NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Mathew Knowles on Drive, Success, and Destiny's Child: Presenting Earn & Invest

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

What drives Mathew Knowles, respected record executive, entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and father to Beyonce and Solange? This special presentation of the podcast Earn & Invest delves into what drove him to succeed and how drive has been both a positive and a negative in his life. The Earn & Invest podcast features thought-provoking conversations intended to empower you to earn and invest wisely, shaping your future while making informed decisions today. Every Monday, wide-ranging panel discussions explore various financial topics, fostering engaging conversations that challenge conventional wisdom and provide fresh perspectives. On Thursdays, Earn & Invest features individual interviews that offer deep insights from experts who share their experiences and expertise. The show's goal is to equip you with the essential questions necessary to navigate a richer path towards not only financial independence but living a life full of purpose, identity, and connections. Listen to Earn & Invest wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more at https://www.earnandinvest.com/

with Matthew Knowles, respected record executive, entrepreneur, author, public speaker, and father to Beyonce and Solange Knowles. And you're going to hear about what drove him to succeed and how drive has been both a positive and a negative in his life. We'll include links to follow Earn and Invest in today's show notes. And we'll be back later this week with brand new episodes of NerveWallet's Smart Money Podcast on Wednesday and Thursday. Enjoy. I'm Matthew Knowles, and this is the Earn and Invest Podcast. When it comes to growing up, my guest today and I share almost no similarities. After all, I grew up in a white middle-class America in the 1980s.

Which is not to say, however, that I didn't face hardships. My father's untimely death when I was seven years old, a learning disability that severely limited my chances of becoming a doctor, and belonging to an outcasted religion and suffering verbal and sometimes physical threats all marked my upbringing in both negative and unexpectedly positive ways. I had drive. Drive born from grief, from intellectual inability, from being derided and occasionally reviled. If you asked me the number one trait to becoming a successful professional, a successful adult, I would without hesitation tell you that for me, it was identifying as being the outcast, the underdog. My guest this episode has also shown time and again the drive to succeed as a top-ranked salesperson, a record executive, a business magnate, a philanthropist, and oh, by the way, the father of Solange and Beyonce Knowles. Today we talk drive and success with Mr. Matthew Knowles.

Matthew Knowles is a global leader in sales and marketing, brand development, entrepreneurship, and leadership with over $5 billion generated across multiple industries, more than $100 million in sales and acquisitions, and the development, recording, and distribution of some of our culture's most notable careers, such as Beyonce, Destiny's Child, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and many more. Mr. Knowles stands as a pillar for corporate, entrepreneurial, and Black success. Mr. Matthew Knowles, welcome to Earn and Invest. As I mentioned in the intro, you've accomplished so much in business, marketing, entertainment, music. Does it ever get tiring being known as Beyonce's dad?

Oh, way to start, Doc. Way to start. That's funny because often, you know, I'm a public speaker, motivational speaker. Often I share when I introduce myself. I say Dr. Knowles, I say Dr. Knowles, Mr. Knowles. And then often I'm called, you got to say it's lunch, Dad. And that gets a big laugh. So, you know, it's not as much today because the arenas that I'm in, you know, it's a different arena than the fan base arena of Beyonce and Destiny's Child and Solange. So I don't get that. As a matter of fact, when I see young people, I get a tremendous amount of respect for them calling me Mr.

So let's talk about you. You were born in 1952 and grew up on a dirt road in Alabama in the heart of segregation. And thinking back, this was right around 1955, Brown versus Board of Education, the fight for separate but equal. Talk about growing up and going to mostly white schools. How did that affect you in such a crazy time period? Very good question. And growing up being born in 1952 in Alabama, George Wallace was our governor. And he came out, the state of Alabama came out with a law that you could decide where your child wanted to go to school. They called it freedom of choice. So we had freedom of choice law.

