Midlife: The Night He Asked If He Would Fold

Matt Gilhooly (00:00)
Matt Ross spent decades building things that worked. He took School of Rock from a startup to a global brand, and by every outside measure, he had it figured out. But at 50, everything broke at once. His son was in a psych ward, his brothers were spiraling, his parents and his in-laws were dying, and he just lost the company he built. One night he sat alone in his basement and asked himself a single question. Was he going to fold? He didn't. What he did instead became a book, a new business, and

An entirely different way of living.

Matt Ross (00:32)
That night I came home, my wife went into the bedroom, I went into the basement. We we couldn't verbalize.

Anything in that moment. And I sat there and I stared at the floor. And I'm like, Matt, is this my life? How did this happen? None of these problems were my cause.

Matt Gilhooly (01:24)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Life Shift Podcast. I am here with Matt. Hello, Matt.

Matt Ross (01:29)
Hi there, how are you?

Matt Gilhooly (01:30)
Pretty good. Pretty good. I had a a nice retreat recently and here I am back in the groove. And I always it's funny, I I tell people a lot that these conversations are typically the times of the week in which I feel the most alive and the most present, but also kind of like a blackout where I, you know, I don't know what's happening in the moment, but besides what's happening in the moment. So it's it's a it's my favorite time of the week. So thank you for being a part of it.

Matt Ross (01:59)
Sure,

my pleasure.

Matt Gilhooly (02:00)
Thank you for being on the life shift because this has been this journey that I don't know. I didn't realize that I was gonna have all these conversations with people around the world essentially, and it would be like a part of my healing journey. Like I just didn't expect I just thought, you know, we're gonna have a podcast, we're gonna talk about these important things, but selfishly it's been a beautiful healing journey for me to realize how much a bunch of us

People living on this earth having wildly different experiences have so much in common in the way we feel about them, the way we move through them, the way we adjust to them. So I'm looking forward for your story to be part of this tapestry as well.

Matt Ross (02:40)
Thank you.

Matt Gilhooly (02:41)
So before we get into your story though, can you tell us who Matt is in 2026? Like how you show up in the world, how you identify these days?

Matt Ross (02:48)
Yeah, so here's the narrative. I've been an entrepreneur for the last twenty years in the creative education space. People might know me as the former CEO of School of Rock. And

I built that brand of from a startup broken business to a really successful global business teaching music to kids, putting them on stage, teaching them rock and roll. And it changed my life. such that when we sold to private equity and I left, I wound up

Starting another venture similar called One River School. I'm now the founder of this venture that has 15 art schools. We teach art, digital design, digital media, 15 locations in six states, and I have a CEO now, so I no longer have that badge next to my name. And she's amazing. And they're planning to scale dramatically. I'm in this best job ever, like founder, executive chairman, vision strategy, culture.

And helping to fly the flag, the chief brand advocate, if you will. I love what creative education does for

humans. Prior prior to that 20-year window, that's been 20 years, I was in the media business. I ran radio stations before there was podcasting. That was the thing. And and I built some important brands in the space. And born and bred and raised in New York City, I've lived and raised kids in northern New Jersey, just outside the city.

and a very important component of my life has been raising a severely disabled child who is thirty-one now, severe autism, nonverbal. And you'll hear a little bit more about that in my story. lastly, wrote a book that came out in January called Grow or Fold. And it became a mantra for me when I was going through midlife crisis and challenges. And life

Matt Gilhooly (04:38)
Life shift, if you will.

Matt Ross (04:39)
shift, thank you.

and I chose growth over folding.

Matt Gilhooly (04:42)
Yeah. Well, congratulations on all of those successes. But most recently

Matt Ross (04:46)
Thank you.

Matt Gilhooly (04:47)
getting a book out into the world, I know that's it sounds like it could be easy, but it's probably a a tough process. Would you agree?

Matt Ross (04:55)
no doubt, but it's had so many benefits. I c I I but one of them i it relates to something that you just said a minute ago. And that would

that was like the podcast, how it's helped you continue to think differently about everything, this journey of the podcast, and you revisit things and you reinforce things and you learn

Matt Gilhooly (05:16)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (05:17)
things about yourself. Matt, what I didn't realize is after I wrote this book, which was to help others by sharing context through

Of my story and what I did to get over it and through

it and to the better place. What I didn't realize is that the process of writing it and editing it and rethinking it and rereading it and listening to my own audiobook has been unbelievably important to my personal growth and my happiness. It's cathartic. It's just like, wow, there it is. I put it out there in the world, warts, warts and all.

And I did all that stuff I said I did, and here I am. So it sounds strange, but I I

honestly am the happiest I've ever been in my life.

Matt Gilhooly (06:02)
Doesn't sound strange at all. And I've heard more than once that that book writing and that process is is ruling, but also very rewarding and fulfilling. And it's like some people describe, I don't know if you said the or felt this when you were reading it or listening to again. It was like you were hearing someone else's story, but it also related to you and un uncovering new things that you didn't even realize when you were writing it.

Matt Ross (06:27)
Without a doubt. it's just a cathartic experience when you share with the world this place that you were in and you're really honest and open about it and

Matt Gilhooly (06:38)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (06:38)
vulnerable and warts on warts and all. And then all of a sudden, how you didn't have a quick I didn't have a quick answer, and we'll talk more about it.

Matt Gilhooly (06:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Ross (06:47)
It was the work I did that allowed me to get to a better place. And that work that I did is what I'm now sharing with the world as I'm out

Matt Gilhooly (06:54)
Love it.

Matt Ross (06:55)
there doing talks.

And really trying to, you know, get in people's heads and scratch around a little bit and get them thinking.

Matt Gilhooly (07:02)
Yeah. Before this life shift moment that we're gonna talk about today, were you someone that was hard on your sleeve, vulnerability?

Were you someone that was open in that way?

Matt Ross (07:11)
Yeah, I love that question more than most. I've always been the acute people person with a great sense of where I was and open to sharing all. I've always had this philosophy that the best way, and it's really actually some of it comes from from other Stephen Coffey said the best way to be understood is to be understanding. And I've always felt like if I wanted to connect with you in business or in life.

It would be easier to do if you really understood me, viewed me credibly, and viewed me as real, and not somebody holds back and plays games. So to a fault, I've been bloody honest, bloody direct, and I've unfortunately expected others to always

be that way, but they're not always that way. So

Matt Gilhooly (08:01)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (08:01)
I've had to modulate what I expect others to do, and but

Yeah, man. I I've just been that guy. I've been the open book. One other piece, Matt, is that I also was the guy who always knew I was a little different and I had to work on myself because I come from a broken household. And I don't know if you want me to start sharing some of these things. All right.

