a family, or trying to break free from inherited money mindsets, Matt’s story offers practical wisdom and heartfelt encouragement to help you construct a meaningful life—one choice at a time.

⏱️ Timestamps & Highlights

  • 00:00 – Meet Matt Morizio: From pro athlete to financial educator
  • 05:00 – Overcoming inherited scarcity mindsets
  • 14:03 – Homeschooling and teaching kids about money
  • 32:28 – Lessons from 20 years in baseball
  • 55:48 – Reconstructing Wealth: A new approach to financial planning
  • 1:14:06 – Encouragement to pursue your calling

🎯 What You’ll Learn

  • How to emotionally detach from money and use it as a tool
  • Why consistency and discipline matter more than talent
  • How to teach financial literacy to your children
  • The importance of aligning finances with core values
  • How faith and family can guide your entrepreneurial journey
  • What it means to be a generational chain breaker

💬 Notable Quotes

“We are all called and created to do something special in our lives. If you don’t pursue it, it’s a disobedience to who you’re created to be.” – Matt Morizio
“You don’t have to wait for permission to live a meaningful life.” – Dwight Heck

Youtube:

Apple Podcast:

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🔗 Connect with Matt Morizio

🌐 Website – Reconstructing Wealth
📘 Facebook
📱 Instagram
🔗 LinkedIn

🔗 Connect with Dwight Heck

🌐 Official Website – Give A Heck
🎧 Listen to the Podcast

📱 Social Media Channels

Full Unedited Transcript:
[00:00:00 – 00:01:44]
Foreign. Welcome back to Give a Heck. Before we dive into today’s episode, I want to share something personal. As someone who’s wrestled with purpose, risk, and redefining success, I’ve learned that most meaningful lives aren’t built by accident. They’re built by choice. That’s why today’s guest hits home for me. His story is one of grit, grace, and going against the grain again. Welcome back to Give a Heck. Where we explore what it means to live life with intention and heart. Today’s guest isn’t just a former pro athlete. He’s a husband, father of seven, and founder of wealth management firms. That’s changing how people think about money. I’m honored to welcome Matt Maurizio, a man whose journey spans from baseball diamond to to the boardroom. After playing five seasons in the Kansas City Rolls minor league system, Matt faced a life altering moment being released during spring training as a newlywed. That moment didn’t break him, it built him. Over the next 14 years, he raised a large family, homeschooled his children, and launched Reconstructing Wealth, a firm rooted in faith, clarity, and emotional detachment from money. Matt’s story is a masterclass in resilience. He learned to be comfortable being uncomfortable and now helps others do the same by changing their relationship with money and building lives they truly enjoy. Let’s dive in. Good day, Matt. Thank you so much for coming on the show, brother. Appreciate you sharing your time with us, man.

[00:01:44 – 00:01:52]
It’s such an honor. That’s. That was an awesome introduction. I appreciate that, that I’m listening, thinking, like, who’s he talking about? It sounds like a fun life. It’s. Appreciate it.

[00:01:53 – 00:01:58]
Well, I could sprinkle in the challenges and stuff, but we’ll get into that to the conversation.

[00:01:58 – 00:02:01]
So no, I’m excited. Thanks for having me here.

[00:02:01 – 00:02:37]
Absolutely. Thanks for again for investing your time. So, you know, as I mentioned earlier, to me, the origin, our earliest recollections are so important to connect with people. And a good origin shared with somebody can break down and collapse time frames in a quick fashion for somebody to know, like and trust you. So, Matt, do me a favor. What are some of the earliest memories growing up that you believe and have confirmed that shaped your worldview and your drive to chase the big dreams that you’re currently working on?

[00:02:38 – 00:04:59]
Yeah, well, I’m, I was, I am a product of a divorced family, so my parents divorced pretty early when I was in second grade. And those actually are realistically some of the earliest memories I have. I don’t have too, too Many before that. And in that separation, you know, as a second grader, third grader, that that time frame you sort of think through or you think that your parents are the foundation and the rock and that that’s the thing you can lean on. And for me, that obviously shattered early on in my, my life. So there’s this kind of duality where in that season my, my grandmother flew us down. My brother and I, when I say us, flew us down to Texas to meet my aunt and uncle, meet up with my aunt and uncle who lived there. And they kind of, they introduced me to faith in a way that I hadn’t heard it before. So that kind of became one bedrock and one foundational element. And the other one was sport was baseball for a long time, because it was an outlet for me. And honestly, that was that thing that I could depend on for a very long time. 20 years really, from age 6 to 26, when I was finally done playing. But even that ended up failing me. Thankfully, the faith never did. But really, baseball became this thing that was my escape. It was my thing that I could dedicate my time, focus attention on. And when I was in it, I wasn’t worried and thinking about the other things. And I was pretty good at it. And you can go pretty far with it. So early on, I don’t know what it was about me or how I was wired and how I was created, but I really early. From my sixth grade graduation yearbook, believe it or not, when I graduated preschool. What do you want to be when you grow up? Under that section I wrote baseball player, which was pre divorced but not very, you know, a couple years after that they did and I just held tightly onto that, especially when I, I started getting good, was kind of around the time that they were separating. And I’m like, I just leaned into baseball and it was almost like a proclamation for me that I was chasing that thing and, and I used it as an outlet for a long, long time.

[00:05:00 – 00:06:05]
Wow, that’s amazing though, that, you know, you can look back and think to yourself, this is what’s going on with my parents. And then to put down in, in your little photo book that you want to do stuff like that, you know, like that’s your dream and, and that become your escape. For many people, though, I find sports, or even not just sports, any form of physical activity, going to the gym or whatever, is the thing that they knew, need that endorphin hit that, that belonging, right? Because people go to the gym and they know people there because they usually go at the same time, hey John, hey Sally, blah, blah, blah. And it’s the same thing with you get, you get an extended family, whether it’s playing Little League, all the way up to the pros. So I believe that is a saving grace for many people such as yourself. Right. Sports is that catalyst that keeps us moving forward while all the noise of family and everything else gets pushed aside. Right. So I appreciate you sharing anything else you would like to share besides that in regards to your origin.

[00:06:05 – 00:09:11]
Yeah. One other thing that I think probably is relevant to my journey and where I’m at today that I can reflect back on and truthfully, it’s mess that I’ve had to work through myself in order to be better on the other side for the people I work with today is as a kid, my money relationship. You know, I know, we’ll talk about that. The finance, the financial relationship I inherited really from my mom because that’s who I spent most of my time with as a child. She inherited from her parents who inherited it from their parents, which are Great Depression era parents. And because money’s taboo to talk about, you don’t ever change that relationship. So for me, I remember distinctly when I was little, even if I didn’t turn the heat down, if I was the last to leave a room or leave the house or come down from, I was the last to wake up and I didn’t turn the upstairs heat back down because at the time I’m living in the great in Boston area, the house is oil heat, it’s expensive. So if I don’t bring it, put it down to 58, I got an earful for it. And we don’t if in the winter you, if you’re not warm at 64 degrees in the house, go put a sweatshirt on. That was the mindset, like don’t turn the heat up, you just layer on my clothes. And those are some of my early memories in terms of money relationships, which really taught me that there isn’t enough that you have to hoard the stuff you have and you have to kind of squeeze a quarter out of a nickel. And that sort of stuck with me, honest to goodness, until I was 32, 33, 34, somewhere in that primary time frame even, especially as a minor leaguer, I made eight or nine thousand dollars US a year maybe. And I, I was grateful to have the, the skills of squeezing a quarter out of an, out of a nickel because I needed to. It didn’t mean it was healthy though. So that’s part of my origin story. Because I needed to work through that. Because I had this mindset that there wasn’t enough and I’d worry about it and I didn’t. It was this, a big elephant in the room, you know, and it wasn’t until I started to learn about it and, and honest to goodness, give some away, that was, that was another part of it. But I started to change my relationship with money. And as that changed, I was simultaneously going through this personal development journey of my own, working through my childhood traumas from the divorce and all the other things. And it was like this rising tide approach where like the water level of my personal finances, relationship wise, was going up and I saw my, my fitness start to go up and my faith grew, grew deeper and my family life got better. You know, it’s like, like a rising tide approach with it kind of not in lockstep, but as one started to get better, the other started to get better. But it’s all as a result of working through that childhood lie. I suppose you could say that I learned that I need to unlearn and really learn. Learn the truth about finances.

