EntreLeadership - What Success Looks Like! with Matthew McConaughey

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Gather ‘round the fire for a very candid conversation with the Academy Award-winning actor and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey. In this winding discussion, Matthew talks about his creative process, why leaders need to take more risks, and how focusing on adding value to the lives of others will get you what you really want out of life.   entreleadership.com/podcast Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey Listen to Greenlights on Audible The EntreLeader's Guide to Hiring EntreLeadership Toolkit - Top tools to help your business can grow and thrive Schedule a call with Tim, the Producer   Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a common belief floating around out there. I've believed this. Maybe you've believed this. It's this idea that if I get to a certain level of success, things will get easier. If I have enough resources, if I've got the team, if I've got enough money, then I can just hit cruise control. From the Ramsey Network, this is the Entry Leadership Podcast, where we help business leaders grow themselves, their teams, and their profits. I'm your host, Daniel Tarty. And my guest today is Matthew McConaughey.

Of course, you guys know him as the Academy Award-winning actor, and now he's a New York Times best-selling author with his new book, Green Lights. The book's a lot of fun. It's about his life. It's about things he's learned. So it's not exactly a business book, and you may be thinking,

what's an actor going to teach me, the small business owner? Well, I've got to tell you, Matthew McConaughey's a leader. He's a visionary. He's creative. You guys are going to love this. There are so many parallels from his world and what he knows directly into your small business.

So buckle up. This is going to be a lot of fun. We had a great conversation. We started out talking about the creative process because a lot of people think there's some kind of magic. There's some kind of mystery. You just show up and creativity happens. But it doesn't. It all starts way before the moment where you put in the reps and you do the hard work.

The hard part's the preparation. I'm working to prepare so I can play on the day. Sports, art. Yeah. best athletes, it's instinctual on the day because they've done the work beforehand. The great quarterbacks are in the final drive. See the defense change after the plays are to be called. They're calm and audible.

They're not thinking, they're instinctually reading it in the context of the present situation. When I go to work as an actor, when I show up to be on set, it's time to play. I've thrown all my notes and all my preparation that will. was deliberate and intentional. And I broke a sweat on. I've thrown that out. Now it's like, let's rock and roll. Let's keep the instrument loose.

I don't want to be tight right now. I want to express. I want to screw up. I want to try and screw up. See if I can. Watch it. It'll be hard to do. I want to be able to be loose enough to take risk and not think about in the moment.

Oh, should I take this risk? Because if you do that, you're a second late. You missed it. So to be working instinctually on the day to look like, look like, look, the best compliment I can get is after any performance, people go, I mean, that's you. And so someone they go, great, that's what I've been working on to get to this moment for it to look like. Well, I mean, you just wake up and roll out of bed and do that? And you're like, sure. That's what I did.

Just woke up and did it. Well, there's a lot of work that goes into making it look like you just wake up and did it. I think that's what people miss on anything that's done with excellence. They see the finished product. They see the highlight reel, and it looks so natural. You make it look so easy. And what you're talking about is something that psychologists teach us, which is that our gut actually has a brain,

and you have to condition and train that gut to actually be a gut. Your instincts don't just show up in the moment. It's almost like you've been putting in reps, like you're going to the gym ahead of time. Well, and you go, if you're going to learn something, you know, it's trouble. me before I started taking acting lessons, which was later in my career, the first two years of taking acting lessons, of actually becoming conscious of what the heck I was doing that I had already had instincts for. It was an awkward couple of years. I'm now, if you have an instinct for doing something,

and all of a sudden you go to now, well, I want to go learn my craft. All of a sudden, you have to think about it and contextualize it and see, you know, what works, what does. You're learning what it is, how the damn engine runs. And that's these little pieces. And so it feels. feels like little pieces. So you kind of lose your instinct because you're learning something. You're going to do an intellectual process. But if you do it long enough through repetition and studying the right way and working the right way, all of a sudden it starts to sift from your head down through your heart and your gut, your loins and your body and down into your heels. And then you're not thinking about it anymore. And what seemed like, oh, my gosh, that's ingenious

new information that I never knew before soon becomes instinctual. And you look at it and you go, oh, well, of course, I know that. I don't have to study that. That's obvious. So, you know, it's, again, like athletics, you get a new defensive coordinator on him to come in for, he's got a complicated defense. He wants to reprogram all his defensive players to play on a football team. That first year, that team's probably going to get smoked because those kids are out there thinking about what they need to do. But give them a year, now they've gone through the reps.

It's instinctual. They're going to be pretty damn good if it's a good defense coordinator the next year because they're not thinking. And if you've got to think on that defense, you're a half a step late and that white outs run past you and got, you know, going to score on you. But if you don't have to think, you're using your instincts and you're on your, you're on your toes a little bit more. So, yeah, it's the preparation before. Yeah. I think that shows up a lot in business, especially business owners.

You can't really win in business big without being visionary. You've got to have a vision. You've got to tell people this is where we're going. It's what success looks like. And I don't think you have vision without being creative. Yet you'll talk to business owners like, I'm not really creative. But it seems like you have, and what you're saying is creativity is a process. There is a formula of putting in reps that don't feel very sexy to end up into what some people would say is just magic.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Look, all self-expression is not art, but all art is self-expression. I mean, it's not about, you know, in the creative world, well, if I'm just brutally honest, it's art. No, it's not. That's like saying the 13-year-old's diaries is just because of Shakespeare. You may have been being completely honest. That doesn't mean it's art, you know.

So how do you make it an art? Now, as far as visions go, you know, one is it's a tough question to answer sometime. Where is it I want to go? How far out in front of me into my future can I project? if I'm a if I'm a small business owner and I want to have my team meeting where are we going what's our mission team how far ahead can I do I think of what we want to do for the end of the year do I think about five years from now 10 years from now the aden to our eulogy are we get is this something we're going to build that we're going to I want to hand off to my children to keep running this business and grow this business or whatever I think that the creativity you have to give yourself more than one language. to get there, meaning choose your direction, your North Star, where you want to go. But then give yourself 16 lanes to swerve in to get there. Meaning, if you're going to say, we're heading east, west, we're heading north, we're heading south. Get on that. Create an auto bond with 16

lanes heading that direction. Get off on the feeder. Take an exit. Do anything you want to do, just don't do a 180 and head the other way. But swerve all over, you know, but we can sometimes get locked into, this is exactly, it has to be have to stay exactly this lane, don't swear over it all, this will get us there. It's hard to be creative in that lane. And then other times, we give ourselves no boundaries at all. So we have no structure and we get lost and we were heading a direction in a company looks up two years later and goes, what have we become?

We don't even, our value system, what I want us to be, this is not who we are as a company. And it's probably why we're not succeeding. because you don't stick to that plan and maintain that same general direction you're supposed to go. We're talking about vision and creativity. I'm curious how it works on set where you've got, I mean, you have a vision for the film and there's a script, but I imagine different directors have varying degrees of real-time creativity in the moment. And certainly as actors, I mean, you do that. You riff and you ad-lib stuff. You talked about that in your book. At times you've done it. Is it the kind of thing that over time you just get more comfortable with being creative on the fly? The earlier you are in the process, the more rigid it is and trying to stick to the script and just do it the way that it's written? No, I mean, it's not. No, I think it is the most competent directors I work with never say the word no.

They will still redirect me or another actor to give them what they want. But you want your actor to own it. You want every actor to feel like that would, they own their character. The not, it's not mine. Director, I hired you for a reason. You stole it from it. It's yours. You're the sole proprietor.