But what George Wallace said, now, if you decide to send your kid, your black kid to a white school, you're on your own. You're not getting any support, any help from the state of Alabama. We're not going to send our state troopers to help you, none of that. So my mother went, you know, she was from a little small town in Alabama before she moved to Gaston, Alabama, went to high school with Coretta King. So she already had this energy about desegregation. Andrew Young's former wife also went to school there. So it's interesting when she came to Gaston, she really, really took on a torch of desegregation. And I'm a kid, I'm six years old. So you don't make decisions as you know at six,

mom said, you're going to school over there. You're going to school over there. So I integrated Catholic elementary school, public junior high school, public high school, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. And then finally went to a black school my junior year of college, Fisk University in Nashville. So up until then, I was in a mainly all white environment, because when you think about it, a kid spends most of their day in school. By the time they get home and clean up, get ready for dinner, it's done homework. It's time to go to bed. There's seven, six to seven hours you're going to spend at school. And something you said that really touched me in the beginning, being the outcast and the underdog. dog uh you know i i had that title quite a quite a time until my high school year

uh years when i became a star basketball player and then all of that shift for me did that being the outcast drive you like you become a very successful entrepreneur business person music music executive. Was that part of that driving force, do you think? Well, it was. And I tell you, Doc, I spent probably 19 years of therapy. And my therapist used to say, it's because of your childhood, because who we are today, a lot of as you know comes from my childhood the things that happened to the racism the made the making of being felt that i was less than not equal to i had to prove myself being a outcast is why I'm so uber successful.

But it's also the reasons I've had failures, personal failures in my life is because of that. And so I had to work for years to bring that balance together. It's funny. The traumas of childhood can drive us to do all these wonderful things. But as you get older, sometimes that drive no longer serves you. That trauma-induced drive can actually tear things apart. And I think a lot of us struggle with that achievement treadmill, this idea that we get so used to achievements that it starts driving all of our behavior. And you said that so eloquently, that trauma, because most people don't understand trauma and how it stays with us,

makes us, molds us into who we are, how we think, our belief system, even in leadership roles, that's all built around a lot of childhood issues. So if you grew up in a home, and that's where I go a lot of times by conversations, if you grew up in a home where your grandfather used the N-word and talked down about black people in front of you, you probably got a little of that in you. And we're not, well, only two, you know, my great-grandfather was a slave. People forget slavery wasn't far away.

Racism is still here, but covert racism not far away. That was only a few years ago. And so that drive played a huge role in what eventually became of you. You finish schooling and you end up working in sales, right? So you'll go work for Xerox, eventually Philip Medical Systems, Johnson and Johnston. But in the midst of this, you kind of take a big risk, which in your bio says changed the course of history. And everyone who knows you and your family history knows that history, in a sense, was changed. What gave you the audacity to step away from what must have felt very safe and lucrative to say, I'm going to move into the music industry? You're one of the few people that will understand what I'm about to say.

And that is, I left corporate America and left the medical field 20 years, highly successful because of managed care. See, when I say that in most interviews, I've got to explain. I get that. I get that. Yeah. I got to explain. So I'm doing a procedure because I was a neurosurgical specialist with Codman, a division of Johnson & Johnson. I'm doing a procedure there at a hospital, the Medical Center in Houston. I get paged afterwards. I'm getting addressed.

I get paged. Mr. Knowles, please go to Dr. Wilson's office. And I'm saying, oh, boy, what happened? And I'm thinking, did I say something wrong? I'm going through every word I say. I was like, did we lose the patient because there's a protocol? I'm going through everything in my head, and I go, and I meet with the doctor, and I'm saying, Dr. Wilson, brother, saying a thing. And he tells me, you know, it's been a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Knowles. It's been a delight

really knowing your stuff. I feel safe with you when you're in the OR, but I just got this letter and he showed it to me. And it said that if he didn't reduce his cost per procedure, lose his privileges at that particular hospital. And because of that, he could no longer use my equipment, which were by far the most expensive, the gold standard. I had to, at that moment, then decide what was my next move in life. And that was coming to the point, I really didn't like that position. I had sold MRI. I loved selling MRI. I sold zero radiography. It was the leading modality in the 80s. I loved selling that. Xerox closed that division. But I didn't particularly like this position, getting up that early in the morning, being on a page your own weekends. I didn't like

that. And so I had to, I called my former wife and I said, you know, this is what I just have this meeting. I've got to decide now what's my passion because I don't want to do this. And that's when, you know, the universe had all of these things happen where at that time, Beyonce girl group had gone on a star search and they had lost. There was a rapper in Houston named Lil' O who had asked me to manage it. And I was considering it slightly. But then I made a decision to make a career change. I didn't quit my job. I always say that.