[00:09:12 – 00:10:45]
Wow. Yeah. I like how you talked about the generational patterns that, you know, depression area and that happened too, you know, like I mentioned, can you imagine? My dad’s parents was depression era. He was born right after the depression in 41. But that whole mindset was all about, like you said, getting a quarter out of a nickel. And then when he come to age and started his career and then started his business, very successful business. But it was all based on mindset, based on a specific economic time in history. And people that learn behavior becomes like a hamster wheel. It just spins and goes to the next generation. Next generation. So it’s important we address our money monsters. There are things that have held us back. But also look at it like you said. I love how you said though it was also a savior for you when you’re only making eight, $9,000 in, you know, playing baseball, so, you know, it helped you, but it hindered you. So looking at stuff in the past as a monster, I tell people you got to also reflect on the good. There’s always some good, even if you have to squeeze it out and drop it will help you forgive yourself, forgive the circumstances of what caused that and then move forward. But you have to have that acknowledgment and awareness. Don’t you agree?

[00:10:46 – 00:11:44]
Agreed. Totally. I kind of like to push back on that idea of scarcity being a problem, abundance being the right way to think. Now I Think like abundance mindset will serve you more than a scarcity mindset will. But I always tell people my own experiences because if I share my truths, it may not be true for everybody, but it can’t be wrong because it’s been my truth, you know, And I’ve learned that so long as that I control that scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset doesn’t control me. It’s actually served me quite well because it keeps me from recklessly spending. And I recognize I didn’t always control that mindset. A lot of my life that mindset controlled me. But to say that scarcity mindset should die and I should only live in the abundance mindset now actually is cutting off a really important part of the thing that probably keeps my boat floating.

[00:11:44 – 00:14:02]
Exactly. So looking at the strengths and making it a strength instead of a weakness in our mindset is so important because as you mentioned, it keeps you the same as me when I got into this industry 23 years ago, was a good six figure income earner with my other business and did well for myself. But there’s times where I’d have more month than money, right? All of a sudden you’re getting to overdraft using a line of credit, using a credit card. And there was, because I’d never been taught. My dad may have been extremely wealthy, was an accountant when he started, right? He had gone to, back then, it wasn’t all these degree programs. He just went to a simple college, got his, his, his diploma in accounting and he was doing that and he never taught me. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. How are we as parents equipped to teach others what we know, right? Or we tend to teach it in a more emotional way, a very poor way. And then that sticks in our kids, locks into their mindset, they see arguments, fight about money, this and that. So we need to be aware of what we went through. Pick the good thing. Like you said, it helps you see, don’t overspend and, but the rest is just, you know, that didn’t serve me anymore. It was, it was, I’m aware of it, I acknowledge it, I forgive it, time to move on. But this one good thing is going to help me so I don’t go out and blow a bunch of money and have more months of money. And if I have a month and more months of money, hopefully I’m strong enough to have a budget where I can look at it and go, oh, that’s okay, two months from now, unless something happens, I got this and that can cover this. So we can put it on our credit card. That need. And then understanding that educating people about ourselves first, about needs and wants, all the things that we aren’t taught by our parents, doesn’t make them bad. It just means that they never were educated. The next generation isn’t. And it’s a terrible problem we have, not just in North America, the whole world. Lack of education is destroying families, destroying businesses, and allowing the government to do more and more crap to us. Weak mindset. If we had a strong mindset, we’d be able to topple anything. Right?

[00:14:03 – 00:14:06]
You know what? Can I, can I say one thing I do actually do with money?

[00:14:07 – 00:14:07]
Yeah.

[00:14:07 – 00:14:44]
With children. Because I didn’t learn anything. And I inherited what I got from, from my parents, my mom. And she didn’t learn anything, so she inherited. Right. More is caught than taught with kids. And I sure I know you know that. And I caught what my mom gave me, she caught what her parents gave me. And it wasn’t until I understood, I learned the language of money, I learned how the game of money worked, that I was like, holy smokes, I’m not passing this on to my kids. What I know or what I knew. We homeschool our children and yeah, I seen that.

[00:14:44 – 00:14:45]
That’s quite incredible. 17.

[00:14:46 – 00:17:41]
Yeah. When you homeschool, you can curate your curriculum. I mean, you use a curriculum, but you can kind of curate the stuff that you want your kids to focus on. And what matters to you, matters to them. And we have what’s called Money Mondays. So I 15 minutes, 10 minute lesson. I am just sitting down with my kids and they’re half. Half listening, half. Not the younger ones, definitely. Not the older ones, definitely. But the oldest is only 13. The youngest is 2. So I’m not like teaching adults this lesson, you know, like, these are young kids and I’ve done this for a couple years, so we’re talking 10, 11 years old max, starting these lessons. Point being, anybody listening that says my kids are too young or they’re not capable of learning. That’s not true probably. So I will teach them the lessons that I wish I knew then. Like, I wish I was taught at some point in my childhood. But I’ll teach it in what I think is a more relatable way. Like, we’re talking about interest rates on a loan versus investment account rates and how debt works and how you repay debt. But we’re using chocolate chips, and at the end of it, you get to eat the chocolate chips. So they have to make a Decision on like, do I want more chocolate chips now or later? And how do these chocolate chips work? If I say yes to this, how much more do I have or how much less do I have? And then it becomes this tangible, real thing that they start to learn the lessons and I will tell people. Anybody listening? I’m on Instagram. It’s. My name’s MattMurizio. It’s just my name. And if you feel like you want to teach your kids about money because you’re in the same spot that I was, that I said I’m going to be the generational chain breaker, I’m going to start to change how future Maurizios see money. And you don’t know where to start. You can just rip any, any lesson off of my Instagram. They’re not, I mean, I don’t have any patent on them. I don’t care. I want, I want you to use it too. Just do what I did. Your kids will never know the difference and make it better. Do what I did and improve it on we know, with your own twist or. The other option I tell people is if you don’t even want to talk to a person or even interact with a person necessarily, you could just go to chat GPT, you know, use AI and say I want to teach my kids about money. Give me the top five lessons I should start with and then creatively give me a brainstorm, a creative way to teach this to a 5 year old or whatever your age kids are. I promise there’ll be some good ideas. The point that I’m trying to really make is that as parents, there’s no excuse not to teach your kids. If you want your kids to learn. Because we live in the age of information, the problem will be there’s too much information. You gotta be able to filter out what’s good and what’s not. But you can’t say you don’t know about money, therefore you can’t teach your children because there’s too much out there that you can learn. Whatever you need to teach them.

[00:17:41 – 00:18:41]
Absolutely you can teach children. But here’s another thing that I’ve experienced through all my clients, right, the thousands of people I’ve talked to, whether it was on stage, face to face, you know, kids will only learn so much. I used to teach my kids when they were so small. Need and want dad, blah, blah, blah, blah. We need that. Really? Is that a need or is that a want? Is do you really need it? Well, here’s the circumstance. This is a month that I had to pay for this, this and that. Right. Here’s the budget. What do you see? Right. Some of them would actually look. Others would just, like, shrug their shoulders. So out of my five kids, I’d say that for sure, for sure, for sure. Out of five kids, three. It’s stuck with that need and want because they roll their eyes when they look at me, and they’ll. They’ll just have a conversation with me, and they’ll look at me, and I don’t even have to respond. They’ll go, yeah, okay. I know. Even as adults, they used to talk to him about that all the time.

[00:18:41 – 00:18:42]
And, you know, that’s great.