Matt Gilhooly (08:22)
Sure. Tell us and yeah, paint the picture of that before.

Matt Ross (08:25)
Here's the back here's the backstory. Little guy growing up in Queens, New York, all about creativity, music, acting, this and that. My household's breaking down, parents divorcing.

Miserable, my mom's beaten down, abused. Loved my dad though, because he was someone I idolized and he was never physically abusive. He just was unhappy. And at a little

young guy, like at seven, eight, I'm like, they don't belong together. I somehow had that had that weird intuition. It was weird. He didn't look happy ever. And my mom, you could just see her hanging on by a thread all the time. All right, so

I wound up skipping eighth grade in junior high school, give you a sense of how broken my household was. I took this test, my family didn't even know. I came home and said, Hey mom, I passed this test, I'm skipping eighth grade. Fine, leave me alone. And I'm like, all right, so there's this saying, if it is to be, it's up to me. I somehow knew early on that I wasn't gonna get the mentoring I needed. I had a lot of good social skills, I had a lot of friends.

I leaned and relied on them as I was probably anxious and didn't even know how to

frame what that meant as

a little guy, right? You're 13, 14, I can't stop the wheels from turning. But I have this really good natural skill to to build trust and connect with people. And I'm pretty happy. But

Matt Gilhooly (09:56)
Okay. Did you feel loved?

Matt Ross (09:58)
I felt loved all the time. That was the weird thing. I I describe in my book.

My household was three parts dysfunction and one part super loving. So there wasn't like this mean undercurrent to the kids. The kids got love, but we got nothing else. We got no practical, structural, logical orientation as to how to live in the world. You had to figure that out. So because I had this deeply inquisitive mind, I was now skipped a grade, so I'm like literally in high school and tenth grade, I'm just turned fourteen.

I'm with all these older teens. I'm trying to fit in and be cool. I'm doing what they do for all the good and bad. They came with that.

And I wound up deciding I gotta get out of Queens, New York, because the streets of Queens was not a great place in the 70s. And I applied to one school, and that was where some friends from my school, my high school went to it. So now I had some people that I can connect with. and my friends growing up in Queens were

Really, the essential component to helping me stay balanced, even though I had no idea where I was going in life.

Matt Gilhooly (11:10)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (11:10)
The idea of going to college was just about trying to figure out how to be independent, because I we had no money either. And I knew I'd need to be self-sufficient. But I guess all in all, where I want to summarize and take this to is I always knew I was a work in progress that had pretty good skills in some areas, some real gaps in other areas.

So I probably started doing the self help thing at the earliest possible stage. Fast forward, I wrote a book that's a memoir/slash self-help book. And I tell people I think I

broke the Guinness book or record of reading self help books. I've read over a hundred in my life, maybe more, because I just knew that I was intense, hardworking, super passionate, super caring, wanted a lot out of life, and had no vantage point on.

How to do it. There was no examples around me. So the NetNet, the one skill that I had was sales. And I got into advertising sales after college, kicked ass right away, selling advertising in New York in the media business in the 80s.

Matt Gilhooly (12:18)
'Cause you're a people person.

Matt Ross (12:20)
And I was a good marketing creative solutions guy. That's what I studied in college undergraduate. went back to graduate school at night, got an MBA from NYU.

Just because I wanted to continue to invest in myself. But the trajectory

thousand, thousand

Matt Gilhooly (12:33)
Did you feel more structured going through college from your okay.

Matt Ross (12:37)
percent. So my first two years was a trial. I then transferred to a state school in New York called SUNY Albany. And that's where I met my tribe. And what happened there, Matt, was people were just like me, except they were going to med school or they were going to be lawyers. And I was like, You can't do that. You're just like me. We don't do those things. And they're like, No, I'm doing this. And I realized.

It's having mentors or peers that peers that are motivated around you was a hugely important part of my development because now I started to get serious. Graduated cum laud with a business degree, went to work. I was working in retail my first year or two out of college. My buddies were working on Wall Street and here and there I felt like a loser, but I knew that I was still a work in progress and I believed

Matt Gilhooly (13:25)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (13:26)
in myself.

Matt Gilhooly (13:28)
I do say

Matt Ross (13:28)
So

Matt Gilhooly (13:28)
that everyone should have to work retail at some point in their life. And in a restaurant.

Matt Ross (13:32)
It

I I don't disagree. And frankly, I love people. And every time someone walked in that door, I was operating, I went through a management training program, I was operating this men's custom clothing business on Sixth Avenue, Manhattan, and I met this guy who was the VP of all the radio stations, AM radio stations at CBS. By the way, governor of Minnesota, some of the top private equity guys and venture capitalists.

And I started connecting with them like I was just one of them. Tell me about your business as I'm measuring you for shirts. And then I'm like selling you more because you like me. And I'm telling you you need a few of these ties to go with these shirts. And how about a custom suit? But what I always is was inquisitive about was tell me about your journey. When did you know you wanted to be an insurance broker or a restaurateur? Because I was still at the stage where I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I had a good gift of gab, and I could extract learnings from successful, largely male, what might have been role models at the time.

Matt Gilhooly (14:39)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (14:40)
And it was very informative for me. And it gave me a sense of confidence because I didn't see the gap that much between me and them. I just saw that they were 20 years older and found a thing to double down on. So

Matt Gilhooly (14:54)
I I

bet that insurance broker was not like I woke up one day and I always wanted to

Matt Ross (14:57)
Ha ha ha.

Matt Gilhooly (14:58)
be an insurance broker. But he found a place that he maybe he was good at and that was something that fulfilled him in that way.

Matt Ross (15:00)
No, no, exactly. And listen, no substitute for hard work.

Matt Gilhooly (15:08)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (15:09)
You have to trial things to get to where you need one to get to. It's kind of like how we work on ourselves, right? I tell people the gap between where you are and where you want to get to requires a plan. What do you think you want? What's the plan to get there? That works on your early professional growth, that works with personal change.

But I always had a weirdo brain for personal growth and development. And I didn't realize how much I was fundament fundamentally building curriculum by

applying it to myself. All right. Let me tell you where the life shift moment occurred.