Take me. That's why I hired you. Take me. What do you want to do? What's true to you? Go. Now, then you can, as a director, you can play a little verbal ping pong and go, yeah, what if they did so-and-so-so-so-so-so.

And actors like most creators, like most people, we don't like to be told. what to do, I tell directors all the time. If I like them, which I usually do, I said, look, I'm easy to work with. Just don't tell me what to do. And if you don't tell me what to do and you listen to my ideas and go, uh-huh, uh-huh, I'm going to be real open and listen to yours. And it's not about, you know, earlier in my career, I probably did think, oh, it's about how many, can I get more of the best ideas in a row? Well, in the creative process, when you're working together. Well, it don't matter who's got most run. Whoever's got the hot end. If I've got the best, 22 the best ideas in the last week, a good director is wanting me

passing me the ball. You have the 23rd. If the director has 25 better ideas than I have in a row, I'm hoping he's hot. Give me the 26. Keep going. See if you can get over 100. I'm following. We're on fire here. So it's not about adding up. It's not a competition in that way, which is different. The great thing about the creative arts. is it's not a competition in that way. Yeah, the best directors, you know, some, look, Cohen brothers, great directors. And as I've never worked with it, but I understand they write a script and they want to be that word for word. They put together some very good movies, good stories.

I personally enjoy working with directors that will be open to a riff. Now, my riff, my improv is not me making something up. it's coming from the text that they gave me. It's inspired by that. So again, it's in that lane. It's in that general direction. I'm just picking another lane in the direction that the director wants to take the film.

Yeah, but I think there's so many parallels in business. I mean, you got a team member who, yes, you have a job description. You've got things you're responsible for. But how you do that job, if you're a good director, you're not going to say, no, you're going to steer and guide the energy. And I love the idea of the best idea when. I mean, sometimes the org chart gets in the way. Sometimes the hierarchy gets in the way in a business.

And I think it's a really key leadership lesson to say, hey, look, let's slide that to the side and make sure that the creativity and the autonomy that each player has on how to do their role can actually surface up and that we're cheering for them. And we're not putting this top-down template on their creativity. Well, I'd say another thing, though, is not everybody's a creative. And that's okay, because some people, maybe it's an accountant. they're really, that's what they're really good at. Man, punch the numbers. It's math. It's science.

Add it up. That's your zone. You're great at it. Well, sometimes we say, yeah, but the creative gets the freedom. That's what I want to do. Oh, let me tell you, man, there's, there's some hardships that come with Cohen and saying, I want to be more than just a pragmatian. So I think it takes both.

Sometimes you just need, hey, I'm a great worker bee, and I love doing this, and I'm good at it. And this is my lane. and I need to do what I do well. I don't need to be creative. I don't need to be the one with the bright idea. You know what I mean? I need to just sit here and cap my head down and do what I do well because that helps somebody else who maybe is a creative to do it. So I think we have a tendency to say, oh, well, we all want to be creative.

We're all artists. Well, that's an argument. No, I agree. I think there are bents towards creativity and you certainly don't want your accountant being creative. Like, please don't reinvent this. There's a way that it's done. Don't need to be right ideas, please. Yet I would say each business needs to have, it needs to have creativity represented in that

business to move forward, to have a vision, to be creating and producing new things. So what would you say to that business owner who goes, I'm not creative, yet I have a responsibility to steward creativity or to bring creativity into our organization so that that's not just a function of my lack of creativity as the owner? Right. And there are business owners that are like that, that are like, look, I'm the CEO. So please, I'm hiring you to come help me write the story. Let me tell you what I want to do.

Let me tell you who I'm not, who are not. And that'll lead to who we are and help me create my story. Because we're all writing a story. Every business is writing a story. Every individual is writing a story. We're all writing a story. Every creative there is a story. So what's the story we're going to tell?

Is that person, does the CEO, does the owner hire a visionary? and then should that visionary actually be the chairman? Not necessarily. Maybe there's just the griot. Maybe they're just the storyteller. Maybe they're the one that says, I'm actually by listening to you, can tell your story better than you can tell it

because you're the subject. And I have an objective view. And I'm hearing what you're saying. And I'm hearing who you are and where you want to go. So let me write this story because that's maybe my talent. That doesn't mean that that CEO should be like, oh my gosh, but they wrote the story. I don't have ownership of this anymore.

Maybe I, no, no, no, no, no. It doesn't mean that. It's two different lanes. Again, I'll go back. I mean, it's always a good process to do that projection to try and go, how far forward can we go? If I'm going to look back at my company five years from now, 10 years from now, what is it I want and what is my definition of success for this company? Is it more money? Is it a B-Corp? Is it the happiest workforce that really loves coming to work? Is it that I just want to make enough to pay my bills and look forward to. to come to work on Monday morning. Maybe that's it. But define what that is, and that'll help start to say

what you're, define your values. You start to tell the story. It's almost like you can't, you can't start telling the story until you have the purpose clearly defined. You have to have some sense of this is the why. Before we get it to, here's the narrative that goes with that. Sure. And even off, that's what I mean when I write in the book about conservative, very liberal like, define the why. Give yourself, that'll look, that'll give you the boundaries to your freedom. that's not going to hamper you. It's going to make you help you work right and work smartly instead of spending time, which I have to watch for myself even to this day.

I want to take too many things on. All of a sudden look and I'm going, man, I got a bunch of campfires going, but I don't have, where's Valhalla? You know, I'm throwing a little sticks in each one. I don't want to throw some wood on. I don't throw some logs on fewer fires rather than have too many little bitty campfires. that. I'm curious, what are your filters? When you look up and you go, I've got too many fires, what do you come back to to sort out how you're going to focus and kind of reprioritize?

Well, it's different now. It's changing now. I'm customizing it more now, which I suppose comes with age and success. And I'm trying to make legacy choices now, meaning, well, if I get involved with that, is that something that I've put my time into that not only do I want to be and hopefully it's grown by the time I die, but is it something that I will have handed off the baton to my children or somebody else to actually keep it alive after I'm gone? So I'm trying to make longer term choices for what I get involved in. Sure, I'm doing less one-offs now.

Sure, I'll go do a one-off if it's going to go, boy, that's really good pay. And I could invest that money in this minister of culture value system. I might want a campaign. Yep, I'll do that because it doesn't take up much of my time. But I want to do things that I'm going, as I said earlier, I don't want to, I don't want things on my desk that I don't look forward to getting into on Monday morning. I had this happen to me 15 years ago when I had a actor. I had a production company. I had five people on my staff. I had a music label. I had two artists I was producing. and I'm at my desk, phone rings, the number comes up, I see it's the number from my office.

My production company, my office where I'm paying the rent and five people's salary. And I went to pick up the phone and I saw the number and my hand paused mid-reach. And I remember going, actually looking at my hand going, what did you just do? Why did you? And I went, you don't want to pick up the phone call from your office that you're paying the salaries that you're paying the rent. I didn't answer the phone. I didn't until quit ringing. I called my lawyer, picked up the phone, call my lawyer, I said, I'm shutting the production company.

I'm shutting the music label. I got six things on my desk. I feel like I'm making C pluses and all of them. I want to get rid of two, have four so I can make A's and four instead of season three, season six. So I cleared that desk. And I still have to watch that today. All of a sudden, I'll have 12 things on the desk and go, okay, which one of these are long-term things that I'm going to continue to work on that I look forward? Right.

enough that to one-off, I'm done. Don't you think that's part of the curse of, I'm also creative. It's my sandbox is more in the entrepreneur business space of ideas that we're going to launch this and sell that. But I have so many freaking ideas and I overwhelm my team and we're going to go this direction. And so I have the bent of creative vision and everybody's like, you're awesome at vision, you're awesome at create. But then I also overwhelm myself and everybody else with just all the distractions.