[00:18:42 – 00:19:21]
And I always told them, I’m not perfect. Dad made a mistake last month. I did this thing that I convinced myself it was a want. We. Our brain is. Does not know the difference between a truth and a lie. And I convinced it that it was a need, and it wasn’t. It was a want. And now it’s caused this problem. And I’d have these conversations, and as teenagers, they’re rolling their eyes. They really don’t give a. They don’t. They don’t. I’m just being honest. I’m not saying we can’t teach our kids. I completely agree. But we have to do it age appropriate, as you mentioned, and take that little space, that little bit of time, and just repeat. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The more they roll their eyes, the more I know it’s sticking.

[00:19:23 – 00:19:24]
Yeah, and that’s the thing.

[00:19:24 – 00:19:24]
You’re.

[00:19:24 – 00:20:31]
You’re including money in part of the home conversation. And I’ve just found in the, in the conversations I’ve had with people, the most successful people. Not. And this doesn’t mean they have the most money in the bank account. The people who have the healthiest relationships with money and are the. Have the most peace throughout their days. It often is that they. At some point. It’s usually not in their childhood. They’ve probably. They’ve learned it at some point, but sometimes it’s in their childhood. But they learned to talk about money in the same way. Somebody who is into fitness just naturally is curious about what do you eat? How do you eat? What do you. How do you exercise? Like, what do you. What are your goals for your fitness? What do you. What are you trying to accomplish with that type of training program? You know, and they may or may not take back what you’re doing and apply to themselves, but it’s that comfort level about talking about money, understanding how certain people use it in different ways that’s the thing that ends up making that person pretty successful with money because it’s no longer this taboo topic that they’re not allowed to know or talk about.

[00:20:31 – 00:22:52]
Well, and then they have something else, Matt, that they can tie to. So if you had that conversation and they grow up and roll their eyes, whatever, and they become adults. They have something inside their computer brain that they put in as that they believe is the truth. Hearing it from me or whoever else to gauge against it, their brain calculates at such a fast rate they. We sometimes don’t realize that, that things that are filed and stored and compartmentalized possibly are actually affecting us. But at least we have that in there. At least we have that in there for us too as adults, young adults, older adults, to go back and think, oh my goodness, I was, I was taught that why didn’t I do different? You know, maybe it’s an epiphany. I’ve had kids, older kids come up to me and we’ll have conversations. Dad, we remember you doing this and this and this and that. And it’s nice to hear too because the acknowledgment that I tried my best and I continually push forward and I continually talk to him about money. Okay, guess what? This summer, you know, I take the summers off. I only deal with current clients, but we always go somewhere close because of money. I can’t go very far because I’m the only person supporting all five of you and all your stuff. Right. And I was very honest with him. I’m not trying to make you feel about. I’m just trying to make you realize that we can only go three days. We’re going three hours away from here to the low. There’s an amusement park, there’s a zoo, there’s a bunch of stuff. It’s a city called Calgary, three hours south of me and we’d have a blast. And those three days we jam packed so much fun. And we come back at the last day. We didn’t stay overnight. We’d come back like 10, 11 o’ clock at night. They’d be exhausted, but they’d be satisfied. Yeah, because I told them what was going to happen, what we could afford to do and we’re going to do it. And I always kept my word. That’s another thing. Parents do poorly when they educate people about money and the power it can do for the family. Right? Just be honest with your kids. Be straightforward, be compassionate. And one of the things I wanted to add before we go on was you mentioned about values I wrote down core values and balance. There’s no real balance that’s possible, but my core values are faith, family, work. You talked about, you know, faith. My faith is so important to me. I can’t have a balance of all three. It’s important, but all three have to work together to live a purposeful life, right?

[00:22:52 – 00:22:53]
Yes.

[00:22:53 – 00:23:34]
My family, my faith have to be in sync. Otherwise my business suffers because my mind’s wandering. Maybe I’m not giving the best advice because I’m not concentrated here. And you know, I’m not saying people, that life is easy, but it’s doable in a good way. Right? It’s doable in a great way. You just got to put in some effort and be honest with yourself about your weaknesses and challenges. Give them up to God. For me, I give them up to God, my weaknesses and say, hey, I’m your vessel. You brought me into this industry. I left dry the old industry where I made so much money to make hardly anything the first year in this industry. But you gave me a purpose.

[00:23:35 – 00:23:35]
Yeah.

[00:23:35 – 00:24:10]
For me to find my purpose and then teach it to others and then constantly drive that. Constantly drive that. Right. You’re, you’re younger in your career than I am, but you’re on, you’re already on that locomotive path. You’re just chugging, chugging, chugging, keeping on going forward and helping people. And every experience you have that you can bring from your origin into your, from your family into your client life, that empathy you talked about earlier, it just becomes more and more stronger when we can empathize with people. And if and when you get better at it, you can identify yourself as an empath. Just so you know.

[00:24:10 – 00:24:11]
That’s really good.

[00:24:11 – 00:24:26]
I’ve had, I’ve had more than one empath coach in the last 250 some episodes on one of them has become a real good friend of mine and identified why I need to utilize my empath. Empath abilities that have been there. She figured since I was a kid.

[00:24:27 – 00:24:27]
Wow.

[00:24:28 – 00:24:48]
More properly to continue to develop strong relationships with younger people. And every people my age are like, I want to deal with people my own age. No, I want to deal with the younger crowd and the older crowd. I’m not an outright 18 to 80, 18 to 90. I don’t care. Everybody deserves to know that they can climb.

[00:24:48 – 00:24:49]
I love it.

[00:24:49 – 00:24:51]
Sorry for the soapbox we shared.

[00:24:51 – 00:25:03]
No, that was really good. We shared the same values. I, I, I didn’t think this up. Faith, family, fitness, finance. Those are my four Fs. Those are kind of like my guiding pillars of really it’s my decision making.

[00:25:03 – 00:25:04]
Isn’t that awesome though?

[00:25:05 – 00:29:12]
Yeah. And it’s easier. It makes the, you know, people talk about the no’s being difficult and, and I get it. Sometimes some things show up that like you want to say yes to. But for me, if it advances what I’m trying, the goals I’m trying to achieve in those areas, if it advances any one of those areas, faith, family, fitness, finance, if it makes progress in those areas, then it’s probably a yes. And if it is outside the scope of those four pillars, we’ll call it then I say no. Like you want to meet up with me on happy hour and grab a few beers at 4:30 and we can just, you know, catch up. I’m like, well that doesn’t at all mesh with any of those. So it’s probably a hard no. But do you want to come over and bring your family to have a dinner on a Sunday afternoon with us and we can break bread and build relationship? That sure, that’s probably it. Yes. You know, like using those as decision making criteria, as frameworks to say yes or no through. It’s. And you talk to a balance in those. It’s not possible for balancing seven children. And I’m in the middle of what I’m calling a sprint season partly because it’s just my mindset around sports. You have it in season, you have an off season. It’s just how my brain works. So in this sprint season I’m calling it, I’m running hard, trying to accomplish a big business goal. Now obviously I’m spending more mental capacity, more physical hours working toward that thing. That thing though came in prayer as I was praying every morning. I start my morning in quiet time and it was, you know, God, where do you want me? What do you want me to accomplish? What do you, where are you leading me? What’s my next step? And I really felt that was on my heart. So like even though those priorities, faith, family, fitness and finance are in that order, depending on where I’m at in life and where I ultimately feel like I’m being led, different hours of time are allotted to those different parts of my life depending on the season, but the priorities always remain. And I think that’s where the, the feeling of balance really stays in. It’s when my business, which is on the fourth of those four priority scale, starts to creep up and take over and become the number one priority. Like I’m missing quiet time in the morning. I’m missing, I’M not reading because I’m working more. Well, that’s an issue. That’s where things start to derail. The train goes off the tracks, you know, or I’m not even seeing my kids games. They don’t know who I am for the last three weeks of my life because I’ve been working so hard. Or I’m working on a fitness goal above my family. You know, I’m sacrificing family dinner because I need to go for a long run because I’m training for whatever. Well, now the priorities are out of whack. So that’s how I visualize, like, what does balance look like and feel like those priorities need to stay? 1, 2, 3, 4. And then depending on the season of life, more time or less time will be allotted to some of those things. So long as I’ve kept the priorities in check and checked in. Like, my wife knows, hey, we’re in this spring season. So, like, I got it from prayer. I faith and family. I talked to my wife about what I’m feeling is on my heart. She’s in agreement with me. I said, what do you need from me in this season if we’re going to go into this? She kind of shared with me, I need a date night. I need one night a week with a one day a week with family to have an outing. So now, like, my faith is in line. My family’s on the same page. I’m not letting my fitness derail. Like, I will stay training. I just won’t set big training goals. And now I’m in the finance. The sprint season is getting the majority of my time, but I’ve prioritized appropriately to make sure that the sprint season is the right thing to do. And I promise, if anything in this, you know, from now till Thanksgiving shows up where I have to course correct because one of those higher priorities need me. Okay, I’m going to adjust. You know, that’s just how life goes.

