021: Executive Transformation in Action: How Matt Doan Redefined Success and Balance

Matt Doan [00:00:00]:

Think three, five years into the future, paint that picture for yourself. What's time freedom, financial freedom, all those characteristics look like when you close your eyes and you just get so excited about what that is. Then think about how that version of you who's living that life into the future, think, speak, act? What are they doing? Take those things and then bring that into the now. What are they saying yes to? What are they saying no to? What are they tolerating? What are they not tolerating? Thinking out the latest research in psychology and neuroscience. And how do you program your mind to become a new identity now? Because it's identity that pulls you forward.

Christopher Nelson [00:00:38]:

Welcome to Tech Careers and Money Talk. My name is Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years. And after climbing my way to the C suite, working for three companies that have been through IPO and investing my way to financial independence, I'm here to share with you everything that I've learned and introduce you to people that can help you on the journey. Today I'm excited to introduce you to Matt Doan. Matt Doan runs uncaged life design. He helps executives who feel stuck in their day to day job deal with burnout today while staying in their jobs. I think this is so important. It's no secret that working in technology, while we get this front row seat to the future, it can easily lead to a 24 x seven lifestyle and burnout. Matt is going to give us some solutions today to be able to address that. I'm going to share some of the experiences that I had dealing with that later in my career as well. That's going to be in the second half of the show, so stick around for that. In the first half of the show, we're going to walk through Matt's experience as a high flying management consultant, how he burned out hard and how he fixed it. I'm so excited to introduce you to Matt. Let's go talk to him right now. Okay. Welcome to today's episode of Tech Careers and Money Talk. I am so excited to introduce you to Matt Doan, a personal friend of mine and also a really successful guy. I mean, when you look at his track record, 13 years in management consulting at some of the highest levels, I'm talking about a director at Booze, Alan Hamilton, we're talking about a principal at the Boston Consulting Group. But his story didn't end there. It actually ended with some very stressful incidents, some burnout. And then I think what's amazing is he ran experiments on himself. And I have to say, I love people who experiment on themselves.

Matt Doan [00:02:36]:

Right.

Christopher Nelson [00:02:36]:

Tim Ferriss and some of us that follow that guy, and he was able to decrease the negative impacts of work while getting promoted and increasing his lifestyle. Now he's teaching this at Uncaged Life Design, where he helps transform executives just like you into people who can perform this way at work. I'm so excited to introduce everybody to Matt Dunn.

Matt Doan [00:03:00]:

Christopher, happy to be here, man. Let's have some fun for the audience.

Christopher Nelson [00:03:04]:

Yeah, let's have some fun for people and let's dig in. And I want to start everybody off with your story. I think it starts like many of us, you got a great education and then what really launched you into the management consulting track.

Matt Doan [00:03:20]:

Yeah. So I came out well, let me go backtrack. First off, I grew up in a very conservative religious, military household, right, where you got the idea of learning the rules. I remember even early in church, I grew up in the Catholic Church and it was like I was raised to be God fearing. So don't mess up with the rules. Follow the rules or bad stuff happens to you. So this is conditioned very early as I'm exiting high school. It's basically like getting into a good school because a good school creates a good path. A good path creates a good job and a good life. So this is what subconsciously is going through my head. That's the roots of it all. So I got out of college in the mid two thousands and really after the.com bubble burst, it receded and things were good again in the tech world. Jumped into technology and cybersecurity consulting in the management consulting space. And it was a good time, right, getting back into that world. Things were looking good in tech and found a lot of value where I was able to plug in as a consultant, learn a lot of interesting technical skills, management and leadership skills. Started to find my footing as far as what I was good at, what I was interested in, and very quickly started rising up the ranks in this career field. At the same time, Christopher, I had a lot of, quote, success personally. Got married at 24, ended up having three kids by the time I was 28 and bought a house and all these things had the two cars. Everyone would tell me, Matt, you are living the American dream. I'm like, Box checked, box checked, box checked. This feels good. Ego is stroked. I am in a good spot. This is what I'm telling myself as I'm making this fast rise in my 20s, right? All the while my wife at the time was raising our three kids. The demanding job pulls me on the road. Always places, always going, different countries, serving clients. This is what was required. I looked up at my bosses, this is what success looked like. This is what was role modeled for me. I knew nothing different, so I felt I had to do the same. And in essence, Christopher, it got to the point where my job became my identity. I couldn't separate the two. I could never unplug. And I told myself, this is for my family, this is for them. In reality, I wasn't giving any attention to them because I was sacrificing everything at work and telling myself I was for them. There was a huge disconnection. And that all got to the point very soon where things started to fall apart. But I'll pause there and see if you have any thoughts there.