I feel like that's the double-edged sword, right? That is part of the double-edged sword of what I was saying earlier about. If you are a practitioner, there's assets to that. There's some headaches with come with seeing art and everything, seeing a possible angle and everything. Oh, but maybe this could all of a sudden you could find yourself in the damn weeds, man, need more than 24 hours a day and they're not giving them. So, yeah, it is. It's part of the blessing and the curse.

I got that line in the book, what is it? man, what is it? Obsessed with ideas need to be starved. Man obsessed with truths need to be fed. You know, where idea, idea of people. Got an idea. Got an idea. Got an idea.

I mean, I try and usually wait and see something that I'll wake up at two in the morning going, this is a home run. I'm following through on this. I usually let it keep it on my desk, look at it each day and just see if over the next two weeks, have I added on to that? naturally, instinctually, if I started to build that, or am I just still looking at that and going, yeah, I'm not sure what that is, but I'll just kind of keep going. And if it takes a couple weeks and I'm just still kind of looking, I'm not sure what that is,

I'll go, okay, it didn't pass the test. It's like a barnacle that's just kind of been latched on. It's just hanging around. It may be good on its own, but let's go log that because I don't know how to utilize that in the funnel of the vision of where I'm going, that I'm going to look forward to it. I don't know how to make it useful, applicable. you talk about logging that i am fascinated by how discipline you've been through the years to journal and actually keep notes and keep up with things i mean so much of what is in the book is you going

back through your journals a lot of people don't do that i i struggle with it i've got hot streaks and then i've got times i just it's you know kind of out of sight out of mind but i find that when i do it's really powerful um when did you link up this is something i'm going to do no matter what um Well, I started off doing it because I thought it was a good thing to do, and I was trying to get to know myself better. And I was tired of having a great, having something that I thought would be a great idea, not writing it down, thinking I'm going to remember it, and I'll write it down when I get home, and then getting home and going,

damn it, I forgot that. So I started writing things down. And now it then it's become just, it's become a habit of mine. I mean, I write, I have to tell people, all the time. I'm at dinner. We're hanging out and I pick up my phone. I start writing. I'll let them not. I'm actually writing myself. It's based on this conversation. I'm not writing something right now. I'm not being rude. And then I'll write something down so I can, because I'll hear something. Say if we had in this conversation, if you said something to me and I said,

I'm writing it down. And I say, look, I'm writing down this line. And then I show it to you and go, is that what you said? And if you go, yeah, this is what I said. And then I'll go, okay, then I'm going to write your name to it. And if I'm going to use this, I'll foot. note you if you're cool with that because I want to take that idea and tonight or tomorrow I'm going to unpack that and then I'm going to say let me take that approach that POV into life and see what kind of response I get see what kind of feedback I get from it. So I'm constantly, I don't necessarily say Matthew 2 to 3 p.m. go writing a journal. No, I'm not a guy who's like, I'll go think about it. So it's just on the fly. Like what?

Whatever's coming to you. It's called in live, special 24-7, jot it down, and then about once a month, go back and look through the 90 entries that I had over the last 30 days and see what kind of categories did they fall into. Do I have central themes coming out? Have I been listening and getting turned on by than somebody said or something somebody did that are connected that have central themes? And usually there are, which was the process of writing the book. It was 36 years of diaries. the general categories that came out of that were a big stack of stories, a big stack of people, places, prescribes, poems, prayers, and bumper stickers.

And then from those stacks, I said, well, let me see if there's a central lineage in these, which became green lines. So, you know, I'll, you know, and the next, I'm working on what the next book will be, and I'll look over the last two years of notes to see, is it crystallization, of things that I introduced in Greenlights. Is it something completely different? I'll find out when I take the time to go look at it. The book's fantastic.

I listen to it on Audible, which I loved because you narrate and you get into the story, especially when you're in Australia and you're doing the Australian accents. It's fantastic. I can think of one other book where I've been listening and I'm walking along and I'm by myself and I laugh out loud. Like you usually don't laugh out loud when you buy yourself. But this one, man, I mean, just the hooks and the stories and the dead bird that your dad resuscitated. I mean, I thought I was going to fall over walking

through my neighborhood listening to that story. It's just outrageous. But I found the book, I mean, you've got all these anecdotes. You mentioned bumper stickers and principles. And it was really fun to get to know Matthew McConaughey, the person, not the person who's playing a role in a movie. And I think it's rare to have that coming from Hollywood because we're all used to seeing actors. Oh, I love this actor. No, you really love the version of what they played in that role. You probably don't really know them. Do you feel like you got to expose who you are to America through this book? Absolutely.

And that was one of the great joys of it. And now that's part of what's giving me great courage and freedom right now. I laid it out there. And I'm looking at all of it with an optimistic smile, even the stuff that you're like, oh, my God. You know, or, oh, you poor baby. I've had people come up. I'm so sorry. I'm like, don't apologize.

No. That was not a horror story. On paper, the facts of what I told you may have been a horror story, but did you see what I got from it? And I didn't delusional, optimistically, try and make lemonade out of lemons. I actually, this happened. There was fortune that came out of this foible, so to speak. So I got to lay it out there. I've now, we all have a gap between who we are, what we show people who we are, and how people receive who we are.

I've just write the book. I got to close those gaps. What has been the most unexpected reaction since writing the book? It's been quite a few. One good friend of mine said, man, I love the book and I especially love what it's not. What do you mean? And they go, it's absolutely not a tell-all at all. I mean, it's not, I'm not telling any stories out of class, out of school, nor did I

intend to nor what I, people that know me well knew I, that wouldn't what I would do. So if you're going to it for a Hollywood book to find out what's going on behind bedroom doors. It's not gossip. It's not. It's not. Really, it's your story. It's your life. So, you know, I think the, the greatest thing, the most pleasurable thing for me is that, and I had this hunch, this is my hope in writing it. Because in writing, I started to realize, I think, you know what, the more personal you're getting McConaughey, the more translatable it'll be to more amount of people. And to have, to be able to talk about this book now for the thousandth time, every conversation is specifically different to the person who in some way the book translated to them subjectively.

So I'll do this for as long as somebody wants to talk about it because it's a different conversation. It may be about the same subjects have been brought up hundreds of times, but they meant different specific things to the person I'm talking to in their own lives every time. And so that's kept it. A lot, fresh and fun. It's been a blast to read. It's been a blast to talk with friends and colleagues who are also reading it. I think one of the biggest things I've heard is just the mad respect for a guy who many of your contemporaries right now in the year of COVID have just kind of been on the beach. And everybody understands. that because Hollywood's been shut down. You didn't use this as the year to just take this big long,

I'm going to take a year off. I mean, you said, okay, I still got something to produce my normal format, the normal medium I use a film. That's not an option. Let's go put a book out there. And it's almost unheard. And there's plenty of actors that have put out books with a ghost writer. It's a memoir that's kind of your classics. This is really your art. And I think that's pretty distinct. Well, you know, I got a great blessing came my way early on. I did not have the courage, one, to go write a book, even with a ghost writer for 15 years, even though I dared myself daily. Never had the courage to do it.

And then once I did, I did have a ghost writer. I met with them one time. Really? Yep. And he worked for the New York Times. The New York Times came up with the policy that said they can't have any of the writers working on any kind of celebrity memoir. He got pulled from the project.

