Three weeks until spring, snow piles everywhere, and Matt’s running late because he just had a powerful meeting with a colleague he meets weekly. Midway through their conversation, the colleague told a story Matt had heard months ago—but this time, because they’ve built real depth, Matt heard it completely differently. He dove deeper instead of stopping him, and the story revealed new meaning. That’s the power of choosing quality over volume in relationships, especially as networking opportunities multiply.

But here’s what really landed today: action soothes anxiety. After a semi-sleepless night of rumination and fear-based thinking (he was honest about being in a foul mood yesterday), Matt realized the pattern. Productive weekends are great, but idle time creates danger when you’re building something from scratch. The mental game is everything, and entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart—it can feel like being out in the wilderness sometimes. So the question he leaves you with: What can you do today to manage your mental garden? Pull some weeds, plant better vegetables. Even if it’s just for today.

New Jersey just declared its first state of emergency for a blizzard in 30 years, snow is driving sideways, and Matt’s grateful for power, food, and the plow operators working nonstop. After some Tootsie Roll trivia (debuted 1896), he gets real: he’s in that familiar phase where the new venture has started, but self-doubt hits hard—especially at 3 AM. Living with near-term financial uncertainty hits the system deeply, even when you know logically that things are moving forward.

But while prepping for a talk on trust in the age of AI, a Warren Buffett quote reframed everything: “If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.”

Scaling trust isn’t about proving reliability—that’s baseline. The real differentiator? Love. Your AI tool will never love you. The love of another human being is uniquely human, and that’s our competitive advantage in this era. So the question: How are you going to infuse more love into your business?

It’s raining again, the last ounces of snow are clinging on for dear life, and Matt missed yesterday’s episode because the day got completely out of hand. After some space-themed trivia—Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake premiered in 1877, John Glenn orbited Earth in 1962, and the USSR launched the Mir Space Station in 1986—he settles into what’s really on his mind as we knock on March’s door: the emotional journey of the past year and what it takes to recover from a brutal season.

Last year forced him to choose between completely remaking his previous business or letting it go entirely, and the gap between knowing what he needed to do and actually doing it was costly. The chronic stress of managing multiple organizations doesn’t just disappear on January 1st, even with a promising new venture. What he’s realizing now is the danger isn’t the anxiety itself—it’s the mindset that can harden around it. When your internal narrative defaults to “I’ll never...” or “this will never happen,” that’s the sign of a mindset problem, not just a practical one. So this weekend, he’s taking inventory: where to pivot, where to double down, who to reach out to for help, and most importantly, how to pressure test the ideas that might be calcifying around certain challenges. Because acknowledging stress without feeding it means staying open to solutions that feel impossible—until they’re not.

It’s raining in the Northeast for the first time this season, and while Matt’s wife is less than thrilled, the Oregonian in him finds it oddly comforting. After dropping some trivia about the Statue of Liberty’s design patent (1879) and the first coiled postage stamps (1908), he dives into an idea that’s been brewing: the Studio Creator Experience. Picture this — business owners gathering at a NYC studio for a party that’s also a quick-hit workshop on storytelling, body language, and speaking on camera, followed by actual studio recording time plus professional photography. Assets, networking, learning, and joy all in one night.

But here’s where it gets interesting: Matt’s inviting listeners to help shape the idea and share their own. He’s proposing to turn Substack into a cyber mastermind where people post their unrealized dreams and ideas — for business, for life — and ask for feedback from a community that wouldn’t have otherwise met. He’s modeling it first, then wants you to comment. The goal? Creating a loop where ideas get better through collective input. Because if there’s one thing he’s committed to this year, it’s curating joyful experiences — not frivolous fun, but the kind of deep enjoyment that makes the work matter even more.

Thirty days until spring, the snow is melting like a slow hourglass, and Matt’s got sardines on his mind — a Christmas gift from a relative that’s been sitting there daring him to crack it open with some saltines. After a quick detour through the first submarine to sink a warship (1864, for the history buffs), he gets to what’s really occupying his headspace this Tuesday.

Six weeks into the new year, Matt’s zeroing in on a tension every entrepreneur knows too well: the pull between survival mode — just making money, saying yes to everything — and the discipline of building something scalable. The trap is that day-to-day expedient decisions can quietly set you off course from where you actually want to go, creating what he calls your own “mind and money tomb.” The antidote? Keeping the vision of scalability front and center, trusting the process, and staying intentional even when the answers aren’t fully clear yet. A day full of networking and human connection ahead — making a path, as he puts it, for the miracle to happen.