[00:29:12 – 00:31:48]
But that’s all about. I wrote down communication. Here’s what I mean by that. Yeah, you prayed, you got communication from God, communicated with your wife, communicated with yourself. Had a. Had a powwow inside your head, you’re right out with everybody else, me and all my friends. Exactly right. But it’s true though, right? We have to. Aware, awareness and communication are a blessing and a curse. So many people don’t know how to be aware and they don’t know how to communicate. Yeah, they communicate based on. And you know, just like many, many people I’ve gone through Mental health issues. And I’ve talked to mental health professionals and I’ve had people on my show, clients that are doctors. Like, I’ve talked to so many people about it. We always have to realize that even as a child, the money things we just talked about, you and I, or the core values you want to follow are always tied into the fact of where is that emotion tied to that memory? So I have this memory of childhood, and when I think about it, your body, you don’t even have control of it, picks up on that motion that’s stored with that memory, good, bad, or indifferent. And then if you don’t aren’t aware of that, it affects you moving forward. What path are you going to take along your core values? Right. Oh, that triggered me. Did I get upset about it? Anger is never our first emotion. It’s a secondary emotion. It’s been scientifically proven. So am I working on my awareness so that when that triggers me, within the first 45 seconds to a minute, can I challenge myself? Can I make it so that doesn’t happen? Am I giving it the adult emotion it deserves, or am I falling into the childhood emotion or teen emotion or, you know, divorced emotion? The list goes on. Right. We need to be. Those two things are so important to what you were saying. Awareness and communication and tying it to your core values, like, good for you. That. You know what? I don’t know you very well yet. Hope to look forward to getting to know you more and collaborating. But at the end of the day, you’ve got it, brother. Like, you literally have to. You literally. You prayed, you got your answer. Sometimes me, I’m stubborn. I pray about it again because I think that can’t be the answer. And then, you know, I get the same damn answers going, darn. Yeah, when I was younger. Exactly. When I was younger. Okay, day three. Let’s try this again. Yeah, here’s what I’ve got going on.

[00:31:49 – 00:31:52]
Yeah, that’s great. You didn’t hear me. Previously.

[00:31:52 – 00:31:54]
Oh, let’s see. I’m waiting for an answer from you.

[00:31:54 – 00:31:55]
God.

[00:31:55 – 00:32:03]
Yet you sent me, just like the old story sent you the boat, we sent you the plane, we sent you out of the helicopter to rescue, and you still drowned. Like, come on.

[00:32:03 – 00:32:04]
I love that. I love that.

[00:32:04 – 00:32:27]
Right? So anyway, I digress. I want to get into a couple other things. We’re going to backtrack just a bit to talk a little bit More about your 20 years pursuing a professional baseball career. Yeah. And you mentioned a little bit of stuff, but I want this to Be specifically flowing to. What did that journey teach you about discipline, identity and letting go?

[00:32:28 – 00:34:50]
Well, about discipline. It taught me that you can chase something for a very long time. And if you’re not all in on it. Let me take that back. If you, even if you are all in on it, you still may not achieve the ultimate goal. Like that’s okay. I never made it to the big leagues. That was the goal. And I never got there. And I really chased that dream, relatively speaking, for 20 years. Professionally I played five. But that, that whole vision started when I was six and I guess that’s that. That to me was this healthy realization that the discipline of chasing that dream was the win. It wasn’t whether or not I achieved after 20 years, which is crazy to say because it’s a 20 year failure if you want to think of it like that. But I learned that the juice really is, is in the squeeze because at the end of the day, I heard John Maxwell say this at a conference that I was at. And he’s the OG leadership coach. If anybody doesn’t know who John Maxwell is, He’s written about 90 books on it, so just find one on leadership. But he said people like him, like us, like me, like you, we are constantly moving the finish line down the road. Like we’re pushing it forward, it’s always in front of us. We never hit the finish line. And I always thought that was a problem. But the way he described it, he said this is, this is the high achiever mindset, the high performer mindset, the high capacity leaders mind says if I cross that finish line at any point in my life, then theoretically those best days in my life are behind me. And who wants to live a life where your best days are behind you? And I finally, it was like this light bulb went off for me. I’m like, that explains why I’m always moving the finish line. But I’m not mad at myself for doing so because I always feel like there’s more in the tank. And I think part of it, to answer your question, was about the discipline of 20 years of chasing something and all of the personal growth I went through in those 20 years without ever actually hitting the final goal of that 20 year journey, you know, so that’s what that.

[00:34:50 – 00:35:34]
But who pushed you in that journey to sit and be aware of what you are experiencing and growing yourself, really? You have coaches, you have people. Me, but. Exactly. But it’s you, right? And we don’t give ourselves enough credit for how strong and powerful we are, that we’re unique. God created us all unique. Like our fingerprints are unique. Your journey to get to there, that discipline is huge in your life. From getting married, getting cut to getting having seven kids. I guarantee there’s so much value in that 20 years that you haven’t even completely grasped yourself right. I’m still grasping my own origin and everything.

[00:35:34 – 00:36:23]
Totally, totally. I remember I had twins. Well they were numbers three and four for us, but they were basically four years into our marriage. My oldest had just, he turned three the day after my twins were born. So I had four kids in almost exactly three years. And that was a very difficult season in terms of just staying power. Like physically I didn’t think I could make it, but I would brew pots of coffee at 9pm I remember that specifically. Think pushing the button on the coffee pot at 9pm Thinking like what, what is my life right now? Just because we needed to make it till 1 to 2, 2am for their final feeding before they slept for 3 and a half, 4 hours so that we could wake up with the 6, 6:30 or so with the, with the rest of the kids again. But that builds you, that builds you though.

[00:36:24 – 00:36:36]
Strong, resilient person. Your smile on your face, yeah, it doesn’t take away from your story. It just adds to the fact of your resilience and your tenacity, both your wife and you.

[00:36:37 – 00:39:34]
I, I, I appreciate you, I appreciate you saying that I, that that season of life, I forget where I was going with that story but that season of life was again carried the discipline I suppose from previously like those 20 years of Chase. I, I, like I can do this. I can push through this like we can. We’re going to be okay. It’s okay if things stink for a little while emotionally, like this is just hard. But carrying that discipline from my 20 years of baseball for sure, like is just one life example of how it’s carried me through. I will tell you. You asked about identity too. What mistake I did make was unknowingly I wrapped my identity up in being a baseball player. So I wrapped it up in what I did. It wasn’t who I was. So he asked what did those 20 years teach me about identity? What it taught me was careful to not wrap your identity up in what you do because it’s not who you are. And I try, I didn’t try even if I tried to not identify as the baseball player. When I would go home for the off seasons, which was the Boston area, I was drafted even out of high school in my small town in Massachusetts. So people knew of me or at least knew my story, because not many people got drafted out of Waltham, Massachusetts. So when I would be home and I inevitably run into somebody at the local whatever store, grocery store, restaurant, and I would. They would say something to me. And then. And then what would inevitably happen is they would go like one of these, like, oh, wait, I think I know. You’re the baseball player. Right. That’s how they would relate. So even if I didn’t want to be, you know, wrap my identity up in being a baseball player, it was really difficult to. To get out of that, because people would throw that right back on me until I was not the baseball player. Until the Royals called me and said, well, they called me the evening before they released in spring training to say, we’re going to release you the next day. And at that point in my life, I was no longer a baseball player. And it was like, who am I? What. Oh, my gosh, this feels like my identity has been stripped. And it actually forced me to lean on my faith again. That thing that we started the conversation with that you need. I believe anybody, everybody needs some type of faith foundation. I’m not going to push Christianity on you, but you’ve got to believe there’s some higher power, there’s some greater force, because everything else is going to fail you in this earth. My baseball, which was my rock to lean on after my family, failed me, and everything else also, 20 years later, failed me like every. My wife was. Will let me down. She’s human. It’s. You need some type of foundation to wrap your identity in that is everlasting. So that’s now where I. Where I tie my identity.