So I am now in the game and fast forward, I'm

are now moving to Charlotte, North Carolina to run radio stations. I'm literally like 30 years old, and I'm on the fast track. I then have

a kid, meet the girl of my dreams, and 18 months later, my son is diagnosed with severe autism. He has epilepsy. He almost died in a couple tragic moments. And you talk about

Your world being rocked. My son Alex, who's 31 today, and living independently in a group home, not independently, living in a group home with hands on 24 7 oversight. I have been able to reflect back on that journey. it was unbearable. It was unbearable. But that was the beginning. He's diagnosed, we don't know what to do. People didn't know much about autism.

Matt Gilhooly (16:53)
In that time period.

Matt Ross (16:53)
We're talking the mid-90s.

Matt Gilhooly (16:55)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (16:55)
We're hiring people to come into our house to sit in the basement

and work with him eight hours a day and just trying to get that brain started that

Matt Gilhooly (17:06)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (17:06)
nothing's working. He's getting more behavioral. We finally I get a gig to move back to New York. And we do everything we can to provide for him. We have a second kid who's a sweetheart. The stress

on my life, the stress on my wife culminated when I turned fifty years old. Drum roll, please. This is the big

Matt Gilhooly (17:31)
Yes. It's perfect.

Matt Ross (17:33)
this is the moment. I'm fifty years old. I'm having health issues.

Matt Gilhooly (17:39)
Because of stress or other things? Okay.

Matt Ross (17:41)
yeah, yeah,

the OCD anxiety, stress, fear, and you'll understand why in a second. But for the first time in my life,

I've got this metabolic disorder. I'm not sleeping. I am beyond anxious, don't know what to do about it. I have two brothers, older brothers that grew up in that same household with me. They're both lost to addiction. One suicidal.

The other one is just manic and intense. And they're both relying on me to be a caregiver. And now I've got a disabled son at home. I'm trying to be the grounding influence for my wife and my other child. And my brothers are breaking down around me, angry, and I don't know what to do. On top of that, we have all four of our parents dying and declining at the same time.

My father slow declined, f dying slowly from Parkinson's

heats, himself and everything in life, et cetera, et cetera. I sell the School of Rock to a private equity firm, and a year later, they replaced me. They wanted to bring in a team from McDonald's. I'm not gonna critique them now, but what do I know? I took the business from five units to fifty-five in three years with another fifty on the contract. But you know, when you sell a business.

It's now theirs and they have the

Matt Gilhooly (19:05)
Right.

Matt Ross (19:05)
right to build the team. So I knew that's what I was doing, but it was the recession in two thousand eight and nine. So we needed that funding to continue to fund

Matt Gilhooly (19:14)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (19:14)
growth.

Matt Gilhooly (19:15)
And it's just and it's another thing to just add to the overwhelming amount of things you already have going through your mind. Yeah.

Matt Ross (19:22)
So I'm out of a j I'm out of a job. And

I'm like, how did this happen? This thing I I left a career in radio where I was a senior executive, senior vice president of Clear Channel. I leave and now I'm out of a job at fifty. And it's

Matt Gilhooly (19:35)
And everyone needs me.

Matt Ross (19:37)
and everyone needs me. And I don't know what to do to get a good night's sleep and how to get the fear out of my brain. But to top it off, my sixteen year old son, Alex.

Had a full psychiatric breakdown, was institutionalized in Westchester County in a psych ward with drug-addicted teens and suicidal teens. And my son is strapped to a bed. He pulled a bunch of his hair out of his head. Talk about rock bottom. All

five of those occurred in my 50th year at the same time. That night I came home, my wife went into the bedroom, I went into the basement. We we couldn't verbalize.

Anything in that moment. And I sat there and I stared at the floor. And I'm like, Matt, is this my life? How did this happen? None of these problems were my cause. I

didn't cause any of them. Yet I'm 50, I'm broken, and I have no answers. And I had this idea. Well, I had this thought that popped in my head: are you gonna fold? Like, why don't I punch myself in the face when I'm down and then

You know, that's what you do maybe when you're from Queens and you're a street guy, and then and I'm like, No, I'm gonna grow. So the idea for grow or fold was born in that moment, but it was a mantra. I just said to myself, that moment, start tomorrow, whatever it is. Found a therapist, enrolled in Al Anon to help me figure out how to deal with my brothers.

Matt Gilhooly (21:10)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (21:11)
Unbelievably helpful. You know, they had diseases. I had no basis for this, I didn't understand it.

I just kept trying to rationally deal with them. And you're dealing

Matt Gilhooly (21:21)
Right. Well and

Matt Ross (21:22)
with

irrational addiction people who are off the grid, right?

Matt Gilhooly (21:26)
And

and subconsciously it's like there's j it can't whether this sounds bad or not, it becomes a burden on us as humans and I mean their family, but at the same time all these things can pile up and become really burdensome. And that whole

idea of are you gonna fold? I bet you that there is a high percentage of people that would willingly take the fold.

Matt Ross (21:51)
You know, it's interesting. Someone asked me once on a pad on a podcast, is it ever okay to fold? And my answer is no, but I don't know that everybody has the toolkit to do it in the moment, or the the sophistication, or the will to keep fighting. So I'm not critical of anyone. Because when you get to that stage and you know, you're this is what you do as a podcaster, you talk about people at that moment.

You know, if you don't have the capacity to do it and you don't reach out for help, then it's on you. Because help is available. It's available in numerous ways. I found an amazing therapist. She said to me one day, Matt, you know, everyone in your life's disabled. And I broke down and started crying because I never thought of it that way. I just thought like, I'm gonna continue to muscle up and help everyone.

All four of our parents had pretty much die, and my brothers are literally off the rails. My son. But what she said is, but your sons need you, and your wife needs you. And if you don't work on yourself, you won't be here for them. Meaning, I would have probably died or something and had a bad outcome. So the point of folding was a matter of life or death, maybe in some ways.

Matt Gilhooly (23:13)
Mm. Yeah.

Matt Ross (23:14)
And it gets that way for others too. And

I don't compare my story with anyone's, right? But, you know, I went to work, I shared with you. I'm an open book. I they prescribed a great SSRI, which calmed the noise.

I started sleeping. I started be able, I started being able to then responsibly set the wheels in motion to chip away different things. And the first thing was solving my son's problem. Because if my son

Had a bad outcome, I'm not sure I would have been able to go

Matt Gilhooly (23:49)
Fair. Yeah.

Matt Ross (23:50)
on. Two weeks later, we got him out of that place. Six months later, we got him into a residential school in Maryland. And we checked off a box because now we were not only making a bet that someone else could care for him, and we had to accept that we couldn't do it all ourselves. And these were for the most challenging teens.