I transitioned. I went back to school. Knowledge is power. Took music management, business, all sorts of production. And then I transitioned into the music industry. And for the record, the first record deal I got was not Destiny's Child or Beyonce. It was this rapper who I got signed to a major record label, MCA. You mentioned Destiny's Child, Beyonce.

They did not win on Star Search. How sure were you that they were going to do well? Because again, whether you planned, whether you went back to school, et cetera, this is still a departure. You still went from probably making a really good stable salary to jumping into something that you didn't know was going to work or not. Did you feel pretty confident, Destiny's Child, this is going to make it, this is going to go forward? Well, you're absolutely right. It was a challenge. We actually came this close to losing our home because I was spending every moment, every second on getting these ladies.

They were girls. They're getting these girls a record deal. and spending so much time at Kinko's, sending out packages to the record labels around the world and spending money that we didn't have at that time. But I had belief in the girls. I had belief that Beyonce and her, the extraordinary God-given talent. And I had confidence in myself, my ability to manage marketing and sales, which I had done exceptionally well for 20 years. So why couldn't I do? As a matter of fact, I always say, when I look at being in the medical field and being in the music industry, man, music industry is so, as you know,

and you've been in medicine, it's so much easier than being in the medical field. And you having that patient there, that surgeon is depending on you to give the right answer. Or you're having this conversation with a radiologist, and he's depending on you to share with him with a t1 t2 image because this is new technology and how to put this big magnet into my hospital that was difficult when did you know that destiny child was going to make it like was there a point where like okay we've crossed the chasm this is gonna work second out of destiny there was a lot

of failures that happened and you know we're just starting the beginning stages to shoot the destiny documentary by the way this june is the 25th anniversary of Destiny's Child. But there was a lot of failures. Star Search, they lost. And Beyonce had won like 30 individual showcases. But that was her first. But then they went, and it was me having a lack of knowledge of the industry, did a production deal in Atlanta. That failed with a major producer and record label.

That failed. Beyonce had some vocal challenges. There were a lot of challenges on the way. And I always talk about this, not failures, mistakes. Challenges are opportunity to grow and not a reason to quit. And the people that are the most successful had many failures. And in the beginning of Destiny's Child, there were a number of failures. And learning, the opportunity for me to learn, for the girls to learn, the industry. That all happened between the start and the second half.

After the break, we're going to jump into the DNA of Achievers Yearbook, which also talks about the habits and the traits of successful people. Learning how to fail is one of those. But before we go there, let's talk about your musical career, because I think people know out there in the world that Mr. Knowles was involved with Destiny's Child. He managed his daughter, Beyonce and Solange. But as you were mentioning, that wasn't even your first record deal, right? Little O was your first record deal.

And you've been involved with many other artists. Talk about some of the other artists you've worked with. Well, I've had the opportunity i sold my company in 2002 uh to a european uk-based company they were the largest independent record label but management company sanctuary we first formed the urban division of management and record label so i had the opportunity to make the last oj's last two albums uh shotgun and a london symphony uh earth wind and fire cool in a gang um and some other artists sunshine anderson and some others we also built uh in the early 2000s the number one gospel label. I partnered with BET. They had a number one show called Sunday Best Competition.

And the winners, they all were signed to my record label. So we were able to build a number one gospel label. And then on the management side, I bought five of the top urban managers. So we had artists like Nelly and just an array of major artists that we had signed on the management side that I bought these artist management companies. So we've had the opportunity to have a lot of success. And the one thing I would, I think in the very beginning of this, I think the wrong word was used. I would use more that I was the architect of these careers, especially my artists, Destiny's Child, Yonsei Solange, Kelly Michelle.

These were young kids. I mean, these kids got their record deal at 15. I have to remind people that don't know the music industry. You don't make multi-million dollar decisions at 15. Matter of fact, you don't make million, multimillion dollars decisions at 15. Matter of fact, you make no business decisions at 15. And the mere fact that people don't acknowledge that is sometimes insulting to me, to not understand that Beyonce would make her decisions at 15 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90, you know, that someone had to architect. And in fact, you architect many careers, right? Because

you architect your own sales career in medical sales. Then you architected your own career in the music industry. Since then, you've also gone on to work on marketing campaigns with multiple businesses i see pepsi l'oreal samsung how did you get involved with those businesses and did that spring directly off of your work in the music industry or was that separate yeah that was that was 100 music industry when i I came over to the music industry, you know, the record, it was the record industry. And I brought a set of skills in marketing, endorsement, and strategic partnerships.