[00:39:34 – 00:41:53]
Oh, that’s perfect. Because you look at people today that don’t have any form of, you know, flowchart filter, however you want to do it. If this happens, do this. You know, what do I identify as? You look at the parents that have stayed at home, like, stay at home, mom. And their whole identity was around being a parent, and they forgot about themselves. I did that even as a single dad. Identified as. As a single dad, you know that I need to do this, and I forgot about myself, and then I let stuff slip for myself, and I wasn’t necessarily continuing to grow myself emotionally, mentally, physically, physically. It’s so easy to get caught up in being identified by society as being, you know, a single dad, a finance person, a baseball player, when reality. Those are things that we accomplish and do, but they don’t necessarily define us. They shouldn’t have to define us as. As a man or a woman. I believe that God give us kids. Right? For me, God give me kids to be their parent, but they’re still children of God. They’re my children, but he allowed them to be my children. Right. And he allowed me to be that person. So am I doing what God wants me to do? It’s not that much to ask yet. I’ll put in tons of effort for my vacation. I’ll put in tons of effort to go to a movie, tons of effort to do this and that. But I don’t put tons of effort into the most important person that won’t abandon me. Not person, but you know what I mean? The most important thing in my life, which is my faith. So you’re right. I teach that all the time. You have to have faith. Like, I don’t care if you have. Your faith is stemmed around the fact that you’re a tree hugger. Good, good. You appreciate trees. You appreciate the fact that they’re. They do so much for us. And. And they do give off energy. Contrary to what people do. Trees do have an energy source, right? They do. They. They’re growing and they’re. They’re thriving, just like they’ve proven. Proven plants will grow better when you speak to them. Why? We’re all creatures. We’re all people that want to be acknowledged. God’s never going to stop acknowledging me unless I stop acknowledging him. And even then, he’s still acknowledging me. I’m just not listening.

[00:41:54 – 00:41:55]
Correct? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:55 – 00:41:55]
Right.

[00:41:55 – 00:41:58]
I couldn’t agree more. That’s. You’re right.

[00:41:58 – 00:41:58]
Right.

[00:41:58 – 00:42:15]
And we all live. We all live with an element of faith. You know, even if people are. Don’t deny it. Or they pretend like they don’t live with faith, like for you to go to bed at night tells me you have an element of faith because you believe you’re gonna wake up in the morning. Right. There’s no guarantee anywhere that says you are waking up tomorrow morning.

[00:42:16 – 00:42:19]
And do you thank them when you wake up? That’s what I tell people.

[00:42:20 – 00:42:21]
You have faith?

[00:42:21 – 00:42:22]
That, like, I have faith?

[00:42:23 – 00:42:23]
Yeah.

[00:42:23 – 00:42:24]
When you.

[00:42:24 – 00:42:29]
When you hop in a car and drive home, you have faith that you’re gonna make it there. No, you don’t have a guarantee.

[00:42:31 – 00:42:34]
You go in to get surgery, you don’t know if you’re going to come out.

[00:42:34 – 00:42:42]
Right. There’s no guarantee. So we live by faith. Even if we deny that we have faith, we literally live every day of our life by faith.

[00:42:43 – 00:44:33]
Every day. Right. I tell people, I say what are your routines? And I just tell them one of the first things I do, open my eyes and go, thanks God for giving me another shot, another day, another opportunity to make a difference in my life so that I can continue to be strong. To serve your children. Right. To serve. To serve the purpose that you put me on this planet. Maybe I didn’t listen and it took me, you know, a lot of years to get to where I’m at, and I’m still growing my purpose, but thank you for being there for me. Thank you for letting me be able to get out of bed. That’s faith. You don’t know that you’re going to wait when you wake up, that when you go to step down, that there isn’t going to be an issue. Right. So I. I do. I appreciate the fact that I can walk into a bathroom, brush my teeth, and people laugh at me. The simple things are the most powerful. That literally out of 8 billion people on the planet, maybe a billion people actually have all that. The rest are all living in third world situations. And we need to be thankful that we were born and blessed into a situation where we had the opportunity to get where we’re at. Right. To appreciate and to be grateful. Gratitude is the most powerful tool. And be aware of how much you screwed up on that day, too. What mistakes you made, address in the next day. Whether it’s, hey, John. Hey, Matt. I. I said something wrong yesterday and I kind of seen it in your face or I heard it on the phone, your tonality. If I said anything to make things worse yesterday for you, my mental capacity wasn’t there. I should have avoided it. I’m. I’m calling you to give you an opportunity to talk to me again and to apologize for. For not giving you what you needed because I wasn’t there. I’m just being honest with you and people are floored. Right. Why do you do that? Don’t worry about it. Yes, I’m worried about it.

[00:44:33 – 00:44:33]
That’s.

[00:44:33 – 00:44:38]
I don’t have the right to bring down anybody. Right.

[00:44:38 – 00:44:38]
Really good.

[00:44:38 – 00:44:41]
And walk away if people are doing the same to you.

[00:44:41 – 00:44:43]
You got it. That’s really good.

[00:44:44 – 00:45:11]
So you talked about being, you know, released and newlywed. Newlywed. Scenario of everything that you went through. We’ve talked about faith. You’ve talked about, you know, sports itself, though it. Did it train you in the sense of consistency for your entrepreneurship and even as a parent. What did it do for you? What has it done for you, that sports journey of 20 years?

[00:45:11 – 00:50:05]
Yeah. What it has done for me is it’s taught me what lasting success really looks like. And you can define success however you want, but it’s lasting success. To me. What I’ve seen at the highest level of sport, right, I was quite literally taught during spring trainings by hall of Famers in the sport. So hard to say there’s anybody better at the game than the people that I was learning from. And I recognize when I’m on the field with other future hall of Famers, that, wow, it’s not about how skilled and talented you are, because on that field, there was a lot of talent everywhere. Everybody had the qualifying talent to be a big leaguer. It wasn’t that. It was to me, I’ve learned that success, besides the stuff that happens between your ears, which actually is probably 90% of it, it’s about how consistently you do the very average things at a very exceptional level. The guys that I played with that made the big leagues, for example, were not the ones that threw the hardest, had the nicest hands, could hit the ball the farthest, could run the fastest, necessarily. They were not, in other words, the most exceptionally skilled and talented people. What it taught me was that the consistent, disciplined effort, day after day, month after month, year after year, when executed at the highest possible level, is the recipe to succeed and make it to the big leagues. Like, for me, I couldn’t do at 7:05, which was first pitch, what I could do at 5:15, which was batting practice. Like, I could take swings in the cage off a guy throwing 65 miles an hour down the middle and do really well. I could look as good as anybody else almost. Some guys could hit way farther than me, but you know what I mean. 705. The ones that made the big leagues were able to do the same thing that they did at 5:15. They just executed at the same. The same boring swing at 5:15 when a guy’s throwing 97 at them, the same thing. So for me, it’s about being able to consistently, repeatedly, day after day, no matter the outside external circumstance, execute at a very high level to the best of your abilities, without letting all this noise get in the way. Like, that’s what I would do. And that’s what anybody that didn’t make the big leagues, that’s usually what I saw happen. Something in their brain rewired what they felt like they needed to do, and they didn’t do what they needed to do. And now you translate that to parenting or to business. And not only do I recognize that failure, I’m going to screw up, like, because baseball is a game of failure. If you’re the best in the world, you failed 70% of the time you got to that, you know, you hit.300. So I know that I’m going to mess up along the way. I know that I have to just show up and do the same important things as a parent, which is I need to make sure my kids know I love them. I need to reaffirm that I’m proud of them. And I need to do that consistently daily. Showing up so that they know I’m there and I love them and I’m proud of them. And they hear it and they feel it and I live it day after day, week after week, month after month. And if I can do that and continue to do all the other things I need to do as a parent, but really those are the swings off the tee, those are the bullpens. As a pitcher, like, that’s what the I love you as a parent. What I’m proud of yous as a parent. What the showing up for the events and being physically present for the. That’s, that’s what those reps are as a parent. You’re showing up day after day for the boring, mundane, routine things and you’re executing them at a high level because you’re physically present, you’re mentally present. You mean what you say, you say what you mean. You know, like, that’s not revolutionary advice as a parent, but when you can execute it at the highest of levels, like I learned the MLB guys did, your kids are going to be okay. You could screw a lot of other things up, but talk to me about what most daddy issues, what most mom issues are. They’re seeking their parents approval because they never got it as a kid. They didn’t feel the love as a kid. They never thought they made their parents perfect proud as a kid. So if you can repeatedly show up, not just say the words, but, but say the words, not just say the words, show up and do the things that makes the child believe they do love me, they are proud of me. You’re gonna win. You’re gonna be a big league parent. Do you know what I mean?