On the spectrum, nonverbal. But the other thing we were betting is that Alex would find some independence

from us, that he would lean in on his own sixteen and seventeen year old resilience. He couldn't communicate this way, but maybe he would find a way to tap into another muscle. And you know what? It worked.

And when I started to go down there and visit him every two months, I would s I would go, My God, he's leaning in. I see him here. I see him playing basketball.

I see him going in the pool. I see him working in the hallways, sweeping and doing things, which were such unbelievable growth things. It said to me that somebody taught him these things. He valued those people enough to listen to them. And that he was calming down. We also got him on the right cocktail, which he needed to to calm himself down. But once I saw forward momentum in Alex,

The world started to just slow it down for me a little bit. Because go ahead, no.

Matt Gilhooly (25:12)
Hmm. Would you say that sorry. I I

was just thinking, would you say that this after this moment in the basement, it was a sense of both taking the reins, but also surrendering? Like was there a mixture

Matt Ross (25:26)
Thousand

percent. Yes, yes. And I had a couple other pieces that are actually in my book, Grow or Fold, but they also came down to the th some other mantras that I had. I had this mantra that we had there was a stool in my basement, three legged, and I said all three legs of my stool, well the three legs represent my personal life, my professional life, and purpose. And all three were broken. I had no sense. And the idea was if I went to work

Eventually I'd figure out my career. I had a pretty good track record. I needed to suspend that for the minute while I got into the crisis mode. I needed to move the car forward personally. Purpose, who knew? Maybe one day I'd find that mythical thing called purpose that would make my life X factor even more enjoyable. But that was such a down-the-road moment. And the other idea that I had.

and you talked about this a second ago, was I had an epiphany. And the epiphany was to treat myself, Matt, like I was a business. So if there's something I want your listeners to think about,

this idea of treating yourself like you're a business is so fundamentally important because it requires you to be objective, not emotional and subjective. Not live in the I can't do that or the anger zone.

Or the frustration zone. It's really about what do we do with great businesses? We create a vision for where we want to get to. We think about specific goals that are measured in time and certain measurable outcomes. And we start to chip away at the ones that are easier and the ones that are long term take longer. And I I set those goals in motion for myself and I started creating a tactical plan. And I said to myself, something that

Something that a therapist said to me one day, which I thought was subtle and brilliant. They said, think about this, Matt. What if you're sitting

across the room looking down on yourself and you're advising that guy what to do? What would you tell that guy to do? I'm like, God, I've been that guy professionally. I've mentored hundreds and hundreds of people. I've always been able to get them, people to think differently, think out of the box.

stop for a minute, pause, rank order, prioritize. Never did it for myself. I just stayed in motion Matt my whole life because I thought like maybe the boogeyman was chasing me. And if I stop, I have to now really systematize this thing that I'm just outrunning. But at 50 I couldn't outrun it anymore. I don't know if that sounds familiar as you talk to other people, but it really was a midlife

transformative moment. don't want to call it a crisis. I call it like my midlife moment, which was when everything was just working against me.

Matt Gilhooly (28:24)
Yeah. And it it got to a point where you there probably wasn't much else you could do without completely

Matt Ross (28:29)
No.

Matt Gilhooly (28:30)
deteriorating. I think there's something to be said. I think f a lot of people that I talk to, I think theoretically the idea of looking at yourself as a business and putting it like all of that makes sense. I think where the where it's hard for a lot of people is

That switch to like actually following through and getting out of because the spiral is so easy to stay in and it's comfortable and it's warm and cozy and all the pieces

Matt Ross (28:54)
Yes, yes. my God.

Matt Gilhooly (28:59)
that come with it. And really the the hard part is finding just enough strength in yourself to take

Matt Ross (29:06)
Yes.

Matt Gilhooly (29:07)
the first step. That's the hardest part, in my opinion, and from what I've heard from people.

Matt Ross (29:12)
Matt, you are teeing up so many things that I wrote about because as I reflected backward and wrote about this in the book, first of all, it's about taking personal responsibility and being self-aware. Those two things

we con ourselves into

Matt Gilhooly (29:26)
For sure.

Matt Ross (29:27)
thing into believing things that keep us in this dysfunctional zone where we are. I call it the dysfunctional safe zone.

I can make a list of 32 things that I think you need to do differently, and you'll tell me 32 reasons why you can't do any of them. But you just told me 30 reasons why you're unhappy with where you are, but you're unwilling to push yourself to try something. The dysfunctional safe zone, it feels safe just to not challenge myself to change. So accept knowing that change is really hard is something you have to accept, but not changing is worse.

And those those four elements are, I think, fundamentally important. But you know what's also important? Asking for help, Matt. You know, those

pieces that I just mentioned, taking personal responsibility, buildings, buildings, being self-aware, you know, asking for help. So if you said to me, hey Matt, I don't think everybody's prepared to treat themselves like a business, I would say you're right.

Matt Gilhooly (30:26)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (30:28)
My gift is I'm strategic to a false.

I can build a vision plan, seek a step-by-step sequential model on what to do. But I'm not great on execution. So there are other folks who are really good tactically at doing like the daily tasks, but can't build the master plan. Other folks are really great with people, but not. So what you need first and foremost is you need strategy. Companies hire chief strategy officers.

Or they hire consultants. So why do we think we have to have all the answers by ourselves? Because our ego gets in the way. We

Matt Gilhooly (31:09)
Society too.

Matt Ross (31:11)
society, we don't want to be vulnerable. We don't want to say, I don't know what to do, I'm broken, I'm I literally am at lost. And sometimes we don't have the money and resources and sophistication to or even the awareness to

Matt Gilhooly (31:23)
Or even the awareness. Like

Matt Ross (31:26)
to manage that process.

Matt Gilhooly (31:28)
Yeah. I mean, think of you

as a younger kid, the exposure to all these other things out in the world. At that time, you would have you had no idea, but then you sought self help books and you've, you know, you found your way. But I think there are some people that are so detached because of their circumstances that they're not even aware. And

I also think about like when you create a strategy for yourself, and this is me just assuming so.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but you've seen your past strategies be successful. it could be easier, not easy, easier for you to take a first step towards a plan that you created versus someone that has only seen what they have deemed, whether true or not, as failure. I think.

Matt Ross (32:14)
So, Matt,

MBA, 30 plus years leading teams, 20 plus years as a successful entrepreneur, no doubt. I have

Matt Gilhooly (32:23)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (32:24)
that hardwired into who I am,

right?

Matt Gilhooly (32:26)
Right.