And so when you think about it, traditionally in the 90s, early 2000, a record label might have a billion-dollar budget for marketing when they put out an album. My idea, if I can partner with L'Oreal, who has a $25 million budget, then we can reach way more people, not only with the visual of the artist being in the commercial, but also the song being in the commercial. So those relationships, Mercedes, Pepsi, Walmart, L'Oreal, Nintendo, I could go on and on. We did about 20 major partnerships, all featured the artist and or their music in the commercials. And it was all timed with the release of a single or an album.

And that's what we brought that was somewhat different, is our strategy of how to develop and how to put out a record for our artists. We are talking to Mr. Matthew Knowles. He's a global leader in sales and marketing, brand development, and entrepreneurship. And we are talking drive and success. We're going to take a short break. I'm Doc G, and this is the Earn and Invest podcast. We are back with Mr. Matthew Knowles. He's been involved with the recording and distribution of some of our culture's most notable careers, such as Beyonce, Destiny's Child, Earth, Wind & Fire, and many more. Mr. Knowles stands as a pillar for corporate, entrepreneurial, and black success. And we are

talking drive and success. Mr. Knowles, your book is The DNA of Achievers, 10 Traits of the Highly Successful Professionals. You've been around a huge number of successful people as well as being one yourself. I want to talk about some of these traits. And my favorite and the first one to talk about is passion. I hear lots of argument on whether you need to be passionate about what you do for a living, especially when it comes to making money. Do you have to be passionate to be successful? Well, let me just start out by saying that what was the idea that had me to write my first book was I was doing a lot of traveling. I mean, we had offices in LA, New York, London, Houston. And so I finally got to move up in the early 20s to first class. And you sit there. And the first thing you ask back then before we had where we are today with mobile phones and technology, you sit there and you ask the person, what do you do?

That would be like a common opening. What do you do? And I just began to ask that to some people and they'll talk to you the whole flight with all this enthusiasm and excitement. This is what I do. And you could just feel the passion that they have. And I began to actually, the more and more I asked that question, the more and more I see the similarities of how these people thought. And that's where I came up with these 10 traits. And then I began to identify people that I knew that were highly successful in their traits and they were all congruent. So that's how I came up with those two traits, starting with passion. Because I found out

early on in life that when you live your passion, you never work a day in your life. And the people that I know that are uber successful, they don't consider it work. And I could start with Beyonce. She is just so passionate about what she does and being the best at it. I think about some younger people that I on the way got to know, like Serena and Venus, how passionate they were as little kids, now today even. Kobe Bryant, I got to know as a young man how passionate he was. And he came out with this thing he calls 666. Six months after the basketball season, he would practice. Six days a week, six hours a day.

And that's the kind of passion which goes to my second trait, which coexists together, work ethics. Those two things, if you don't have passion and work ethics, you're probably not going to be at the top of the game. You could be still in the game, but you won't be at the top of the game. Everybody that I know that's at the top of their game, they are so passionate about what they do. They put in this tremendous amount of effort and work and practice, practice, practice to be the best at. So you mentioned a bunch of incredibly successful people and you made the point that they're both passionate and as well as having a major work ethic. Will work ethic overcome either genetics or even in a sense, lack of smarts? What's more important? Like,

can you really get to the top of your game with work ethic only? You know, it's a very good question. And as I've gotten older, Dr. G, I've kind of changed my perspective on that question. When I first wrote The DNA of Achievers, the DNA was just really a placeholder for a title, a real cool title. It had no reference to genetics whatsoever. Fast forward, five years ago was found with cancer, genetically mutated, and now I've done a tremendous amount of research and work on genetics. I actually do think things like work ethics, things like critical thinking does fall into genetics, that it's inherited some of that i've changed completely my thoughts i had 20 years ago or 15 years ago when i wrote this book to today what about risk taking do you think that's in your genetics and if so how do we do it in a safe way well i mean we, we can say someone that injects drugs into their arm, that could be risk-taking.