[00:50:05 – 00:50:08]
Oh, I do. Actions speak volumes, right?

[00:50:08 – 00:52:04]
Yeah. And the same is with business. Like, it’s not because I’m going to have the most robust, fancy, technical, savvy investment strategy that’s going become a great investor for people, or I have the idea, the unique, unique financial planning tips and tricks that’s going to get you to magically make zillions of dollars and be able to afford your life. It’s really not that. It’s like I’m going to show up and I’m going to teach you the basics of money that you need to understand. I’m going to articulate them through personal experiences in a first, first hand experience way that’s going to make me, like you said, more empathetic. But I’m going to do the reps off the tee. Like the same swings off the tee, outside, middle, inside. I’m just going to take the reps meaning I’m going to teach you that you can’t spend more than you earn and I’m going to tell you personal experiences and I’m going to show up for you and, and, and remind you why if you’re not investing and living your life aligned to who you’re created to be, you’re calling like you’re not buying and investing based off of your values. If, if you’re not doing that, you’re going to live in misalignment and you’re going to live and miss live in an incongruent life and it’s going to feel messed up. But I’m just going to keep showing up and reminding you the things that matter to you and how to use your money effectively to live your calling. And if I can keep doing that for people, then they’re going to be the heroes of their story and I’m going to be the, the big league advisor. You know, like it’s, there’s not going to be, which I’m grateful for. This experience is 20 years of playing with some of the best in the world, the best that will ever play the game to recognize holy smokes, you don’t have to be the most talented. Actually almost everybody isn’t the most talented. It’s, it’s the ones who show up and do the mundane at the highest of levels every day are the ones who make it to the big leagues.

[00:52:04 – 00:54:06]
Oh yeah. All those areas I, I look at, am I the same advisor I was when I started? 10 years in, 20 years in now. And the thing that gives me the most thrill, I guess or gratefulness is when I have clients or even friends that I coach on a life because I do a lot of lifestyle coaching. And they’ll say to me, you know, we were thinking about this and I was mad at you the other day. Why were you mad at me? Because I kept on in my what would Dwight do? What would you do in that circumstance? Right. Whether it’s Money related or raising kids? Because I get people asking me all the time, people say, well, how can you give people advice on raising kids? You had a broken family. Why would you say my family’s broken? Your definition of family maybe equals broken. My definition is, is I saved my kids, I raised them, none of them are in jail. I’m all proud of that, you know, but at the end of the day, when somebody, a friend or family member says, you know, and they roll their eyes, it’s like the kids, it’s more like need, want, thing, or they’ll, you know, clients will roll their eyes because I’ll tell them, if you’re struggling, just think to yourself, what would conversation be like with Dwight about this? What would he say? And people. I have people that have been doing that now in their lives for 15, 20 years. And it makes me feel glad. Not because I’ve indoctrinated them or, you know, like brainwashed them. I sat and listened, I helped develop, I stayed consistent and I, and I just pushed forward. Right. I’d never ever let. Like you said, you’re getting up, you’re doing stuff, you’re doing your baseball stuff. You don’t know what’s, you know, gonna happen the next day, but you’re showing up, and that’s what we all need to do in life. You showed up for 20 years, it didn’t work out, and then you started showing up a different way. You got it as an entrepreneur, as a dad, like, and as a friend, whatever you want to define that as.

[00:54:06 – 00:54:36]
Being, yeah, you got it. And what you, when you’re, when your clients are saying, what would Dwight do? And then that realigns or, or changes or helps them figure out whatever they’re trying to accomplish, you’re no different than that hitting coach that’s impacted the baseball players. If you’re in a slump, your swing’s not going well, you think like, what would that coach say? And often you just have to think about what that coach would say. And now your, your swing’s back on track because you just got coached up again.

[00:54:37 – 00:55:48]
Yeah, exactly. So we could keep on going on and on about this. There’s so many other things that. Because I literally am writing notes, checking things off, but there’s things I don’t want to miss and we’re running out of time, so we’re going to go into, we’re going to go into the flow being. And yes, all of this conversation is talked about. There’s been wealth, conversation, like money, there’s been faith, there’s been family, there’s been. It’s a great conversation because it all ties together. So you can’t segment your life as much as we think we do everything. When I open up the doors of clients lives and I look inside, am I seeing what they present, what they talk about, their materialism? Does it represent their, their, their abundant needs of, of life to support family? Or are they trying to impress the Joneses and the Smiths? Right. Anyway, see, you founded a wealth management firm called Reconstructing Wealth. Obviously the name’s quite, you know, it’s self explanatory in some ways. But what inspired that name and what makes you approach differently wealth creation? First.

[00:55:48 – 01:00:23]
Sure. The first, well, the first thing I knew I didn’t want was to put my name on the wall because that’s what everybody in our industry loves to do, like the Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Edward Jones, Merrill Lynch. Like everybody just puts names on the walls and makes it, makes it a thing. So I said, all right, I feel like God’s leading me into this calling. Like I never, I didn’t, I didn’t feel like I ran from my old firm. I felt like I was being called to build something. So I felt like this mission was way bigger than I could ever be. And I didn’t even, and admittedly I don’t even know what it will eventually turn into. Whatever God thinks it should be is what it will be. But I knew it wasn’t going to be just me. It couldn’t be just me. The term Reconstructing wealth comes from thousands of conversations with people about their money. And I know you can really relate to this big time. I learned through those conversations that nearly all of us have some varying level of jacked up relationship with finances and myself included, that we have an unhealthy some degree on the spectrum of health, some degree of unhealthy relationship with our personal finances. And I knew what that journey has. I know what that journey has done for me to transform from, from unhealthy to healthy relationship with money. Because it has made me a better everything. Better husband, better father, better, better in my job, better in my fitness because I can be more present. I have this monkey off my back. I understand how the game of money works. So as I’ve firsthand lived and witnessed this transformation, I realized that if I can help other people do the same, if I can reconstruct their relationship with money, I have an opportunity to help them be that one in their family lineage. They can be the generational chain breaker that for Future generations forever of their family, they don’t see money the same. They don’t have that same problem with finances. And if they can change their family trees, who knows what their kids family trees will look like. And then the ripple effect of multiple generations of that becomes unquantifiable. So I recognize that the most success I will have with somebody, the biggest success I can have with somebody is when their entire relationship with finances changes really, from one of fear and emotion to one of looking at chess pieces on a chessboard, almost to emotionally detached. Now, we’re human, so none of us can ever fully emotionally detach from money. You know, if you’re living in a place where you can’t cover your next month’s paycheck, I mean, your next month’s rent or mortgage, that’s stressful, no matter how great your relationship with money is. But if you can emotionally learn to emotionally detach from money, then I’m living proof that you can quite literally change your life. So for me, nobody comes to me to start because they say, at least not yet. Maybe one day when this becomes a branded thing, they’ll, they’ll do it. But most people don’t come to me to say, hey, I think I have an unhealthy relationship with my finances. I need some help. In the same way people don’t go to Jenny Craig and say, I think I emotionally eat in the evenings and I need you to help me there. Instead, they say, I, I’ve got a wedding in three months and I need to lose 20 pounds and three inches on the waistline. You know what I mean? I know that. That’s. People are coming to me for the financial planning, for the investment, for the blocking and tackling of personal finances. They need the help. There’s a level of complexity or unwillingness in their personal financial life to do it on their own anymore, or they need guidance of some kind. But the lasting change, just like a Jenny Craig example, when they start to understand food as fuel and, and fitness as a way of life, not just this thing to do for a season, you know, when, when people start to understand money as a tool and they see, then the relationship with money start to change, they see it as chess pieces on a chessboard, not as this emotional burden, then their lives will start to change. So really, like, that’s the underlying. And it’s not that much. I’m not really trying to hide it. It’s in the name of the firm, but that’s where I know true, lasting success for somebody is going to be.