Christopher Nelson [00:05:49]:

Yeah, because I think I want to walk through because the journey that you were on is most of us right. I can't speak for myself because I deviated early. I have a whole crooked path story. But I saw so many people like yourself where you got into a good school, then you got into the job. And so I want to try and tease out for people what were some of the things that were really good, that were happening that gave you momentum. But then also in hindsight, where did you see yourself all of a sudden starting to message to yourself in ways that were starting to create a rift between you and your family?

Matt Doan [00:06:31]:

There were a lot of goods early in my career that first decade. I really found a ton of value and I still value it today. Those experiences, the ability to plug into meaningful missions, whether it was defense and intelligence, community stuff, whether it was private corporations doing meaningful missions like working up to boards of directors, these were very important things in my mind. And those experiences were only accessible through a corporate environment. The only way I couldn't achieve that as Matt in his mid to late 20s, on his own, completely inaccessible and that idea of plugging in and learning leadership skills, managing teams, where else would I get that other than an environment like that? So I'm immensely thankful. It created a foundation for me, skills wise, mindset wise, financially, of course, it created a good cushion for my family, a substance to be comfortable and build off of. I'm very thankful for that. But as time wound, after I built that foundation, I kept going and I kept going again because I thought that's what I had to do. And I swear, within a year, things just hit a wall. I remember being in Munich, Germany for a meeting and I was in my gold plated hotel room. I remember it very clearly. And I just had this hyperventilation thing happen to me where I couldn't breathe and I fell to my knees because I realized I was in Germany for a one day trip and I was missing my baby son's birthday for that work meeting that I didn't even need to be on. I felt it was just keeping up with the Joneses at work and I was like, what the hell am I doing right here? What am I trading off? And that kick started over the year. Literally. Within a few weeks, I learned my dad had brain cancer. He passed away in 90 days. I had to reconcile with not having the relationship I always thought I would have time to have with him. Never built it. That brought a lot of mortality thoughts. To my mind, life is short. My wife and I's relationship fell apart. The work at home thing, like the tension from work was terrible. We ended up getting divorced, which in turn prevented me from seeing my kids. So I only saw them four days a month and it still is to this day, a decade later, that same scenario, which is a very long term price to pay. My mental and physical health was terrible. I was living on anxiety medications, just trying to get through. I was in therapy all the time. This all happened within one year. And what I had found I have language for this now, Christopher, is that I had given so much of my life to corporate and I was trapped in the corporate cage. Now the corporate cage is a mental state that we say yes to. We opt in. It does not happen to us. We opt into that cage, we step into it. What I didn't realize the whole time is that the door was wide open, but I chose to stay in it. And that's really hard to admit, knowing the cost that transpired because of it. But that was a turning point in my life where I had to say I need to rebuild it's, do or die for my kid's sake especially how do I deal with this work environment? I need the paycheck, the benefits to support these three kids. I need to be a father that makes them proud, that actually creates a life for them. So I had to rebuild from scratch right there. And that led to what you're talking about was me experimenting on myself to create a new relationship in a demanding corporate world. I got to the point of taking what was an average of eleven hour workdays, running some different scenarios, being inspired by Tim Ferriss, some of my coaches and mentors. And I converted that down to five hour work days, quite quietly, right? And I didn't really tell anybody about it because it was for survival reasons. And I can go into lots of tactics and strategies and what that is, but I need to live, to breathe, to be there for my kids while keeping the paycheck. And I created a whole new relationship with work at that moment.

Christopher Nelson [00:10:28]:

And we're definitely going to get into some of those details in tactics and strategies shortly. So I worked in consulting for the first eight years of my career. And one of the things that I found there is that a lot of the people in management, in leadership, they're walking around in the cage also. And I didn't see there was occasionally I can remember now that you and I have had conversations and this whole framework. I could remember seeing some people in leadership that maybe had what people would call cush roles or they're at a plateau that now, I think, did they have it figured out? Did they have this balance? And so I'm just trying to understand, did you see people or did you have mentors where you worked that were understanding this or was this truly something solo that you had to go on?

Matt Doan [00:11:29]:

I had a few people that inspired me and they were the anomalies, very much like the one percenters of the environment which looked like you could see them physically healthy, mentally emotionally calm, feeling joyous. They seemed to have great family life and they weren't always plugged in at work, they weren't always accessible. And it was mostly like VP, senior Vice President, managing Director level people that took advantage of their authority and seniority and just created a situation for themselves that worked for them and the life they were trying to live. And I remember, why can't I do that even if I'm not quite at that level, why can't I be assertive and do something similar? It's making it work for them. And then of course, it's working with mentors and coaches. Like, how do you formalize this? How do you bring real structure? So between that inspiration of the 1% executive that had control of their situation and the few mentors I had that helped me figure it out structurally, that's where I got the inspiration from because I felt it was possible and I didn't need to be a super senior C suite person in order to make it real.