And we now found that that could be genetically brought about when they were even born, that their mother has some issue with drugs. So I'm all about, I'm part of research with University of Pennsylvania years ago. And I got some great genetic information news today. So I'm all about genetics impacts everything we do in so many different ways. And when we add genetics and AI, that's going to be the future. I know I still love medicine. You know, people don't realize how much I love the field of medicine. And if someone told me today I could be a music of medicine, I would pick medicine. So when we get into this genetics, this kind of frame of talking, you see my excitement even changes. I've done the music video,

done that, went to the mountain, very grateful. But I've always had a place for medicine in my heart. You mentioned just briefly being diagnosed with cancer. You were, male breast cancer. I think we live in a world today that we have to be correct in how we say things. No man wants to be said you have breast cancer. You know, I don't know a lot of men are proud to say that. Takes a little edge when you say male breast cancer. At least say I'm a man, you know. But, you know, that's been an interesting journey.

And it has really changed my perspective also on success. It's changed my perspective on money and wealth. Because you can't have any of that if you don't have health. It also has changed my whole thought process on having success, having these things and having all of those traits. But also, I look out the window some days today, and I just see the mountains and the ocean and the flowers and the trees that I never saw five years ago. I exercise. I watch what I eat. What success today is a lifestyle.

And it's not, for me, it's not the lifestyle of making money, making money, making money, making money. It's a totally different lifestyle for me, success today. And don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong. I love making money. The way that I go about it and the way it does not engulf my every day, every moment, it's different today. You know, it's interesting because that really brings up some of those other traits. One is failure, which we talked about.

I want to talk a moment about ego. There was a mic drop moment during your TEDx talk that I watched where you gave a definition of ego. I'm going to read it here. Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. Explain that definition for me. It was really one of those moments during the talk where everything just stopped. I love those moments. I try to have at least five or six little moments when I'm on the stage speaking. Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity. One of my biggest fears I've always been, and I had to work through this, believe it or not, in my early ages of segregation where my mother couldn't go into the room. My first time to a dentist,

she had to sit in the color waiting room. The dentist, that was the last group he saw every evening. So by the time he saw them, he was ready to go home, go to dinner. And it was a terrible experience for me, sitting in a room by myself for 30, 40 minutes, hearing that noise and seeing these needles. And so when I thought that anesthesia that deadens the pain, I thought about being in a dentist's chair and getting that first shot and how I've always been so frightened of them.

And if you think about people that let their emotions and they don't think through problems to problem solve. I use the word stupidity. That's not a word that I use often, but I do use it in that context that it is the Denton. Ego is like, I think I'm all that, but I really know I don't not an expert in that field. So we might know some people like this that I'm about to say. So we know we are not prepared for this field and we're not an expert. So we deflect a lot. So people that know that we don't know. And that's what I bet by. How did you find a way to keep ego in check, not only in your own life, but in the life of

your children as you saw your fame and fortune rise? Well, that's what I admire. People always ask me, Doc G, what is probably the highest moment with my kids? And it's the same for both of them. The highest moments for me is the fact, and I've seen this happen, that they are just good people that would go into a building and have a meeting on the 23rd floor. And when they walked in and they saw the people that you got to show your ID, they would say hello and be polite. If there was a janitor sweeping the floor by the elevator, they would say good morning. I love that about them. They're just good people that none of this has ever gone to their head that way. But I think I'm better than somebody else.

They had that humanity part of them giving back, which is one of the chapters, as you know. I love seeing that about my kids. Is it hard to see outsiders, other people, the media, people who now know you or at least know about you because you're public figures? Is it hard for them to assign personality traits, ideas to get in there in your business well you know we we have to also understand this is my 20th year in a classroom you know so i'm an educator as well uh and you know i teach a lot of marketing um and i use this word i like the coin words i like to think I was the first to coin this Jedi mind trick. And a lot of that is filtered by all sorts of people. So what's coming in all day to us is information. A lot of it is not even accurate information. And so it becomes really difficult today to really understand what's truth and what's lies. But if you're going to be in this

business, you have to understand media. You have to understand how to make it work for you. No difference today. We're having a conversation. You're wanting to get ratings up. I'm wanting to have a platform that people understand that my number one thing I do is a speaker as a public speaker. So it's a win-win for us. And that's what it has to be. Do you feel like you have to continuously reinvent yourself? No, I don't think it's reinventing myself.