[01:00:24 – 01:03:02]
Wow. Yeah. It is so true though. Reconstructing wealth, getting people to be aware and admit their financial challenges and disconnect from it, detach from takes work. We can lay it out as a coach, mentor, but they still have to put in the effort and then they have to do what we do. When we go, we’re getting into a mindset or like a mind mind intensive organization. Like I’ve been on groups where we’ve had masterminds, we’re having conversation. It’s awareness and realization where we’re at that is the biggest problem. And disconnecting from a society that’s got so many associations, not just people, associations of what we hear, watch, read, listen. And we don’t have any filters to filter that crap out. It actually affects everything we do to help people recreate wealth because they have such a defined. They’re living in that drama of that show and they want the fancy vehicles or their neighbor living a facade. And they’re broker than sin. They’re in their house, they don’t have furniture, but yet they got a few vehicles in the driveway and they got all these fancy vacations, yet they’re literally 90 days away from going bankrupt if one of them lost their job. Right. And at the end of the day, we need to teach people, like you said, to be detached. And the reason I want to help people detach from money is for them to chase experiences and memories with their family and their faith tied together. And if you keep that tied together, even in your worst financial situations, you still have each other. You’re still going to find just as much joy. And is going on a big vacation, you’ll have that same joy taking your kids to the park and playing for hours and packing a little lunch or going to a beach if you have one close and playing in the water, not worrying about worrying and giving it up to God. For me, tomorrow is another day. Eventually things are going to change. I just have to have the right mindset to create memories with my family and raise them the best I can, control my 6 inches as best I can, make sure I have mentors to talk to me, to keep me in check. Because you, you’re. You’re only as if you walk into a room or walk into any situation and always think you’re the smartest. You aren’t. You’re the dumbest because you’re thinking the wrong way. There’s too many people that you can learn from until they take your last breath. And how to be a better parent, better business owner. A better wealth. Professional.

[01:03:03 – 01:03:03]
Totally.

[01:03:03 – 01:03:05]
You can. You can learn from your own clients.

[01:03:06 – 01:03:07]
Oh, yeah, all the time. I do.

[01:03:07 – 01:03:10]
Me too, man. 23 years, I’m still learning.

[01:03:10 – 01:03:13]
That’s the best part. Yeah, it’s exciting.

[01:03:13 – 01:03:20]
It’s exciting. When I see the dramatic changes in family’s lives, too, I feed off that. That energy. Yeah. Oh, it’s.

[01:03:20 – 01:03:21]
You got it.

[01:03:21 – 01:03:27]
It’s great. God’s blessed us both, right, with the ability, you know, Yours a little bit bigger family than mine.

[01:03:28 – 01:03:30]
No. Just a little bit. It’s not that much.

[01:03:30 – 01:03:34]
You got family. Maybe. Maybe you’re going to double up in size. I don’t know. You’re still a young d.

[01:03:36 – 01:03:41]
I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see what God has in store for that. I don’t know.

[01:03:41 – 01:05:57]
So, you know, at the end of the day, there’s so many more things we can talk about. We’ve got to wrap up the show. I was going to talk a little bit about your homeschooling and in the mind shift and stuff like that because, you know, I. I know people that have homeschooled. My sister did it with her, her child, and, And. And all the different things and stuff. Sometimes I think homeschooling allows us to control the. The poison. And why I call it poison is people bring their own personal challenges to their job. Teachers bring that to their job. I’m not against teachers. My sister’s a teacher. I have tons of clients that are teachers. Very unforgiving job when you’re dealing with all the tension and puking on from the parents, for that not to affect what happens when little Johnny’s not having a good day or little Sally’s not having a good day and that teacher’s so overwhelmed and something is marked inside of their head that was unintentional, but it’s stuck there now, Right? So homeschooling, I find, can be very powerful. I don’t agree with the adage that they need the social interaction, put them into extracurricular things. There’s lots of ways you can give social skills and graces to your kids. How about you start teaching them some, then go introduce them to it and not let the school system be a giant babysitting service which has become. The pandemic, proved that. I’m very blunt about it. I’m not against schools. I’m against the corruption of governments that control the school systems in North America and the world to not educate our kids, to be emotionally resilient, to understand that it’s okay to feel this way. Right. It’s just there’s, it’s, it’s so frustrating to me that I do believe that our school system is broken. Yeah. Because of the governments, the administration, staff, the teachers, all are great people trying to do the right things with very little tools in place to do it. So homeschooling at least gives you the ability to teach. If it’s wrong, you can, you take the onus, you can’t blame anybody else. Yeah. But I think homeschooling, especially seven kids, if you’re faith, family and business related, that’s powerful. They’re never going to forget that. Right. As long as you keep them busy outside of the home.

[01:05:57 – 01:06:08]
You got it. Dang. What did you want me to say about homeschool? Dang. You just nailed it all. That was really good. Kidding me? I kind of thought, I don’t think I could say anything oh, better than that’s amazing.

[01:06:08 – 01:06:17]
Well, I just, I wanted to know how it shaped your, your family, your dynamic and your perspective on it. But sometimes they get on a soapbox.

[01:06:18 – 01:07:23]
That was great. You basically said a lot of what I felt. But you know, so the quick summary. Homeschooling for us was born out of necessity, I would say at first. So back to that season of life when we had four little kids. My youngest when he was finally six, we still had three young babies basically. So the where we were in Massachusetts, the bus was going to pick him up first, drive 30 minutes and drop him off and then reverse the route. So he would be the first on last off. So he’s going to be on the bus really long as a six year old. And we lived a mile and a half from the school. It was just crossing major roads that he couldn’t walk on his own. So the, the options became okay, this is kindergarten. My wife, she, I was working a lot at the time for a different, in a different career. Finance, staffing. Still in finance but in staffing. So she was now. And the other piece was it was a 9 to 12pm school school day. As a kindergartner, you had to pay like four or five grand to go all the way until three o’.

[01:07:23 – 01:07:23]
Clock.