Matt Ross (32:27)
but I never leaned on it for myself. I always applied it to my businesses. So treating myself like a business, I would tell everyone here, what does it mean to treat yourself like a business? Every business needs a great strategy.

Clearly defined goals and a plan to get there. If you can't do that, have someone help you. Right?

Matt Gilhooly (32:50)
I think that's the key. I think that

is awareness of your toolkit is more than you. Like you you can't you can't most of us can't do this by ourselves. Whether that's the tribe around us, whether that's experts around us that know more than us in a particular area and we're not ashamed to admit that they know more than us.

Matt Ross (33:12)
That's a key p k key piece right there. Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly (33:14)
Yeah. It's it's

but it's I mean, I think

of I mean I didn't my mom died when I was eight and I pushed down grief and I failed at grief and I pretended it didn't exist for like twenty years. And

Matt Ross (33:25)
Mm.

Matt Gilhooly (33:26)
so here I am in my thirties, then going I'm having another issue at work and so I'm like, Okay, well this issue at work is pointing me to a therapist. Thirty something years old. I knew what a therapist was. I knew

you know, like all the problems I was having, yet I just didn't have the trust that someone could help me with that. But the reason I went to a therapist for work was because I saw someone else at work had gone to a therapist about their work situation. And so there

was proof there. But the other things felt so so hard. Eventually it all worked together and worked out for me for my grief stuff. But it was really like seeing other people use their toolkit.

So in a way, people s reading your book or seeing how you went through it in hope, you know, we can hope that people out there reading it or hearing you on podcasts can go,

it worked for him. Maybe it could work for me.

Matt Ross (34:25)
And nothing's an overnight success. When I

Matt Gilhooly (34:27)
Well

Matt Ross (34:27)
talked about having these measurable goals, goal one, stabilize my son's health,

Matt Gilhooly (34:32)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (34:33)
get him to a place where he can be cared for, and we could feel like we've got a team supporting us. Goal two, work on myself to calm the noise in my brain, to be able to deal with my brothers with addictions, to advocate

for myself and my family, and to

work on the next stage of my career. That right there was 18 months, man.

I wasn't like built the next day, ready and willing to, you know, start over. I did though something irrational.

Matt Gilhooly (35:05)
That would be nice. Okay.

Matt Ross (35:09)
Here's the irrational thing.

I'm like six months now. Alex is starting to have a plan and I go, how come there's no cool art schools near me?

What that means, that means I've got a business assignment. I'm going to start an art school after doing all the research. Took six classes, read 30 books, realized that I can do

school rock art. And one river school today is 15 schools in six states, and we're franchising and expanding. And we've got all these beautiful things that we're doing. We've changed the lives of thousands of kids through art and design education. And

There was no basis for me to do this in the moment.

Or was there?

Matt Gilhooly (35:51)
was there. I see it as w that was the spark of purpose. I mean

Matt Ross (35:56)
Matt, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Matt Gilhooly (35:58)
But we are

I I I think you're I mean it's sadly unique in this way that you leaned into that and did that. Because I don't

Matt Ross (36:06)
Yes.

Matt Gilhooly (36:07)
think we're taught to when that spark hits, when that idea you can't get out of your head happens,

Matt Ross (36:13)
Yes.

Matt Gilhooly (36:13)
we're not taught to like lean in because

Matt Ross (36:16)
So here's

the story. And again, in my book, I I'm one of my original investors

in School of Rock agrees to do a meeting with me. He's setting me up for all these meetings, see C suite jobs.

And then at the end of the lunch, he goes, What else you got going on? And I and I'm just blurred out. You know, I'm thinking about maybe opening an art school. I just realized that there's nothing cool like that for like School of Rock for art, particularly in my neighborhood near Englewood, New Jersey.

And he goes, that's great, tell me more. And I start frothing from the mouth with all these ideas. And then we finish our lunch. And he goes, by the way, if if you want to do that art school thing, I'm in and I'm driving home. And you know what that means? That means you're gonna write me check. And now I'm like, uh-oh, I think I'm gonna do this. So what I had to do, I had to go find a couple consulting jobs so I can build one.

Matt Gilhooly (37:09)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (37:09)
Just one, a tester to see.

If I'm good at it, if I like it. Yeah, just one. Just one restaurant, Matt. One taco

stand.

Matt Gilhooly (37:13)
Just one. Just one. Yeah, that's it.

Matt Ross (37:20)
And to see if my tacos were the if there was demand in the market for the tacos, for the art school.

Matt Gilhooly (37:26)
Right.

Matt Ross (37:27)
So one river school, one river from New York City in New Jersey. And it turned out to be a game changer. And to your point, and very astute, I found my purpose through this. I realized that creative education.

And teaching people to invest in their own creative growth was the deciding difference at the School of Rock venture for me. It wasn't just this cool brand where we were teaching kids to play the Rolling Stone, it was the look on their faces. And the look on my employees' faces, these touring musicians who found their best career ever teaching music to kids. And I'm like, God, if I can do that in the art space. And then I did it. We opened two more a few years later.

And I'm like, okay, we've got a test case now of three. We're gonna do this. And I realized that helping people find their magic and their creative inspiration is my reason for being,

which is the which is how you define purpose, your reason

Matt Gilhooly (38:26)
Hmm.

Matt Ross (38:27)
for being.

Matt Gilhooly (38:28)
Yeah. I mean, and not to say that any of that was easy, because it probably wasn't,

Matt Ross (38:33)
It wasn't. It was a grind.

Matt Gilhooly (38:35)
but as you were doing that, as you were kind of leaning into this this purpose now, did you find more space for the other things in your life? Not in a actual time, but okay.

Matt Ross (38:47)
totally. Because

I was empowered also because I'm working for myself. Even when I was the CEO of School of Rock, I was an investor, but there was a board. It wasn't

Matt Gilhooly (38:55)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (38:56)
my business. I was running that business. I was the steward of that business. But now, as opposed to me making another bet going to work for someone else, I finally decided to bet on my own intellectual property, my own skill set. And they felt this term agency, I

Matt Gilhooly (39:13)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (39:13)
I now I was like

I've got belief in myself. I can do this. I've earned the right to put some money at risk on myself and

Matt Gilhooly (39:21)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (39:22)
to do this and to see if I could change lives through art education. And and as soon as I started to see some momentum, man, it just built my my self-esteem, my confidence, and it allowed me to continue to double down on some other things that maybe I was on the fence about too, because now I was getting healthier.

Mentally, spiritually, my family was getting healthier. And you know, I did have one other thing that I do want to point out to your audience. I was okay financially.