As I opened my mouth after I got that news to my wife to say, yeah, so I think I need to find another go. I stopped. And she didn't say a word and looked at me and I went, I know. I got to go write it. It hit me right there. I was like, ah, that's what this gift was. It's on you, Matthew. Go away.

And then she said, like, yeah, pack it up, get out of here and don't come back to you got something. And so I went away and it was getting highly intimidated. idea. One, I'm not nostalgic. I'm not one for looking back. And now I'm going to go back and go off in a solitary confinement with 36 years of writings about my 50 years in this life and I'm stuck with who. Me and me only in my last 50 years. Oh, I said, you know, this is going to be embarrassing. Yes, it was. This is going to have some shame. Yes, I did. I'm going to feel guilty. Sure. I'm going to have times where I was like going to be just cringe worthy at how arrogant I may have been.

And all those things happen. At the same time, so many of the things I thought I'd be embarrassed about, I laughed at, some of the things I thought would be ashamed about, I ended up saying, oh, well, you've already turned the page on that or forgiving yourself.

And then even the things that I was like, you weren't arrogant, SOB at that time in your life, a little Mr. Know-it-all. But out of that, I noticed in the chronology of the story, immediately after those, soon after those times where I was very arrogant in my journals

about having things figured out and, you know, condescending other people and things. Soon after those times, I'd get humiliated. And I realized that if I wouldn't have been the arrogant little prick, I wouldn't have had the confidence to put myself in the position to get humiliated. It's funny here in hindsight, you can see the links between what otherwise might feel like an isolated experience. Well, when you look back, it's all the science. You know, connect all the dots. where at the time you're like, I have no idea why this fortune or disruption came into my life.

But boy, when you start connecting them, it all adds up. But it sounds like the bookwriting process for you was really cathartic, therapeutic in a way. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, do you feel like you got some stuff out that was dormant or they had been bottled up? No, I didn't feel like I got it out because I've told these stories around campfires at dinner tables. I've done the spoken word. I've performed them. My family knows them.

I didn't feel like, oh, I got to get it off my chest that this happened to me. I didn't feel like, oh, it's time I let the world know this so I can catch my breath. I didn't never feel like that. But I think just coming to reality and having a look in the eye, I didn't know I've taken this meeting. I was surprised. I laughed my ass off right and just going. damn, you have taken some wild-ass risks that you didn't even, I didn't even think I'd taken that many risks.

I'm like, you've done some pretty wild stuff. Hey, you really have tried to pull off some things and pulled off a lot of things that, yeah, damn. I don't know if I'd have pulled, you know, even some things I go, oh, you pulled some things off in your younger years, but I'm glad you didn't know what you know now because you wouldn't have tried to pull that off. You're at certain times, you know? And then there's certain times where I'm like, who, you got lucky on that one, man.

You know, I've woken up with many a nightmare going like, from something I got away with in a story in the book that I'm like, oh, yeah, you survived that when you actually came out of that one. Damn, I wouldn't do that again if I was back there, you know. It strikes me that you've figured out a way to stay hungry. I understand being hungry before you've made it or even the early stages of making it because you're making money and you're growing and your name's getting out there. I have a lot more respect for somebody that can outlast the one-hit wonder syndrome and is really still going.

How hard is it to stay hungry and put something out like this? I mean, this took a lot of work. You had to curate a lot of things. I know you said you've already told all the stories, but I mean, there's a bunch of resistance, even in a process like this. At your stage, you didn't have to write the book, but you doubled down. for me. I mean, it was a dare to myself and saying, hey, quit talking about it, quit, quit taking, quit copping out saying like, yeah, you'll die and maybe Camillo look through there and see if there's something worthy of sharing. I was like, what is that martyrdom crap? What are you doing, man? I don't know if something's in there worth sharing or not, but let's go find out. Look, the staying hungry part, it can be hard, but I very quickly complacent. I have a pretty short threshold for, complacency getting comfortable with me because I immediately tell myself who do you think you are getting complacent. That's an arrogant idea to think about this. We're not even, humans aren't

even tap it, just tapping into the 11th percent. What do you, you know, you, I like to use this now. You know, yeah, you think, you know, the old Icarus flying too close to the sun, the wax is going to melt on my wings. Who do you think you are thinking it's getting hot? You ain't even close, boy, telling myself that. You know what I mean? It's still 50 degrees. Your wings ain't close to melt. You ain't that close to the sun.

I mean, and the idea that I just don't, yeah, I've achieved some things, but they're all, I've never felt like, tada. And any time I did feel like tada, are those times where I was saying to the arrogant one who got humiliated soon. So I'm going, you know, I talk about it, the book, roofs a man-made thing. I'm like, who the hell are I thinking to get complacent? Now, does that mean me now at 51, I need to find a bunch of new things to do? No, a lot of my complacency needs to be gone because I've built things, family, a career that I'm like, it's not about new things. It's about spreading these roots wider and deeper.

It's about keeping, maintaining the investments that I have. while still being open to things that, as we talked about earlier, that are funneled into the same general direction where I'm going. I don't, I'm not ready to, I've built enough now and I've got enough to take care of in 24 hours a day where I'm not looking for an aberration of a thing to do. Now, writing a book, you could say, well, that's an aberration from your, from your acting life. Well, if anything, it's actually, I just got more selfish. No, I mean, I see how it's putting those roots deeper.

I mean, and you've talked before in this conversation about the idea of a story for your life. and this idea of legacy. It seems like legacy is one of those filters for, okay, at midlife, the things I'm going to do going forward are going to be significantly shaped by what I want my legacy to be. I mean, I think that's a natural way to look at it at the stage that we're at in kind of midlife. I mean, I think so. I just started, you know, that idea about considering what your eulogy is going to be and how we're going to be introduced when we're gone is only something that I started thinking about a couple of years. ago. I was probably like a lot of people are. They think thinking about, and I don't know why, but we think about death as this morose thing that. Oh, no, I don't want to do. I don't want to think

about that. Knock on wood. I'm always like, yeah. Like, what do you mean? It's the one thing we can guarantee. And actually, to sit in that spot doesn't make you contract in life. It doesn't make you go, oh, my gosh, it's all for nothing. It makes you go, oh, here we go. It's all for everything. Let's get it on. I think my whole life I've heard this idea of legacy and thinking about that. It wasn't until I lost my dad within the last year. And that's when it hit me. Like, this really happens. Like, you're really going to be here someday.

I'm curious, you talk about losing your dad. How much did that impact your perspective on this stuff and the way that you live as a result? Well, that happened to me. I think it was 22, 28, 28. So I was 22, I think around that age. It was early. As you see, I've made many, I've found many things, learned a lot, lost what I learned, had to recalibrate, screwed up.

I didn't have it all figured out after he moved on. But it was a very seminal moment of sobering me up as a young man. And I don't mean sobering up from a drink or something like, I mean, just sobering up how I looked at the world, taking courage to say, hey, okay, your dad just moved on. You no longer have that crutch to rely on. that has your back that's bigger and stronger than government or law that's gone man that's gone matthew you don't look over your shoulder that safety net's not there all these things you've been talking about yeah i'm going to do that one day let's go look look at square in the eye go try out go

fail more what do you mean what would you not risk it for you see you know you lose your father i bet this year you probably take there are things you probably had a little let you have less reverence for mortally than you ever did sure i mean it it shakes your floor where you're all of a sudden you have courage to walk room because you're like, this is nothing. I just lost my father. Right. This is nothing. Bring it on. Well, you're feeling about other people's opinion. I mean, you suddenly realize how much you were performing to impress other people or to try to match what you perceive as their expectation. And you just don't give a damn anymore because you're going, and you talk about taking risk and going for it and not asking for permission.