Christopher Nelson [00:12:40]:

That's right. And I want to say like one of the things I think it's really important is to help people identify the bars in the cage because it's really interesting how it happens. And even just in this conversation, I'm reflecting back to, you think you get out of college and all of a sudden you have a life. Like, you go to work, then you come home and you want to go out and you're an individual contributor, you don't have a lot of responsibilities. And I think the bars start getting put in place. And I remember when all of a sudden I wanted to go for a promotion and then it was, okay, you're going to have to be more available. That was where I saw, all of a sudden bar number one started coming. Oh, what does that mean? I may need to call you on my drive home and close off on some things, or can you come in a little early for this? And they start painting it with really sort of faint lines. They start then putting a little bit more cheese out there so they start walking you into the box. And this is where I think these conversations that we're having and I had Maurice on a bit ago, and I know we're all mutual friends now that we've been in the same room at the same time. When that happens, watch out for people. But I think they draw it with this lure of more responsibility, which I think we want. Like, I want to be able to lead teams, I want to be able to deliver more impact. But then they start fuzzing these lines up that start leading us into the cage. What are other things in bars that we see? Because I want people to be able to start identifying where they are in the cage and where they can literally walk out today.

Matt Doan [00:14:32]:

Yeah. Wow. So there's all sorts of bits of cheese they dangle, right? Incentives, titles, seniority compensation of different types. Right. And all sorts of different compensation models. So they allure you here, they bring you in. In reality, what's happening, for the most part, is they're trying to make their lives easier by divesting some of the responsibilities onto your plate, things they likely don't want. They're going to say, I'm going to need to call you on my evening ride home, because that's most convenient for them. It's not what's best for you, but it's like, this is what makes my life easier. You just see what's happening. It's like everyone here, all of us, are just trying to make our lives a little bit easier, a little bit more free, a little bit more to our own liking.

Christopher Nelson [00:15:11]:

That's right.

Matt Doan [00:15:11]:

And it happens in the corporate world. Right. Like, how do I make my life easier? By giving you some of what I used to do that I don't like anymore. And you got to look for all the things that you're trading off, like by accepting X. What am I trading off? What am I giving up? Everything in life is a series of trade offs. By saying yes to something, I'm having to say no to so much else. By saying yes to the role and compensation, I'm saying no to evening time with my family. I'm saying no to my personal health, my mental time, my ability to learn, reflect, meditate, exercise, whatever it is. I'm saying no to those things and I just want people to be conscious of it. But then, tactically speaking, what does it show up on as a day to day basis? Well, 08:00, a.m. Stand ups, 05:00 p.m. Stand downs, town hall meetings, extracurricular things that feel smart. You have to show up and do cocktails in the evenings. You have a project that seems good at the surface levels, like someone's pitching you on it, but underneath it's absolute crap and you're not a good fit at all. And it's going to stress you out because your skill set and interests don't align whatsoever. Right? So all these bars start coming up to use your language there, and it takes a very brave soul to critically analyze by saying yes to this trip, saying yes to this role, by saying yes to 08:00 A.m. Stand ups every single morning. What am I giving up? I'm giving up my energy, my family time, my creativity, space to build something of my own, all sorts of things that we're giving up. So we have to take this brave choice to say like, no, that is purely optional. No, that does not contribute to the career and life I want. And we got to have a life design we're aiming towards overall so we know where we're pointing. But I mean, once you start saying no to stuff that's truly optional and you only say yes to the corporate stuff, that really moves the needle in a way that you want it to move is good. There's lots of strategies and tactics. But I'll give you one example right now. Look up vertically at your management chain, your boss and your boss's boss, and you understand what they're rewarded for, what their incentives are, particularly what gets them more money. Okay, let's be very straight to the point. Everyone wants more money. At the end of the day, that's where we're working jobs we don't like. So in that state, you gotta ask yourself, how do I make my boss financially successful? How does his or her boss's boss get more financially successful? Do the dirty work to understand what they're rewarded for. Go talk to them. Go find out indirectly through peers, learn what they really want to see as outcomes. And then you adopt those outcomes for yourself and ask yourself, what am I gifted at to deliver on? How do I enable those outcomes? Using my unique skill set. If I can use my coding skill set or I can use some sort of agile project management skill set and that contributes to my boss's success, they're going to vie for you at promotion time. They're going to vie for you at the salary bump time and you're not killing yourself on stuff that's a waste of everyone's.