I constantly learn. I love to learn. You know, when I was a kid, one of the first things my parents were poor, said it earlier, grew up on a dirt road. Actually, what you didn't add to that is we had an outhouse until I was maybe 13, 14 years old. But one of the first things my parents bought me, boy, did I have some amazing parents that really instilled in me to dream and dream big. And then I could do whatever I wanted to do in life if I worked hard enough. But, you know, one of the things that was so amazing, I got a set of encyclopedias.

Poor kid on a dirt road, here I have a set of encyclopedias. And I would almost every night dig into a couple of two, three pages and learn something. I love to learn. So I don't call it reinventing myself. I just, marketing has always been my fundamental thing. Everything I do in business, the fundamental basis of it is marketing. What differentiates me from someone else? What makes my product? So there are a lot of young people listening right now.

What do you think the younger generations get wrong about drive and success? What do you see? And you're like, ah, they totally got this wrong. Yeah. You know, again, I I'm in a classroom. So, you know, I, I teach the semester of Pepperdine and I teach also in London, the London college of contemporary music. I mean and I teach also in London, the London College of Contemporary Music. I mean, I'm really in the classroom. The one thing today, and I just had this conversation recently at Pepperdine with my students, the impact of social media on them. It's really concerning starting to as an educator uh this whole thing about life balance work-life balance that's the the key word for young people work-life balance for me work-life balance has changed but the thing that makes it easier and different is the fact that i have money and i don't say that in an arrogant way when you have money you can

have a different kind of work-life balance than having work like life balance and being broke so i always tell my my young people put in the work while you're young. Make those investments while you're young. Work your butt off. So when you get 50, 40, 50, you can really have amazing work-life balance versus you didn't do those things. And now you're 50 years old. And now you're wondering, what's the rest of my life, but it'd be at 50. Well, Mr. Knowles, I really wanted to thank you for coming on the show today. As I reflect on our conversation, it really hits me this idea that what drives us when we are young often is pain, trauma, or this fear that we're not going to achieve. But what I think you're such a great

example of is this idea that what drives us as we're young doesn't necessarily have to drive us as we're older. So it might be trauma when we're young. It might be fear, anxiety. But when we're older, we can actually take our successes and build on them. And I feel like that's exactly what you've done in your career. I want to end this episode the way and every episode by asking you what is up next in your life and how people can reach out to you. So first and foremost, what is coming up next for Matthew Knowles? Well, let me say, first of all, I don't know if you're noticing, Dr. G, I'm taking notes. There's some amazing things you've said that I, again, I love to learn.

So I love how you articulate some of the things. What's up for me next? I love looking out the window. No, what's up for me next? My whole what I do today is three fundamental topics around the world. I either speak or teach on health and wellness, being a cancer survivor, genetics, part of that. That become a core conversation. Entrepreneurship probably is the number one thing I think I talk about

in all aspects of entrepreneurship, from media entrepreneurship to the who, the what, to why, to where. And then the music business. So I go around the world on stages talking about these three topics with subtopics of all of them. And I thoroughly enjoy those moments. I thoroughly enjoy those moments. I thoroughly enjoy giving back. I thoroughly enjoy hearing the questions and seeing people sit up in their chair wanting to learn, wanting to one day experience these things and getting the knowledge that we all need to be successful. I love giving back in that way.

And if people want to connect with you, hear more, or even book you to speak, what is the best way for them to do that? I make it real simple. They just simply go to MatthewKnows.com. And Matthew, interesting enough, it's the whole story behind it. It actually goes back to segregation. But Matthew is spelled with one T. My father was a Matthew with two Ts.

Quintel Knows. That's what I thought my name was until I got my birth certificate. But you go to Matthewknowsles.com and there's a section book me to speak. It's as simple as that. Matthew Knowles, a business magnate, a record executive, philanthropist, teacher. Thank you so much for coming on Earn and Invest today. Well, thank you so much, Don G. I hope we have the opportunity to talk again. I thoroughly enjoyed this. You're a good man. I can tell that when you get older, you just have a gut sense of people. And I thank you for having this platform that we all can learn. I told you I took notes today, brother. That's a wrap.