I want to drill on this because I just think it's. beautiful, especially small business owners. There's still this temptation, even though you have your own business, to ask permission from society, from your team members, from the marketplace. I think this is a key thing. We got to really remember, like, it's not our job to be asking permission all the time. Otherwise, we're not entrepreneurs. We're not building something new if we're always asking permission. No. And if you're asking permission as an entrepreneur, The powers that be, know you're bluffing. I think it's that way with parents.

I think it's also that way with business in America. You're raised, you brought up as an American, you're brought up in your family to stick to the rules inside these guidelines. And if you do that, you'll work your way up the ladder and be part of the cock. Okay, that can work. What's wrong with that? what does our parents really want to see? What does America really want to see?

They really want to see that young child, that young man, that young daughter or that young entrepreneur, break out of the mold and go, this is what I'm doing. And I'm not asking for your permission. But you get one chance at that. And the powers that be, whether it's your person, parents or whether it's a government, if you're kind of going, I think I want to, as soon as as they hear that pause, they'll slam you back, right back in your guidelines. Uh-uh. Didn't mean it. Didn't mean it. Uh-uh. And so while we say stay within the lines, when entrepreneurs really break

out, when I told my dad, I want to go to film school and not law school, he heard me in the tone of my voice saying, I'm not going my expected way anymore, dad. And yes, I'm asking you, but you can tell by I'm not asking you permission. He loved it. He's like, yes, that's what I was raised you for. Steve Jobs, entrepreneurs, go, I'm going my own way. The government goes, you can't do that. I wasn't asking.

And he does it, and you go like, the world goes, bravo. So it's an initiation process that a ride a passage is to take your courage to go, I'm going my own way. Now, that does not count for all tyrants. And I don't know, because you can't just say, well, I'm going to go and it's going to harm a bunch of people. No, though. No, but you're not talking about being. You're not talking about being unethical or hurting people.

But I think it's like permission for approval and permission that this is the way the world works. Don't buck the system. I mean, I can relate. I've been with Ramsey for 17 years and I'm at an executive level on the operating board. I'm extremely well compensated. And everybody would go, this guy's successful. And so I don't have my own business, but I can relate to the idea of success can get in your way. Golden Handcuff Syndrome is real.

There's times I'm tempted to say something in the board. boardroom and I second guess and I go, ah, that's not going to be popular. Just settle in. Don't rock the boat. I mean, we all at some level deal with the not wanting to lose our success and the fear of losing our success keeps us from really going for it. Yeah, for sure. I mean, look, I am not comfortable working from a protectionist stance. I like being, but I've tried to create a life myself where I can be a free agent. I actually try to watch my affiliations because with affiliations come the suppression of those risky ideas a lot of times to rock that boat. And look, do I measure risk versus reward all the time? You damn right, I do.

I'm not going to be bullish with what I've built. I'm not going to give everyone the key to what I've got and come on and go, yeah, I trust you all to play fair. But that's not going to happen either because there are those tyrants out there. But I think there's, look, it's also measuring good fear and bad fear, man. I mean, there's a good fear when you're like, I'm not sure. I'm going into the unknown. But I really believe in my idea and I think it's scalable. And my close friends, they hear it and they add on to it and they see how we could build this narrative.

Well, go for that good fear. Now, bad fear, the one you don't want to make a move on is when you go, I think I got a really good idea, but the pedigree of the people I'm working with, I'm not sure if they're up to speed. They really don't get it. I mean, I'm not sure if they're committed. But maybe I'll just jump off and try. No, watch it. Maybe you ought to stop and get your ducks in a row more and be more confident and secure with what you're going to go marching into the new world order with.

So I'm always trying to measure those. And again, as creative, like you were talking about yourself. I think I can make anything work. And it's like, whoa, hang on, man. You know, sometimes you go, no, that's not for me. I don't deem that excellent. No, I disagree with that. That goes against my values.

Yeah, but I think I could, you know, pick your fights. You know what I mean? So measure the risk or so. Because, again, we do only have 24 hours in a day last at Jack. I think you said something key on if you've got an idea and your close friends are kind of breathing life into it. I think it's so vital to have close friends who you know are not going to just tell you, yeah, because you're awesome and successful. I imagine you deal with this, people you work with, you're Matthew McConaughey, and probably a lot of people just say,

yes, whatever you want, because they can't imagine challenging somebody with your stature and what you've achieved. The same thing happens for business owners. Everybody on your team, all of a sudden, you can get into this emperor has no clothes thing, and you're missing out on the best creativity because people aren't being honest. But if you have close friends who are going to be honest with you, you can trust that they're going to slow you down when you need to. You can also trust when they say, hey, go for it in spite of the fact that everybody in the system has lost their mind

and they don't see what you see. Say more about how, I mean, I know you have close friends. How do you get people around you that are really just your friends because you're friends and not because you're famous and successful, but they're actually just your posse. This is your people. Well, I discuss things with different people. I try to win arguments.

I try to, the best I can, take the alternative side and live and tell myself, now I'm going to play the character that wants to blow this idea and say this idea is foolish you have, McConaughey. And let me argue. So I'll socratically, you know, argue with myself on ideas and live as the naysayer of a good idea I've got. I don't want it to be 50-50, meaning like 50% of the time you're saying, yeah, it's a great idea.

Let's go for it. And 50% of the time we're arguing with you. No, that either means my ideas aren't good enough or I don't have the right people working for me with me. I want it to be, I don't want to be that much of a democracy. I want to be like, no, I'm real clear on this. Now, your rebuttal of my theory and what I'm pushing to me usually means I have. I haven't explained it well enough or I haven't formulated it well enough for you to get it. So that's the pushback that I like in my life.

It's going to go like my wife. Every movie I'm going to do. I can be highly passionate, but she doesn't go until I get her to go, ah, I get it. Oh, yeah. It's not necessarily, I didn't, it wasn't the argument for not doing it. It's that I wasn't, I wasn't convincing her that I hadn't really convinced myself. I was still trying to convince myself in telling her. Is it because she's close enough to you that she's just,

she's just not impressed with all the trappings of what goes with being Matthew May. I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, sure. I mean, that's if we wouldn't, we wouldn't work as a relationship.

Again, I talk about that, but be less impressed, more involved. If she had me and my opinions on some, uh, unreachable impressionalist pedestal, we wouldn't.

we wouldn't probably be together now, you know. And she's honored with what I do, but she knows me well. She knows me well. And so I can come in and lay down the mathematics of why a new endeavor may be something I want to do. But she's going to come in from the gut under me and go, I know you well enough. I know you can make that work. But is that something, again, that you're going to look forward to every Monday morning the rest of your life?

Are you going to be honored with that, proud of that? or you just chasing another wild idea. Yeah. You know, so it's a lot about, and I found this with the writing the book, working with editors. They'd come back and go, oh, my gosh, this story doesn't work. And I would find out, at first I was like, well, then you don't get the, you don't get what I'm writing.

But what it really meant most of the time, 80% of the time, was I didn't write it well enough. It's so tempting to want to defend what is so clear in our mind. and it's almost like we feel attacked when somebody doesn't get it. And there's a tremendous amount of maturity in that moment to go, the fact that you don't get it means that I got to level up. I got to figure out who am I not being or what have I not produced that's causing you to feel confused? How am I not communicating my idea?

Or have you just exposed a hole? And if I can't write my way out of it, if I can't come up with something concrete enough for you to go, now I go, oh, yeah, I got that. Then maybe it's not an idea. worth pursuing. But usually, and I, excuse me, I'm happiest when this is a case, it's the fact that, oh, he didn't write it well enough.