So, and I say that because if you if I went through all that trauma and I was almost bankrupt or literally couldn't pay the bills, so the work that I did for the previous 30 years professionally, I saved some money and I

owned a home and I had a couple investments. So so I had played the long game in a very disciplined way, building a little bit of a nest egg. And that allowed me to then be entrepreneur at 50 at one river school. If I didn't have that, I probably would have gone and taken another job. But now it was just like, what's the worst case scenario? I lose a few bucks and I learn and I try something, I'll go back to work for someone else. That that

You know, crossing the road for people, sometimes it's harder to be a mid midlife entrepreneur comes with a different

kind of risk because you're closer to retirement and closer to your earning capacity declining, which is what happens.

Matt Gilhooly (40:51)
Fair. Yeah.

Matt Ross (40:52)
So, but I was I was confident and sure it was the right thing for me.

Matt Gilhooly (40:57)
Yeah. Do you think that this experience of like hitting that wall and your son, you know, going through what he went through and what you guys went through with that and then getting him into another place, does this like make do you think it like makes you a better father, a better everything? Do you see like do you see it as this I don't know, I hate saying this, but I'm gonna say it anyway, like the this moment made you better, even though it sucked.

Matt Ross (41:24)
You know,

it's just so funny that the word everything followed. Does it make me better? Everything. Everything is the answer.

Matt Gilhooly (41:29)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (41:31)
Because I feel like I'm playing with the house's money now. I mean, this is

I'm 65, Matt. So my book Grow or Fold, Transform Yourself in Midlife and Beyond. I realized that there's a book that a guy named Marshall Goldsmith wrote called What Got You Here, Won't Get You There. And it's a business book, but I'll use it as a metaphor for myself.

All my behaviors leading up to 50 were going to either help me, I was going to decline if I didn't change those behaviors. Too intense, too angry, too impulsive, drinking too much, you know, like trying to be a steward for myself and my family through all these crises. But I was dealing with so much stress, those things were natural because I didn't I didn't even know that.

I could change those things because I had so much stuff to do. Now I took a long

view at where I wanted to be when I was 60. That was part of my plan. Like literally, can I close my eyes and dream at 60 years old what I want my life life to look for, look like? Well, guess what happened? We went into COVID and I was on my way. But I had the muscle to get through that because God almighty, I started writing this book in 2018.

'Cause I was really feeling better than I ever felt. So it changed everything. I

Matt Gilhooly (42:54)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (42:55)
hate to w I mentioned purpose. People go, I don't want to hear about this purpose thing anymore. You know, the reason why the defined purpose was because I study longevity now, and everything I read says if you know your purpose, chances

Matt Gilhooly (43:08)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (43:09)
are you'll be more fulfilled, happier, healthier, less cortisol, sleep better, right? But the the other part to that also is, you know.

Reflecting back on how I got there, gratitude, another often overused term. But I have it throughout my heart and soul right now, because I know

the journey I was on and I know the paths that I could have gone. And the fact that I made the right choices,

people, in process, and ideas in myself, and took the slower, longer road.

reinvented myself over a decade, not over a day, week, or month, right? One of the biggest, quickest ways to failing is not having real real time, real time, like accurate time measured into your goals. Like, can you do this in a week? No, it's gonna take two years. And I think people put too much pressure because they they want the noise to stop. They

Matt Gilhooly (44:13)
yeah.

Matt Ross (44:14)
want the frustration to go away.

My wife is going through some stuff right now, some health issues, and they're not life or death. She had a minor surgery,

and it turned out to be more than just that. And I said to her, She's like, I feel terrible. And it was like two, three weeks after the surgery. I said, honey, 90 days. 90 days, six months, girl. And I could just see her feeling deflated. I just want to feel better. I could see that look on

Matt Gilhooly (44:36)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Matt Ross (44:39)
her face. And I was there with different situations, physically and mentally. I said, honey.

Why would it be sooner? You've got to go to sleep some nights going, I feel shittier today than yesterday, but you're healing. I know it, and you know it, and the doctors tell you.

Matt Gilhooly (44:52)
Yeah. Right.

Matt Ross (44:55)
So, but we all want to feel and see sustaining change sometimes faster than it's worth than it's possible.

Matt Gilhooly (45:04)
Yeah.

Well, I think you know you couldn't have the whole even the gym analogy in which like you are getting stronger, you are doing this, that or the other, but it takes a while for you to then look back at that before picture and go, I didn't realize that all these little incremental things that I did along the way made

such a big thing. You know, when you were saying that I was curious of the you know, in your forties and you were doing all these things, did you feel like you had it together?

Like did you feel

Matt Ross (45:33)
So

Matt Gilhooly (45:34)
like you were you were doing doing good for yourself and everyone?

Matt Ross (45:37)
Let

me share. I I had made, I had built businesses in the media space where I created a few billion dollars in market value for my companies. I was undoubtedly a success. That lent itself to a lot of personal pride. And I had spent the 20 years working on 20 plus years working on my professional toolkit, but my persona was so tied to my

professional sensibility,

right? And then I pivoted at 45 and invested in the School of Rock and kicked some kicked ass with that. Like literally

grew the business. And here I am.

And then all these so so yes, I always felt a sense of pride in where I got to, but I never really saw the potential for this cataclysmic sequence of things to occur.

'Cause I was always able to put out the fires onesie-twosies,

Matt Gilhooly (46:34)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (46:35)
you know, one here, one there. My brothers were always off the reservation. I never thought they were gonna hit a crescendo like that. I never thought our parents would all decline at the same time, and my son would have a full-on psychotic breakdown. And I think part of the challenge is building the toolkit to deal with the unknown. But my toolkit was built for

Building and operating intense businesses that required me in real time to be making

hundreds of decisions in real time weekly without that depth of calm that you would need to solve the even more critical personal challenges that nobody could help you with if you're not gonna dig in on your own. And I and I had a team and I built good teams in business.

Matt Gilhooly (47:24)
Yeah. So you look at well, right, yeah. Well,

yeah, and a lot of it's tied to that success metric. Whereas at home it's hard, you know, in family life, there's like what does that look like? And I'm sure it's especially hard when you don't know, you know, when your son was born and and diagnosed, like there wasn't a lot of information out there. And then I could imagine sorry if I'm imagining wrong, but there are probably moments in that journey with your son where you were like, Am I doing this right? Am I

A good parent and you know, all these things that come along with it that are natural for humans to think about. And so like you can

Matt Ross (48:00)
Of course.

Matt Gilhooly (48:01)
prepare for that. But do you think if all those things didn't happen at once, you would be where you are now?