[01:07:23 – 01:11:23]
Which, taking that babysitting idea, that was a discount for anybody who was used to paying full time nanny care or full time daycare. For us we’re like why do I need to pay five grand to have one less child for three hours? That doesn’t help my day. So that’s, that’s a waste of money. So now we’re looking at 9am we’re going to drop him off and then come home and then pack three, three kids back in the car to drive a mile and pick him up again at noon. Do that twice a day, five days a week for kindergarten. Like, what do you learn in kindergarten? We’ll figure this out. That’s basically how it went. Because we were like, that’s ridiculous. It’s gonna be by the time we’re back, she’s back from drop off, kids are gonna eat a snack and then get back in the car. We gotta go pick him up again. That’s not gonna be great. But then when he started, we started to do it at home. We really started to go down the rabbit hole of homeschool and we realized like how perfectly the school day lined up with the industrial revolutionary time when the school day was basically created to babysit our kids. Well, yeah, what we know as a school day is right around when they needed a ton of workers for factory work. And they were preparing the kids at the time for factory work. I mean they were. School was doing its job, preparing you for the real world, which was going to be. The bell rings, you get on the line, the bell rings again, you take a break, you know, bell rings, lunch break. That’s how a school day looks. So they were getting well prepared. The problem is the school day hasn’t evolved yet. That’s not my what my work day looks like. So I realized like, well, how are we best preparing our children by sending them there. And I want to raise employers, not employees is the best way I can say it. So we have a ton of flexibility. There are a ton of programs out there for homeschooling and you can do, you can flip flop mid mid year if, mid semester, if the kid doesn’t like something. I’m like, I just sat around as part of one of those money Mondays and, and I brought out ChatGPT and I introduced them to AI because I think like AI is the next revolution, I believe, like industrial revolution, the Internet. AI is probably going to be that thing that they need to get a handle on so I can teach them that. I don’t think they’re doing things like that in the school day. You can have tons of flexibility. And on that socialization piece, that’s the biggest that people say to me, like, oh, aren’t you worried that they’re going to be like kind of weird and not not be able to socialize? Don’t they need that interaction with kids? And yes, they’re in A ton of sports. So they see kids plenty. But here’s the funny part. This day in social media and 8 year olds having smartphones and all that, it has set the bar so painfully low in terms of socialization that my kids look like shining stars because they’ll just look at you in the eye and talk to you. That’s it. Like, they are not exceptional communicators. They just know that when you talk to a person, you look at them and you just talk and you ask questions. And that’s how, that’s the, the volley of a conversation. You ask a question, they answer, they ask a question back, you answer that. And so many children cannot do that. I can’t tell you how many kids come into my house that are in the neighborhood, which I love. The kids play outside, they come to the house, they grab water. Not a single person that comes into my house. The kids, they don’t even acknowledge my presence. They’ll walk right by me, they grab water, they walk right by me and leave. And I’m like, do you not see that I’m right in front of you? But that’s how low the bar is set because of social media. So I laugh at the whole. Don’t you worry about your kids being socialized? Because we get the most compliments on our kids about their communication skills. Because nobody, no kids talk to each other anymore. It’s the funniest. Funniest.

[01:11:23 – 01:12:11]
Well, I agree, because it’s the same with my kids. I used to always, not, I didn’t homeschool them, but I taught them. They always had to have manners. They always had to be gracious to people. They always had, if you give a compliment, it needs to be genuine. I used to always tell them that stuff. And then I reach in, their friends would come over and no, thank you for a great meal or thanks for giving me a lift or this and that. And initially when the kids were young, I’d say, did you forget to say something? And someone go, what? Huh? Then my kids would get mad. Dad, they weren’t raised that way. Well, it doesn’t mean that they can’t act a certain way and be respectful in, in our presence. Right? Yeah, but I’ve seen that too. Kids come and go and, and no acknowledgment, no manners, no whatever. And social media is destroying that even more. People hide behind the screen instead of.

[01:12:11 – 01:12:53]
Yeah, they’re just so used to staring at a phone all the time that they don’t even understand how to communicate effectively with their peers. Let Alone like an adult or a different aged kid. So because I don’t allow smartphone, like none of my. My oldest is 13. He does not have a phone. We won’t give them to him at least until high school. If late, if not later. My children are forced to just talk, which is a while not talk. Like hey guys, we’re gonna have a sit a Kumbaya like pow wow moment. Just you’re not allowed to sit and stare at a screen. So go figure out how to be a kid. And lo and behold, they can use their imagination and create games and figure things out, go outside and get dirty.

[01:12:53 – 01:13:36]
And yeah, you’re not being a digital parent, which is good. Yeah, right here, here. Let’s all sit at the meal and you see three kids all with tablets while everybody else is eating. There’s no conversation. Mine, sorry, no technology at the table. Even as adults, I, I get upset at them and I’ll say to my adult kids, you know, I’ve made this rule years ago. Unless it’s urgent and you’re expecting something, then say, hey dad, where. What’s the doc? I’m waiting for this important text. I might pick up my phone and I do the same thing in business too. If I’m having a conversation, something’s urgent going on. Have respect for other people, but don’t feel that you’ more important than I am. Right.

[01:13:36 – 01:13:40]
Or that the message you’re giving without knowing you’re giving it, that’s the message you’re giving.

[01:13:41 – 01:13:45]
Yeah. So anyway, we’re. I’m already a couple minutes over. I apologize.

[01:13:45 – 01:13:47]
Don’t, don’t be sorry. This has been awesome.

[01:13:48 – 01:14:04]
We’re gonna have to jump forward to my last final question that I ask everybody. Matt, if you had to leave our listeners with one last piece of encouragement, something from your own life that proves it’s worth giving a heck and never giving up, what would you say?

[01:14:06 – 01:14:47]
I love the question. I knew it was coming too, and I wasn’t. I haven’t fully settled on exactly the one I will want to pull from. But here’s what I. Here’s. I think where I’m going to land on is that I firmly believe this, that we are all called and created to do something special in our lives. And I see too many people shy away from that because they don’t feel qualified and don’t feel like just they’re justified in that desire that’s deep down on their hearts. And I’ll give you an example.

[01:14:47 – 01:14:47]
So many.

[01:14:47 – 01:17:08]
Not not. I won’t derail this Conversation, I promise. So many players that I played with, baseball guys playing at the big league level like or minor league level, professional sports as an example, they are wired differently. You cannot try to chase this dream of making it to the big leagues, which is a point zero, whatever statistical odds against you, and still believe you can make that thing become true without being a little bit crazy wired. Right. You, you have to be a big dreamer, growth minded person to even for a second think like, hey, that could be me and then chase that dream. So I played with teams of those people, 90 plus percent of them settled into staying in the game of baseball not because they felt called to, but because they let their anxiety and fears take over because they didn’t think they could do anything else. I’ve done baseball my whole life, it’s what I know I probably should just stick in the game. And they settled on what I think maybe their calling could have been because they stuck with what they knew and they didn’t feel qualified to go outside of it. And I see that happen across the board in different examples in different industries all the time. But I think that if you can set aside the fear and anxiety of the unknown and instead flip that and say nobody knows what they’re stepping into when they step into it for the first time. That’s the point. You have to take that faith filled step first and then the path is revealed. That’s how it works for everybody. Whether you’re a person of faith or not. You ask any entrepreneur, any person who’s built anything meaningful, say, hey, did you see the roadmap before you started? 100% of them are going to say I had no idea, I thought I knew. And then I take a step and it was totally different than I planned. Or some may say I didn’t know, but I took the step anyway. Nobody has the roadmap. So you need to know that calling on your heart is there for a reason and you should pursue it and chase it because if you don’t, to me it’s a disobedience to who you’re created to be. And that’s the worst thing that I could think of is living a life of unfulfilled potential.

[01:17:09 – 01:19:03]
Yeah, sadly most of the, most of the world lives that way on the hamster wheel. Right. You look at this, you look at the stats, you know, between us and Canada, it’s pretty accurate. 91 out of 100 people, depending on the year it’d be 94. So between 91 and 94% of people, or in a room of 100 people. You walk in, 91 people in there are going to be dead or dead broke at 65. They won’t. They won’t even have a life of any purpose. They’re struggling. They’re just not moving forward. And it is terrible, but it is what it is. Why are the 9% succeeding? Stuff that we’ve talked about, right? Faith, drive, determination. Right. But at the end of the day, we will wrap up the show. This has been fantastic. A couple. Couple things that are. Wrap it up and we’ll close her down. I appreciate you coming on, brother. It’s been. Thank you. Yes, me too. So before we close this out, there’s one last thing I’d leave with you. It’s this. You don’t have to wait for permission to live a meaningful life. Whether you’re starting over, chasing a dream, or trying to rebuild your relationship with money, your story matters. Your courage to keep it going is the real wealth. So give a heck and give it boldly so that this was Matt bringing faith, fire, and financial clarity to the table. If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure of what wealth really means, let this episode be your reminder. It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the life you build with them. Share this episode with someone who’s ready to rethink success, take a leap, or simply hear that they’re not alone. Because in this journey called life, abundance starts. Belief. Until next time. Remember, it’s never too late to give a heck.