It’s President’s Day, there’s a fresh dusting of snow, and Matt’s watching the great melt of 2026 continue as those disgusting piles of hard-packed ice get smaller each day. After some trivia about the Canadian Pacific Railway and Ladies Home Journal launching in the 1880s, he shares what happened on Saturday: his brain just... stopped. Not burned out, not consciously aware of needing rest—just that feeling of a toddler sitting down in the middle of the street, refusing to budge. Sometimes the gym fixes it. Saturday? Not even close.

The culprit? Cranking the mind nonstop on a new venture, long days of solving problems, decision fatigue piling up with tax season looming. The big learning: he doesn’t have to solve everything today. Prioritize a couple things, let tomorrow handle the rest, and accept smaller wins instead of forcing breakthrough moments through sheer mental effort. He’s excited about potential new projects—maybe an audio book, touring a studio, building relationships with media production resources around NYC—but the real work is narrowing his message and audience without draining himself dry. Also, nearly 7,000 downloads and growing steadily? That’s inspiring. And a reminder: you’re not alone in any of this.

It’s Friday the 13th, and Matt’s greeting you with ski mask energy as he reflects on a very good week. After sharing some trivia about Tycho Brahe mapping the solar system in 1588 and Novocaine getting patented in 1906 (imagine dentistry before that—yikes), he dives into what’s making this week feel so different: the ratio of time spent actually talking to clients versus everything else.

He’s now spending most of his time diving into clients’ actual worlds, understanding their real needs, and figuring out how to help—even if that means bringing in someone else. And that shift has filled him up in ways that sustain him through the inevitable challenges. When you’re aligned and focused on genuinely serving others, everything gets more joyful. That’s the gratitude he’s carrying into a busy weekend. Also, the show’s growing on Substack, so if you’re listening on Apple or Spotify, pop over there and say hi—he’d love to hear from you.

After dropping some Lincoln birthday trivia (plus a fun fact about The Scream heist), Matt tackles a pattern he’s noticed over decades of watching public discourse: everyone’s yearning for “normal,” but normal doesn’t exist. Bodies change, society changes, art changes—we live in a dynamic reality, yet we keep searching for solid ground. The danger isn’t change itself; it’s getting myopic and settling into the illusion that anything stays constant.

So what’s the play when building a business? Never stop innovating. Every client interaction is a chance to learn and pressure-test your assumptions. He’s experimenting with Claude AI after time with ChatGPT, prepping for a client video session with one goal—complete presence—and gearing up to launch The Bigger Stage brand plus a new LinkedIn show in late March. The question: What are you learning today that’ll make you more adaptable tomorrow? Because the world’s changing whether you like it or not.

After kicking off with some quirky February 11th trivia—including the birth of the La-Z-Boy recliner and a 44-pound lobster worth roughly a grand—our host dives into a confession: he doesn’t fact-check everything, and that’s okay. Because as a former history major and lawyer turned entrepreneur, he’s learned the most valuable skill of all: knowing where to invest your time.

Fresh off a late-night coding session with Claude (the AI, not a developer friend), he reflects on how his video production venture has evolved from “let’s make cool videos with CEOs” to something deeper: helping founders step onto bigger stages. The journey required moving past the activity he could visualize and into the psychology of transformation his clients actually need.

Along the way, he shares hard-won communication wisdom born from editing too many videos of himself—slow down, lose the filler words, and connect your heart to what you’re saying. Think clean line edits in writing, not frantic scratching out.

The punchline? AI tools are making solo entrepreneurs 1,000 times more productive. His new website, TheBiggerStage.com, went from concept to live in one evening—no awful templates required. It’s placeholder-level now, but it does the job while he preps for the next-level design. And that’s the point: we’re entering an era where humans get to do the more human stuff. The question is: what are you learning today that’ll matter tomorrow?

As winter drags on and exhaustion quietly sets in, Matt reflects on a familiar danger point in building something new: early traction without enough discipline. With a few clients secured and more opportunities emerging, he notices how easy it is to drift toward “busy” work — events, side projects, and clever ideas that feel productive but don’t actually scale. This episode is about learning to separate core function from distraction, using scalability as a hard filter for decision-making, and staying accountable when momentum is uneven. A candid look at the fragile middle stage of entrepreneurship, where clarity, focus, and restraint matter more than enthusiasm alone.