Matt Ross (48:07)
No.

Matt Gilhooly (48:08)
Okay.

Matt Ross (48:09)
I think I'm infinitely better.

Matt Gilhooly (48:12)
'Cause you wouldn't have hit like a a wall per se. You would have just kept putting out the little fires here and there.

Matt Ross (48:17)
We develop

we develop bad habits, but if you're hardworking and talented and you have a what we'll call a recovering recurring success formula, you don't always work on those bad habits. Those bad habits

Matt Gilhooly (48:32)
No?

Matt Ross (48:33)
get exposed when shit happens, but they would have had a more ulterior effect on my health, probably.

I wasn't an alcoholic, Matt, but I probably drank way too much.

Matt Gilhooly (48:48)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (48:49)
A lot of it socially putting out the intensity fire that I had to have to manage

hundreds of people in the media business and billion dollar brands at the time. and you know, I like to have fun. And I would mm go fast and go hard and travel and

You know, try and squeeze a lot of joy out of life. And I didn't know how to give myself solace when I wasn't doing well. I would beat the shit out of myself. I I literally was that guy. I could have nine successes and one failure, do one thing wrong, and I would lose sleep because I how dare I not do make that silly mistake. I don't know if you know people like that or if you're like that, but I didn't ever treat myself like that.

properly. I had a therapist say to me once, why don't you try and be kind to

yourself for once? I'm like, what are you talking about? Who's kind to themselves? Because I just kept thinking, if I just run faster, run harder,

Matt Gilhooly (49:53)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (49:54)
produce more, I will be successful. And my whole measure was this professional success. And I was a good guy who treated people well. I I never asked anyone for much

But I never really built the muscle to sanity tests would my was my behavior scalable over a lifetime. And it and it became clear that it wasn't, that what got you here won't get you there. That toolkit

Matt Gilhooly (50:19)
Hmm. Yeah.

Matt Ross (50:22)
that I built that served me in the media business in the eighties and nineties wasn't gonna allow me to be happy, healthy, and live long,

Matt Gilhooly (50:30)
Yeah.

Matt Ross (50:31)
balanced, and to feel like I've figured out what life's about.

Matt Gilhooly (50:37)
What do you think the biggest difference of you in twenty twenty six and you of two thousand one? don't know what happened then. Before.

Matt Ross (50:46)
No, it's a fair question.

and and I think maturity is a is kind of a weird term, right? But like I have this body of work now.

So so twenty five years ago, when I was forty, I wasn't fully developed. I tell people that it probably took me into my mid fifties to figure out really what I wanted out of life, Matt. I

Matt Gilhooly (51:12)
Like personally.

Matt Ross (51:14)
Yeah, I never wanted to be a billionaire. I never wanted to be the richest guy in the room. I wanted to have enough money to not worry about money. But what were the other things? I realize now that I've got a gift to help people.

And sharing my story was probably the most cathartic thing I've ever did other than helping my family get past the trauma of Alex, helping my younger kid grow successfully.

Helping

my wife through that. But this was like the eye-opening experience that like

life is so much more than just your professional journey. It's

having peace with where you've come from, how you got there, the bumps in the road. Everyone says to me, well, all really smart people say, without your failures, you wouldn't be who you are. But I never realized it that much.

Part of those failures were lack of mentoring, part of them were bare choices, part of them were circumstances, and part of them was me running through some stop signs and and maybe being a little too type A at moments.

Matt Gilhooly (52:23)
Yeah.

I I also think there's something to be said about your generation as well, and being a guy in your generation. They're

Matt Ross (52:32)
You know,

it's funny you say that because I'm on the younger end of the baby boom generation. I'm born in 61, and the youngest boomers are born in 64. So I almost straddled the fence between Gen X and Boomers. But because I was at the younger end, in the C-suite and the executive suite, there were always a bunch of often guys who were five and seven years older than me. And for me to grow, I always had to, I had to be so good, I had to leapfrog them.

'Cause they kept telling me stay in your lane, young man, 'cause they wanted to kill me.

Matt Gilhooly (53:04)
But they were probably

all business and not personal development.

Matt Ross (53:09)
Totally. And it was

bureaucratic and I'm working at CBS and Viacom and these big

Matt Gilhooly (53:13)
Right.

Matt Ross (53:14)
companies. And I'm just like, No, the best idea wins, man. I don't wanna stay in my lane. I wanna innovate and do great work. But they wanted to keep their job and they wanted people around them who were just gonna do what they said and I wasn't

Matt Gilhooly (53:29)
Yeah. But I

Matt Ross (53:30)
built that way.

Matt Gilhooly (53:31)
I don't know, I see you as someone different than maybe some of your counterparts because you do have such an awareness of person, of human. Whereas a lot of I mean, I'm my dad's older than you, but you know, there's a lot of old fashion in him and and

Matt Ross (53:50)
Yeah.

Matt Gilhooly (53:50)
the way that the and and a lot of

Later in life he was able to tap in more to that vulnerability and the the things that you're talking about now, but I don't think it's that common. So I think there's this nice piece of it too.

Matt Ross (54:01)
Yeah. I think it's a combination of environment

and genetic.

I'll

share something with your audience. There's the Gallup organization operates this business called Clifton and Clifton Strengths as a personality profile that's available to anyone. And it kind of changed my life when I did it at thirty, 'cause it showed me in rank order priority thirty-four traits that I basically have from best to worst. And it gave me a sense

Am I really good with people? Am I somebody who likes to influence others? Am I good at executing or strategy? And once I realized how I was naturally wired, I figured out also, Matt, that I could never do anything. I could never be successful in any endeavor in life if I didn't surround myself around the right people and a give them a great place to work or treat

family and friends really well.

love them up, care about them, be there for them. And then I get a lot out of it. And I think that's ultimately what the rewards of life are about. It's not about the dough. It's about the experiences and the people you're on your journey with. But I think like if you th if you think about everyone who listens to this, if if they basically really, really understand themselves, and I mentioned self-awareness first.

What are you best at? What are you worst at? What's somewhere in the middle? And what are the things you want to change?

And if you go, I'm good with everything, then okay, cool. I was never good with anything.

Matt Gilhooly (55:41)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (55:41)
So I was always, the one last piece is very driven to continue to grow and learn and figure out, you know, what the holy grail looked like. But I never

Matt Gilhooly (55:51)
Right.

Matt Ross (55:52)
realized it that I would have to build a toolkit to deal with such profound challenge. And because I was forced to do that.