Oh, you don't have a concrete. Your idea is not concrete enough. It's not bulletproof enough. You can't answer that question. Now, what I have to watch is, you know, a lot of my best ideas are coming on when I'm in the flow. We're flowing, man. So if you're coming at me, and all of a sudden, well, wait a minute, I'm going,

why would you interrupt the flow right now? We're fling. I'm going on, be affirmative. I do like when people go. with the affirmative longer while I'm generating an idea before they start the question. I'm going, no, not, not yet. Because it breaks the flow. I mean, you're in a totally different headspace if you do that.

Remember I said earlier, best directors don't say no. That's right. Let's keep the flow going. And if you say in the affirmative, how could this work? I want, I like to and I want to work with people that are going like, I'm trying to see what you're talking about. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. And then let's walk that dog to where we all go, wow.

Yeah. Now let's sit down and go, now let's shoot holes in it. Now let's see if we can rip it down, if we can tear that castle to the floor. Or does it still hold? Now let's project all of the resistance we're going to face. Now let's look at our competition. Now let's see that someone else has a similar idea that's successful or where it didn't work and what can we learn. So now let's try to shoot holes in it.

But I need the affirmative for a longer amount of time than I think some people do. I want the affirmative. Do you coach people? You know, it's like you can't assume everybody's going to get that that's how you work. And especially if you're a business owner, you've got a team. But it's like you've got to coach people that, hey, this is how I work best. I'm curious about your process on set or directors. I mean, you told that director, hey, I'm easy to work with.

Just don't tell me what to do. But, I mean, there's a responsibility that's on us a little bit to help people out with this is what's going to work well for me. You're right. And I know I can do a better job at that. because I, like so many of us, you know, you've got an idea going over it. It's in your mind, whether you're directly thinking about it. You've been working on it. And then when you go pitch somebody, you forget, it's their first time.

And you just gave them the cliff notes, but you wrote the book. And so when they come back, they go, wait a man, but what happened right there? You're like, what do you, come on? What do you mean? I mean, don't you get it? And so I have to watch that as well to go, slow down. Remember, this has been in your head and heart for weeks, months, and now you're pitching it for the first time, and you expect people to understand it and get on the train, and it's not necessarily fair. So I do assume that sometimes where I could be better at going.

Let me unpack where this started, if you got the time to hear it. Tell you what I formulated. Tell you what I've been thinking about and how I got to hear. And usually I find that does help quite a bit to just lay the groundwork, let the person kind of get up to speed before you lay the, the, the Cliff Notes version on them or the elevator pitch. You know what I mean? It's really a misguided notion that you could pitch something in an elevator. I mean, it takes time for somebody.

You're talking about building an on-ramp so they can get up to your idea. And that whole like, let me pitch you. And then here's my business card. And they're going to call with a million dollars in the next day. Like, that just doesn't happen. No, that doesn't happen. But you can, I do think there's great value in distilling something down to what is your 30-second hour.

I agree. Yeah. Well, get, come on, what's your, what's your at. I got 30 seconds. Talk to me. Get, hook me. You know, I think there's something to salesmanship with, with having an ad, with having that proverbial bumper sticker, with having that flag.

And you explain what the pole is and you define what the trunk of the tree is in the elevator. And if you want to get into it more, I'll then go define all the branches. You know, but I do think, I mean, I try to do that with films I do. Can I pitch you a film with 30? seconds. How can I tell the R-rated, how can I explain true detective to my kids? They're not, they're 10 years old. I can't tell, they can't watch you. I can't really tell them. So do I make it in a parable form where they go, oh, cool. Can I tell it to my wife differently? Can I tell it to my mom who's 89? Can I tell my pastor in church a way that he loves the story,

where I can tell my friend at 2 a.m. after we've had a bunch of drinks. It's a different way of telling to where you go, how's that audience hear it and goes, oh, yeah. And if you can get a yeah, that sounds great. Yes, that sounds cool from all those different audiences, ages, places, times, tired, drunk, sober. It's almost like you're on an island and you have to build a bridge to their continent. Like you've got to get to where they are. You can't get everybody to come to where you're at. it strikes me that you're pretty strong in sales. I mean, you're persuasive. You're energetic for sure.

And I know it happened earlier in your career, but how often do you pitch and it gets rejected? And then what do you do after that to evaluate the process of the pitch? Well, usually my first reaction is if they say no. My first reaction is, well, they don't get it. glad they didn't think yeah because that had been a hell working with them because they'd never got it. So true. And then after I, you know, come off of that, if I'm, if I deem maybe that wasn't correct,

I'm back to what I was saying earlier. Oh, maybe I didn't write it right. Maybe I didn't sell it right. I don't lose vigor and vitality and belief in the original idea. but if that crosses me as an absolute truth, I know it is. I may never achieve it. I may not get around to realizing it and creating it and letting it become a tangible thing, but I know there's something there.

So that's part of what I talked about staying hungry. I'm staying hungry on 100 ideas of going like, I know there's something there. I'm not giving up on the original idea. I've just still got to figure out, well, how do I realize it? How do I add on to it? How do I pitch it in a way? How do I talk to the right people to go, oh, this person could help with that? This is actually what this could be. This could be a business. This could be a nonprofit. This could be entertainment. This could be educational. This could be inspiring. This could be like all those things. I don't ever lose belief in the original idea because when that crossed me, I know there's a nugget of truth. I know it's true.

There are some people who spend their whole life trying to meet a hole in, in their psyche or their heart, and they're chasing success, and then they get a trophy, and then they need to get a bigger trophy, and they need to get a bigger trophy, and their entire life, they never wake up. Right.

And I think we all start that way. We all have something that we're trying to build our own empire because there's something that we're compensating for, we're trying to figure out, do we have what it takes? And then there are some people who wake up and they shift to a life of, all right, I'm fine. Now, how do I add value? How do I make a contribution? How do I help other people? It's very clear to me that you've made that shift. You're all about, I mean, you know, I'm working on it.

Well, you're doing it. I mean, it's in your book. It's in the vulnerability and how you tell your stories. It's in the humility that you have. It's clear that you're not in. And of course, we all want to continue to grow and be more successful and we have our own needs that we're trying to meet. But I really have the sense that you're wanting to make a contribution for your family for your community, the stuff that you're doing at UT Austin. I mean, it's just, it's very apparent that you want to make an impact more than just make the next trophy on the wall. When did you get to that point? Was there a moment? There was a defining moment, or has this just been kind of an evolution? Was it a season? I've always, instinctually, and that's what's in

the book. The book is, full of stuff that comes to me at 2 in the morning. It's what I do. It's how my mind works when my mind can do whatever it wants. It's not stuff from a classroom. It's not stuff I went to study. It's not a film set that I said, oh, now I'm going to do this thing. It's how I try to see my engagement and relationship with the world around me with people. Successful relationships, successful relationships with my past, successful relationships with our future or successful relationships with people, businesses, goals. and I've just been trying to find, write down things,

hopefully sharing the book that are, there's a, I believe there's a science to satisfaction. I don't think, again, ever find the answer, and that's the point. Look, I want to impact, I believe in people. I don't know how to make a collective change, and it relaxes the heck out of me to go, okay, you don't have to know how to make collective change.

Oh, thank goodness. But, boy, I believe in the power of the human spirit and mind and heart. And I believe that I can have a hand in helping us understand that the real music of life is that selfish and selfless are not contradictions. Responsibility and freedom are not. budding heads. Doing for someone else today pays us selfishly back tomorrow. Doing for ourselves now can be what's best for the most amount of the other, most amount of people. Yeah. Those two are making money for profit does not mean you can't do good. You can't make good change. You can't fill a souls account and a bank account at the same time.