Earn and Invest is now part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Visit airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to this show as well as other fine podcasts. It was a pleasure having Matthew Knowles on the show. We were talking about drive and success, and it really made me question both myself and others about what drives us. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about specifically what has driven me, and that's why Mr. Knowles' answers also appealed to me in many ways, because what I've come to the conclusion is that many of us are driven not by positivity, not by optimism. Most of us, those who are high achievers, are probably driven by trauma. I think with Matthew Knowles, that trauma probably had to do with living in segregated Alabama, being the only black person in his school, probably all the racism he encountered. He wanted to be better, stronger, faster. And I remember for me, I also felt similar things to a lesser extent,

because I grew up with a learning disability, and my father died, and I had a religion that was not particularly common in the area that I lived in. All of these things made me feel like the outcast, the underdog. And in fact, I embraced this idea of being the underdog. And that was often what drove me. It drove me to get past my learning disability. It drove me to go to medical school and spend all those hours studying and learning. And then it drove me in residency to go 36 hours without sleeping. I found that people who accomplish big things tend to be very, very driven. And often that drive comes from trauma, which serves us. It serves us when we are young. It serves us when we are hungry. It serves us when we have nothing. But, and I think Matthew Knowles alluded to this in our conversation,

at some point, it stops serving you. And Mr. Knowles was talking about going to therapy to talk about his upbringing and his childhood. And I think a lot of us come to this realization that all these achievements, all this drive we had got us to where we are. But once you get to a place where you've achieved enough and you have enough money and you're married and have kids or you have enough family and friends, once you have enough, that drive to achieve doesn't go away and in fact becomes a hindrance, a hassle. It actually makes us unhappy because the more we achieve, the more we want to achieve. When we realize that that achievement doesn't fill the whole of our past, the trauma we went through, it doesn't resolve it. All it does is quiet those demons, quiet those voices for a short period of time,

and then we're back to finding the next achievement, the next mountain to climb. It sounds healthy in the beginning, but it just becomes another treadmill. In this case, the achievement treadmill. We keep on running faster and faster and faster, and yet we're getting nowhere. We can mark our progress with achievements, with promotions, with raises, but those things aren't making us feel any better. The skills, the mindset that got us to success are not the same as the skills and mindset we now need once we are successful. I think achievements make us happy in the short term. They give us that spike of dopamine that feels really good and we in fact almost get addicted to it. But the problem is, I don't

think that really is long-lasting happiness. Long-lasting happiness looks more like going back, understanding those traumas, realizing that we didn't do anything wrong, forgiving our present and past selves, and maybe a little bit of that narrative therapy, looking at those narratives of our childhood and realizing that we weren't bad people, but sometimes we were people in bad situations and that we did the best we could to survive and in fact thrive. But unfortunately, as we get older, it doesn't feel like thriving as much. Drive and success are wonderful things, but they are not the only things. And I think this conversation with Matthew Knowles really brings that home. It was a pleasure talking to him not only to learn about his experiences,

but also to reflect on his experiences, connect with a lot of my own childhood traumas and experiences. I hope too you can connect with our stories and decide what drive and success look like to you today in a peaceful and fulfilling way. All right. I leave things running just for a few minutes to catch our after show, whatever we chat about. First and foremost, thank you. You have been a pleasure to talk about,

to talk to. And I just think, I think your story is so instructive. And again, this idea of, I think there are a lot of people out there looking for that key to success, right? Looking, how do I drive myself to become what I want to be? And I think your story really helps us kind of see those different elements that get you to where you want to be. Yeah. Well, that's what I strive to get across. You know, what people, we all see the success, but we don't know how people got there, what the struggles were and what those were. Society makes us want to disguise and not say what they are. I think people need to hear more of that so they can say, I'm not crazy. I'm going to do what other people go through.

But it's also getting that emotional mental health as well. Is there anything we didn't talk about or didn't mention about your story that you think is important that you want out there? there uh you know i actually you know gosh we could have talked maybe more on health and wellness uh but i think we i think for for this first time i i think we we intrigue people to want to hear more you can come back anytime you want i'm gonna take you up on it seriously anytime you want. I'm going to take you up on that. Seriously. Anytime you want. It was a great conversation. I'd love to have many more. Well, thank you.