Now I'm in such a great position because I have I'll have great challenges one day again. here's another book for your for your audience. The Body Keeps the Score.

Matt Gilhooly (56:13)
Yeah, lots of people talk about that.

Matt Ross (56:15)
Game changer for me. Game changer. When people go through trauma, those who have the best outcomes, what did they do? That's what that book teaches you. So I'm reading that

book as I'm going through my journeys, and I'm like, okay, I got it. I'm gonna do what this genius tells me to do. Because how do I know how to overcome trauma? I'm in trauma right now. You know, I

Matt Gilhooly (56:38)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (56:40)
got all these ideas of what I think I need to do, but when I'm

Down the road feeling great about everything. There's something else. So basically what it is is when you get to the when you're going through it, what are the learnings? What are the key takeaways? And when you get past problems, what did you learn from that experience to help you the next time you have a similar challenge?

Matt Gilhooly (57:05)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (57:06)
Because problems sometimes just they look differently, but they're quite similar. And your toolkit

That helps you sometimes solve problem A can also be used on problem B if you stay calm in the moment.

Matt Gilhooly (57:20)
Yeah. Well, I mean, it's a challenge, but you're up for it. I mean, I think as humans, we if we want to evolve, we have to think about those things. We have to be self-aware. We have to

Matt Ross (57:30)
Yes.

Matt Gilhooly (57:31)
but it doesn't mean that it's easy. It doesn't mean that it's gonna be on the timetable you think it should be on. It could very well happen when it needs to happen. In in your circumstance, all those things kinda had to come to a head for you to kind of evolve into this version of you.

For me, I had to go through 20 years of grief to figure out how to get through it so that I could be this version of me. did I want to do it? No. Did you want to go through all those things? No. But we did. So here we are. We take those next steps. So I appreciate you sharing your story in this way. I think it's so fascinating. And, you know, all the similarities, yet on the surface, the wild differences in our experiences, but how much we all can relate to.

these feelings. this the show always blows my mind, just just have these conversations. Yeah.

Matt Ross (58:22)
I would love to share one last thing if you

because I've been talking a lot about building the toolkit and the plan and the strategy. There's one other thing that people have to think about. They have to invest in their pure growth. What does that mean? So you could have a plan and you can execute, but how do you continue to get smarter? I just mentioned about this book and some other tools, the Clifton Strength. So you can tell, like I told you, I'm the self-help nerd, right? But

I think there's three aspects to growth. Functional growth, emotional growth, and creative growth. And we kind of know what functional growth is. Do Pilates and eat well. Sleep right, right? All this but the basic stuff you read about every day. Emotional growth. How do you build better relationships? How do you be kinder to yourself? Things that are sometimes a little bit more nuanced. The X factor is creative growth.

Because if we want to age successfully, we need to continue to build neuroplasticity and help our

Matt Gilhooly (59:21)
Hm. Right.

Matt Ross (59:23)
brain continue to evolve. And so it's exercise for the brain. And if I asked your audience, when was the last time you did something creative or took a cool creative class, I bet 85% say they haven't done anything since they're like 14 or 16.

Matt Gilhooly (59:36)
Right. Yeah.

Matt Ross (59:37)
Right? We lived in a society when I grew up in the 60s and 70s, nobody jogged, nobody went to the gym.

And then one day they figured out this is all good for your physical health. Well, I'm suggesting that creative growth is really important for brain development as we age, and

Matt Gilhooly (59:54)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (59:55)
it helps to create that neuroplasticity

that allows us to continue to be better at executing on all of our daily challenges. So I challenge your audience to go out and try some things for the joy of it first, for the fun of it. Don't look for like to do some things creative that it's going to have this massive new effect.

But maybe you through play and doing some things, you just might find something that creates a new opportunity to lean into what makes us human

Matt Gilhooly (1:00:24)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Ross (1:00:25)
and what makes us different from any other animal in the animal kingdom. Language and creative thinking. Those

Matt Gilhooly (1:00:29)
Right. Yep.

Matt Ross (1:00:31)
are the two.

Matt Gilhooly (1:00:32)
I love it. I think it I mean, you're not wrong.

Matt Ross (1:00:37)
And you've got a podcast and it's a creative that's a creative assignment. It's what it is.

Matt Gilhooly (1:00:39)
This is what we do yeah. I mean, never would have

happened for all if it wasn't for all of my experiences. So

Matt Ross (1:00:46)
And

just so you know, I practice what I preach. I wrote a book. Last

night I took an improv comedy class. I'm in week six. I'm taking a cabaret singing class, man. I went back to my roots, which was I was this quirky creative kid that got no fuel. And now I'm just trying to put more joy into my life, which is really important.

Matt Gilhooly (1:01:07)
Yeah, totally. So speaking of your book, if if people hear your story and they want to connect with you or reach out to you or share part of their story.

Matt Ross (1:01:13)
Well, if they go to Matt Ross,

Matt Ross dot com, they by the way, they'll see Mel

Robbins endorsed my book.

And Jack Canfield and Marshall Goldsmith. They could find it on Amazon. And if they want to hear this the golden tones of Matt Ross, there's a beautiful audiobook that they could also listen to. So

Matt Gilhooly (1:01:32)
Perfect. Yeah. And

how do you feel if someone hears part of your story and something resonates with them and they've never shared their story with someone, but they feel compelled to reach out and just say, Hey, this is how Okay. Perfect.

Matt Ross (1:01:41)
Write me personally, Matt at Matt Ross.com.

I'm all in on putting good out into the world and helping people think through their challenges. I never tell anybody what to do, Matt. I tell them how to think through what they're going through to create perhaps a plan that might fit their needs. And I think that's the difference. I think it's really about facilitation. I don't get paid to do this. I just love to help people.

Matt Gilhooly (1:02:08)
Mm-hmm. Right. Same.

Same. So well, thank you for coming on this journey and going wherever this conversation went. I think it went exactly where it was supposed to go, but maybe and it maybe because neither of us planned it.

Matt Ross (1:02:22)
There you go. Thank you, Matt. And by the way, I love your name.

Matt Gilhooly (1:02:25)
It's this very unique name. Not many people had it in

Matt Ross (1:02:27)
Ha ha ha

Matt Gilhooly (1:02:29)
at least in the eighties when I was born. So

Matt Ross (1:02:31)
Ha ha.

Matt Gilhooly (1:02:32)
anyway, thank you for being a part of this. Thank you everyone for listening. And I'm gonna say goodbye. I'll be back in a couple of days with a brand new episode. And thanks, Matt, for being a part of this.