I like that. Now, we're going to feel, I can see, you know, we can preach about filling the souls account. But in today's world, until you're filling that bank account, everyone's just going to go, yeah, yeah, great idea. Love it. Yeah, bye. You better fill the damn bank account.

So let's own up to that and not make those to a contradiction and go, okay. I think it's one of the coolest things business owners can do. I mean, if you have a purpose and you want to make an impact in the world and you realize, oh, it takes resources to advance that purpose. It takes troops on the ground. Who's going to feed those troops? How do we get the troops to the point of need? Oh, well, we have to have a business and we have to have a profit and we have to use that for the greater good. You know, it's a bad stigma that's gotten out there that somehow capitalism is greedy.

The stuff that makes the headlines is the stories where capitalism was abused and it was greedy, right? But so many small business owners, men and women listen to this podcast, they've got hearts of gold. And they're investing so much of their profit back into the business to provide more jobs or into the community that they're serving and helping. And I really think they are a key to healing this country and getting us back on track. I hear you. I mean, I would say, and I've got very smart people that say, I don't necessarily agree with you, but I'll throw it out there anyway. because, again, this may be one of those ideas I still need to add on to to have more people agree with it. But what's this year shown us?

No trust in leadership. What do we believe in? We thought the people at the top hoped, kind of relied past we thought they knew what they were talking about. I never in my life have felt more like, oh, my gosh, on certain subjects at certain times this year, I feel like I'm on the front line of the knowledge because I was talking to the right people and thinking like, oh, everyone must know this and sharing things, people going,

oh, I had no idea. I'm going, you didn't? And then finding out that certain people that I trusted in, like, well, obviously they know, they were going, they didn't know. I'm like, wait a minute, how did I get this information? But not in my limited access, that was reliable in a year

where people that we look forward to that are in much more leadership positions than I'm in didn't have reliable information. I was like confounded this year and we kind of sobered up. So in that sense, I believe right now the private sector has more actually in a way power and leverage than ever before because there's more talk about breaking out of that mold we were talking about and going your own way and less of the construct of, of government telling, no, you can't. They've already defined. Those walls aren't even clear. Those boundaries are not, those fences are broken down. You know what I mean? There's the escape routes out of this, out of the lane. They're telling us to stay in all over the place now.

And it's a great time to take advantage of those for them people to sit back and go, well, the individual sector, the private sector, the small business is showing us the way. Right. More of these are individually coming out. And this is making collective change because more of them have broken out of the pasture. Well, there's two different, we actually don't disagree. We're talking about two different geographies. I mean, if you're talking about the top of our country and leadership in our country, yeah, train wreck. But if you're talking about the top of an organization, I'm thinking this guy Arlen, who's got a team of 60 people in Kansas and they manufacture steel buildings. And this guy, he's got a heart of gold. He does birthday parties for his team, barbecues for his team. He's doing outreach things in the community. Recently a team member was on sick leave and they had to be out of work for, multiple months and he just wrote a check for his mortgage and took care of him. It's people like Arlen who you're never going to hear about on Fox News or CNN that really are the glue and holding this thing together. And that's leadership. That's leadership in the trenches. It's leadership that's very low profile in the national scene, but it's actually the leadership that's causing

our country to work. I heard. And hopefully it's the kind of leadership that can hold us together right now where the bulls bucking harder than it's bucked in a long time. And hopefully it's the leadership that can keep us on that bull to get our eight seconds. You know, I mean, there's opportunity at least now for not that the Orleans will be put to the forefront and become the on the news known leaders. But look, leaders and politicians are having to redefine or redeclare. what the hell it is their own purposes now more than ever. So if you want to talk about the old proverbial drain the swamp,

well, this year, it really got, is really getting drained. We're seeing incapacity in all over places. We just saw something the other day, Congress, that you're like, what? Didn't even think that was, that was imaginable that could happen. So, yes, we can then go, oh, now I distrust certain, what I thought was a standard. of security and purpose by politics. Well, no, it's clear. Well, let me ask you this, because Arlen can't fix Congress, but there's things that Arlen and the several hundred thousand brothers and sisters he has who are listening to this right now that they can do this year, what would you encourage them with?

What would you say, hey, double down on these things, you matter, you're making a difference, what do you see for them? And what do you know that they need to hear from a guy who's doing the same thing and who's going for it and who's not settling in. Well, hopefully, look, hopefully I'm talking to and people listening are those non-tirants that believe they can succeed for themselves and help and help other people succeed as well. There's room for everybody to win blue ribbons. It's just a bunch of different. It's not the same ribbon. It's not the same race we're all going for. So if those people are, you know, good heart, yeah, there can be difference. I'm not one of these guys that say, hey, everyone needs to be the same. Uh-uh. I'm for, if it's, if you're

responsible, I'm for celebrating all the differences. But know now that you have more of a chance to lead, the people policing you, the boundaries, the barriers from you going your own way, they're busy tending to other stuff right now. It's a great time to break out of the, break out of the corral and run, man. Go and just own it. Do not ask permission. Because actually, if you ask permission now, you might find out no one's on the other end of the line. You know, they're going to go, wait, I'm busy. I've got other stuff I'm trying to deal with here. Go do your thing. Go now. The pastures have been broken out. You've got a way out. Run. Let them look up later. And when it's too late for them to say, no, I'd rather you not do that. No, that's out of your zone. No, that too big, don't be too big for your britches. Let let them look up later when you go, sorry, why you weren't looking. I was doing my deal, man. Too bad. You got you up. Well, and it's like if you're doing that with the right heart and you're adding value, I mean, who's going to say, hey, you've got to shut this down? Because look all the people you've

helped. You're talking about blue ribbons. Have you heard the metaphor of cake versus candles on opportunity? Like, if you've got the mindset that opportunity is like a piece of cake, then for my piece of cake to get bigger, yours necessarily has to get smaller, right? It It's a fixed, it's a zero-sum game. If it's like candles and we're in a dark room and I got a candle that needs to be lit and yours is lit and you light my candle, the room just got a little bit lighter and both our candles are lit. And the more people that we can light their candles collectively, the room gets lighter for everybody. And I think it's a mindset. It's how you look at opportunity.

If it's cake, you're screwed, man. But if it's candles, I mean, that's really what this country was built on. That's how our economy works. And we just got to get people to realize. I think not only realize, and again, let's talk about this, which comes first, realizing that that fills your bank account as well or and ways that it actually does. What do we value? We got an America that says, you want to succeed?

You want to be called a success? You want respect? Get rich and famous, boy. That's top two. Well, now wait a minute. And I'm speaking as a guy who is both of those. But wait a minute. That's the top two values we're teaching saying this is how you get a seat at the table.

This is how you get to the front of the line. There's a lot of burn bridges and irresponsibility that you can get from being rich and famous that we still reward. Because we're so enamored and impressed with rich and famous. because when I'm talking about integrity or how you did it. Jeez, you just did it. You pulled it off. You scammed him. You lied, cheat, and stole it?

Get here? Way to go, man. Come on. Come on. No, I don't really want to sit next to you at the table, sir. I'm not that impressed with what America's told me to be impressed with. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, more toys, retail therapy, one with the most toys wins. Oh, great.

