Mid-80s today (almost 90 the next two days), and Matt’s excited to be a little too warm after months of cold. After sharing trivia about Noah Webster’s dictionary (1828), cornflakes being patented (1896), and the Titanic hitting the iceberg (1912—124 years ago and people are still fascinated), he reflects on why that story resonates: we’re all on a boat together, and in the end, status didn’t matter. In this gilded age, those stories tend to hit.

But here’s what he woke up to this morning: the fear monger, that familiar friend showing up when another sale isn’t in the books yet. It can get dark pretty fast. Then he turned his mind to the opportunities at hand—a presentation next week in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, great meetings this week. The fear, the anxiety, the ups and downs—it’s just all part of building something new.

Especially when you’re building something people haven’t heard of before. If you open a donut shop, you just differentiate—ours are vegan, softer, sweeter. But when you’re offering something that walks a line—like leadership development with a media perspective, using video, a hybrid of coaching, facilitation, partnership, media creation—distilling that into something that sounds different, resonant, and valuable all at once? That doesn’t happen overnight. The messaging doesn’t fall out of the sky in diamond-hard form. There’s a period of play, sampling, constant feedback. And while he can feel exhausted by it sometimes (he just wants it to work), every bit of feedback is valuable data. He doesn’t have to follow it, but having people unafraid and gracious enough to tell him what they think? That’s a strength.

The lesson: even having people who respond to messages, read what you send out, give you feedback—that’s a gift they’re giving. Stay in gratitude, stay open, and remember you don’t have to act on everything reflexively. The question: Who tells you the truth openly and honestly? What does that mean to you, and how could you use it to propel yourself to the next level?

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