Now, come on. That's, that's preschool stuff. So what? But that's Lord. This is a really big deal because there are a lot of people who are not rich and famous that would say those things. It's easy when you're not rich and famous to say, well, you don't need to be rich and famous. You need to do this other stuff. As someone who is both, if you could rewrite the prescription based on what you've seen, what would be those virtues you would say this is what success really should look like?

we have to watch selling our soul along the way. I've done it. It ultimately sucked, and I couldn't sleep in night and felt gross. I can also say, and I think I can honestly say this, when I've been my true self, the best I could be, the most responsible yet also freedom-loving man who didn't never, I don't,

it doesn't feel, I never liked winning at someone else's expense. I've never really felt like, I've never just been one of those people that's like, we have so many today, which is I feel better if I make you feel worse. I win if I make you, if I defeat you,

it's back to your candle thing. Those two are not, that's a, that's not long-term gratification. That's not true, success. That's looking at the competition of humanity the wrong way. Let's look at the competition I would say of capitalism the wrong way. But it's fait accompli for a lot of people. I mean, I'll get away with what I can get away with by hooker. I don't give a dick what I leave in the

wasteland. Even if you're not a believer, that's going to come back to bite you in the butt in this life. Right. That's right. And a believer would say, oh, that's going to come back to get you later, but it doesn't have long-term ROI. Yeah, no doubt. It doesn't have real residuals. Well, and it doesn't help other people, which ultimately doesn't help you, and you don't feel good about any of that at the end of the day. No, and you're not kidding. You know, 30% of Americans trust their neighbors right now? That's a tragedy. That's 30%. Really? Trust you go over there on the other side, the fence or the wall. And hey, I'm all four walls on the same. On the same. side to separate neighbors. We also make a good neighbor. I'm four. I'm four. I get that.

But to not trust your neighbor to not 30 percent. Whoa. Hang on a minute. Now then, let's go back to this. The rest of the process of how much does that mean we don't trust ourselves. Yeah. Those two reciprocate. But I mean, look, going, yeah, going forward. I mean, I've taken, I got a good work ethic. I got instilled that. I got a work ethic. instilled in me. I got, I would say, if I could tell myself at 15 years old what advice would I give myself, I'd tell myself to do more of what I just found out by writing the book I actually did a lot of, which is take risk. Yeah. Take the right risk. And don't be afraid of the failure. The failure of things today, we think that the world's going to go nan and nat and booboo.

And the world will go nan and natanatibu. But guess what? Those nanina buburs are on the sidelines, yelling nanina boobo for sidelines. That's good. The people in the game, we sit there and you think the ones that you're going to be most embarrassed about failing in front of are the ones that matter are like going. Yeah. Shot man here. God has respect. I fell down yesterday and I fell down the day before and I've got this. There we go.

I've said this before. I've gotten some successes in my life because I failed and got up and failed and got up and failed and got up. And I got the job over the guy who succeeded and won the race in the first. place because the person the power that be said wait a minute no I saw the horse that won the thing but this horse here this Bacconi kid the one that keeps losing but keeps in and the race again I want Charlie Hustle here so I know I've gotten some things just by being Charlie Hustle and then you know learn to work on maybe what I was good at and become better at my craft because it's obviously more than just hustle you got to try to we want to be good at something um but yeah I've not at some of

else's expense. I don't, I don't have anywhere in the world that I need that I go where I got to look over my shoulder by somebody that I lied, cheating, and stole from, or I did wrong, or I pulled off a deal where I got to be in anywhere in the world where I got to look up my shoulder and go, oh, I hope he's not here. And maybe that's part of what, you know, I don't stress that much about that some people tell me they do. I don't know. Well, it's apparent in your spirit. I love your heart. This has been a blast. The book is a lot of fun. I encourage people to do the audible because they can hear your fantastic voice. But also, if you have not seen the physical book full of lots of cool pictures and anecdotes and doodles and things like that,

it's not just your typical words on a page book, lots of photos, really, really good stuff. Matthew McConaughey, the book is Green Lights. I hope you write more. You mentioned doing that. And if you do, we'd love to have you back on and talk about it. I'd love to and hope I hope to write something first and then yeah definitely come back I enjoyed it could have gone for even longer all right well you're welcome back anytime thanks for what you do brother we really appreciate it I do too all right now all right guys big fun to have Matthew McConaughey on the Entry Leadership podcast I don't know about you but here's a guy who very easily could justify saying hey I've made it I'm going offline or I'm just going to do movies I love that he's getting out and he's making new things and he's helping more people. So for me, I'm a little bit convicted. I've accomplished a lot of things. I could justify hitting cruise control a little bit. Nobody would ever know, just like Matthew McConaughey, nobody would ever know, nobody would ever doubt him. But there's something in him. He said, it was a challenge to myself. And what I heard in that, the note I made is,

I have to be able to take myself seriously. It's not about impressing other people. It's not about achieving a level of success that outwardly people give you an applause and you can say, I'm going to settle in on that, I'm going to sit on my laurels. Because when you do that, you don't respect yourself. You can't take yourself seriously. And ultimately, as we talked about in the end of the conversation, it comes back to what contribution are we making. How much value can I produce in the world with my team, with my business, with my community? Guys, you're only here for a certain amount of time. What do you want to do with it? What is your legacy? When you think about the end of your life and you say, this is what I did, yeah, money will be nice,

but it's not going to be what you're talking about on your deathbed. You're going to be thinking about the stories of the lives that you impacted, the people, the relationships, what you built, who you served, and where you added value. So gut check, where are you adding value right now? Are you doing it? Do you need to level up a little bit? Do you need to shake off last year and go, hey, new day, new game, back in the hunt? it's time to do it. You can solve these problems. You can heal our country, not collectively,

but individually as business leaders, you are the solution. And to do that, you got to build a team. You guys know building a great team, it's not that easy, but it can be done if you're intentional. And intentionality starts in the hiring process. You guys have heard us preach that at Ramsey's solutions, we are maniacal. We are extremely picky. We are very very, very, very intentional to hire the right people for the job. Because when you do, it solves a lot of problems later that really never have to come up if you get the right person to start with. In fact, we're so obsessive about this. We have 12 exhaustive steps to our hiring process. And people ask all the time, what are the 12 steps? Well, we're going to make it easy for you. We're going to give them to you

absolutely free so that you can use this in your hiring process. It's the Entry Leader's Guide to Hiring. Just click on the link in the show notes. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Entry Leadership Podcast. As always, if you know somebody that would also enjoy this episode, send it to them. Thank you for sharing this episode and all the other episodes. You're the reason this podcast grows. Of course, you can watch Entree Leadership Podcast on YouTube, highlights, and full segments. Check us out over there.

And look, if you're a small business owner between about two and 200 team members, we'd like to have a live conversation with you, get some feedback on how we can improve the show and ask you a few questions. If you want to help us out with that, just click on the link in the show notes, fill out a brief survey, and you can set up a call with our producer Tim. You can follow us on social media at Entree Leadership. You can also follow me on Instagram at Daniel Tarty. This episode was produced by Tim Hull. It was edited and mixed by Will Redder.

I'm your host, Daniel Tarty, and on behalf of the entire Entree leadership team, thank you for listening. Until next time, keep learning and keep leading. If you enjoy this podcast, you should check out other great podcasts from the Ramsey Network, like the Rachel Cruz Show. Hey guys, it's Rachel Cruz, and I'm so excited to tell you about my podcast. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck. They're in debt.

They don't even know where to begin, but they have this need, this want to get in control of their money. And if that's you, you have come to the right spot. So in each episode, you're going to get a ton of inspiration and practical advice. If you not subscribe to the Rachel Cruz Show podcast, make sure you do it today. To hear full episodes, just search Rachel Cruz, wherever you listen to podcasts, or go to ramsysolutions.com slash shows.