Christopher Nelson [00:18:19]:

And that's, and that's essentially what you did. Right. So then you start running these experiments on yourself. And one of the things, and my wife, Regine is excellent at this too, where she can leverage corporate to get her all sorts of training that she needs. But you then were running experiments and started realizing how you could produce more by working less hours.

Matt Doan [00:18:45]:

Exactly. Well, produce the right things, more of the right things by working fewer hours. Right. So rather than say like a twelve hour workday, which is really long and fragmented, maybe 3 hours is real work, 9 hours is fake work. We all know what fake work is. It doesn't move the needle. It's BS stuff that actually doesn't contribute to the organization succeeding. And you say, well, how do I use these 3 hours as effectively as possible? When in the day do I want to use these hours? Should I use them in the morning? Should I use them in the early afternoon? And then you start engineering your schedule for that reason, if I want to preserve my mornings, say, to be with family or to exercise or do creative work for my own business. I need to preserve those mornings. I need to make sure that my corporate stuff appears at the right part of the day. I need to do the hard work to decline move, reengineer meetings or project activities that get in the way of what I need to happen right now. So it takes a lot of active work, but it's all dependent on knowing what gets rewarded in your organization, knowing how you can best plug in using your natural gifts, and how do you make sure that it's all in service of the life and priorities you have for yourself.

Christopher Nelson [00:20:02]:

As you started running these experiments, you started carving time back. You still got promotions. This wasn't a scenario of where all of a sudden your career plateaued. Like all of a sudden you found that with this you can get another gear.

Matt Doan [00:20:17]:

Think about the people you might have respected most in your past organizations. Were they the ones who were emailing at 11:00 p.m., always frantic, always online, feeling like they were just scrambled? No, it was the people that felt in control, maybe a little bit more mysterious, hard to reach. Why is that again? Human psychology for people that are more mysterious and scarce, our mind says, oh, they must be busy with important things. I don't want to waste their time. Right? And if you look at Robert Green and 48 Laws of Power, one of his laws of power is actually our respect and honor for someone goes up if they're harder to reach, if they are busy doing important things. It's like you only get so much time with the CEO. Same effect as in play. They're so busy, if I get five minutes with them, I'm so appreciative of it. But if you instead are always online, always on Slack, always answering emails nights and weekends, what are you? You are a commodity player in the minds of others. You are just mediocre, right? Mediocre means you're always available, always wanting something. You don't value yourself. You're not busy doing really important things right now. So it is a mind game where you have to have enough contact and presence with the people in your organization, but not so much that you become a commodity in their mind, where they can just move you around like a chess piece. You've got to understand how to have self respect in order to increase the respect they have of you.

Christopher Nelson [00:21:49]:

Yes, you do. And I personally have found the same thing as well as when I started blocking off time, becoming less available people, then putting you in a completely different category. Tell me a little bit. I think one of the stories that I really enjoy is how you got work to get you into a strategic coach, that then you helped start building this business outside of work. And I want to walk people through what so many people and I know myself, I made this decision at one point. It's so easy to run from fear. And instead of running from fear, we need to move towards joy. But when we experience burnout, which is this, I think, comes with shame, comes with regret, and all these feelings, we want to run away. You made the decision to stop, change, look around and say, wait a second, I can actually operate differently here, creating margin. And then you said, I'm going to turn this into a business.

Matt Doan [00:22:56]:

Yeah, let's talk about that journey. So after I'd created Space, which is the operative term here in my corporate job, I was able to breathe, be a good dad again, and be healthier again for survival reasons. That was my only thing at the time. Eventually, I started getting curious intellectually. I started reading more, getting into philosophy, psychology, entrepreneurship. This is someone who'd never had an entrepreneurial bone in their body, never knew an entrepreneur. I always thought at the high end it was like Bezos or Musk. And at the low end it was a mom and pop shop on Main Street. Didn't know anything in between. It's just like, not for me. Not for me at all. Christopher this was what I grew up with, right? Military household and all this. But Dan, for some reason, I came across Dan Sullivan. He was the founder of Strategic Coach, and he was getting close with Ben Hardy at the time. They've written great books together since then, like Who Not How and Gap in the Gain. But at the time, I found Dan in his work and it was so alluring to me. It's like, what would it look like to be in the room with him and his team? What would it look like? How could I get in that room? And I was like, I'm going to be a complete outsider. I can make it happen. But I looked at the program, it's for entrepreneurial growth, essentially. And I looked at my tuition program inside the corporate. I said, well, they would value me if I were more entrepreneurial, right? If I were able to have the characteristics of someone who saw opportunities, took initiative, made something out of nothing. Like, the characteristics of an entrepreneur is very much valued in a corporate organization, just like when someone calls themselves entrepreneurial inside of a big organization. So basically, I created a business case and got it funded for ten K to actually go take that program several years in a row. So I was in the room with all these entrepreneurs. I was the only person who had a day job working in a corporation. It's a huge, impostor feeling, but my God, it completely brought in new mental models. It's like the old world is gone. Like that whole corporate attachment, it is gone just by being in a room with these people. I was for a long time running from that world that took me apart. I had run and created Space. But now to your words. I felt this compulsion to run towards these people living this life. Some had one, two, three businesses. They had this multiple houses, lifestyle, massive impact for people they were meant to serve. I was like, this has to be a part of my future. I don't know how, but I stayed in the room with these people, found additional coaches over time. Fast forward. When COVID hit, I was like, I'm not traveling. This is the time to start my business. I don't know what it is, but I need to start this business now. Several iterations forward, I thought at first I was going to teach technology leaders like chief technology officers, CIOs, CISOs, like this, teach them to be leaders, because that's where my day job came from, doing that kind of thing. I ran out of energy for it, and didn't feel quite aligned to me. And eventually I got to the point after having several clients of I'm just meant to serve my past self, the person who was stuck in corporate hell and it was overrunning their life, that person had no room to breathe, to be to be for their family, to build anything of their own. I'm going to teach them to create space to breathe again, turn their job into a tool. I'm going to teach them to be their future selves now. And I'm going to show them an entrepreneurial path which gives them a long term opportunity and excites them. It's exactly what I did. Took a number of years, but I now had the tools and framework storylines to be able to convey that to people and really accelerate their journey, right.

Christopher Nelson [00:26:25]:

To be able to give them the frameworks to say, okay, you can live uncaged while incorporated and then let me give you the tools so that not only are you uncaged there, but then you can actually walk into new ways of living outside of that as well. I think that's phenomenal. And that's it. That's the Matt Doane story. And I want to take a quick pause right here. We're going to be back in just a few minutes. And now I want to spend the second half of the show. I want us to really break down some of these strategies and tactics. So for people today, technology employees are running a million miles an hour. How do we give them some tools today so they can start creating some margin? We'll be right back. All right, we are back here with Matt Doan, and we're not going to be mentioning words. We're going to get right into thinking, you know, from the first half of the show, one of the things that's so important, and we've talked about it and I see you write about it a lot, is how do people immediately start leaving the cage? What are some of the first things that they do to start moving outside of it?

Matt Doan [00:27:35]:

Great question. So most people think to themselves, I need to. Leave corporate and create my own business, because that is the path to freedom, and that is a very several steps ahead mindset here. In reality, we need to do some things to set a foundation. First we need to create space.

Christopher Nelson [00:27:58]:

I want to pause right there because this to me, is a public service announcement. Let's make this announcement because I've seen this happen to detriment to families. I've seen this happen. And I want to call out a caution because sometimes it's sold online that, oh, once you leave corporate, there's this beautiful entrepreneurial life ahead of you. And caution cuidado said it in Spanish is it's hard? Like, being an entrepreneur is hard. And if you develop, if you do it responsibly, you can create a landing spot for yourself. But all of a sudden, walking into entrepreneurship, having to all of a sudden meet the same financial responsibility if you don't have a financial plan, could be brutal. So I do want to make sure to Matt's point, like, slow down, stop. And there is the potential and possibility to fix where you are right now so you don't make any hasty moves.

Matt Doan [00:29:04]:

Thank you for stopping us there right now, because if you're not careful, you'll see all the stories sold online, which makes it seem super easy. Oh, I'm suddenly making six figure months, and it was so easy. And I work 2 hours a day. Come on. That took them three years to make at a minimum. Let's not gloss over that. And let's also be clear that some of the models you're seeing online, popular on places like LinkedIn, people start, I want to sell the $200 digital course. I want to sell 100,000 copies in a year. Okay, let's talk about that. 1% of people that are able to make that effective, they started in 2018 before the creator economy boom, before everyone wanted to be a coach, creator, consultant. There's a window of opportunity. It's a very different time period right now for someone that wants to make that particular move. I'd say the ODS of doing that at all anymore are pretty much zero. Let's be very honest about that. So you can't just look at someone else and be like, yeah, I'm going to copy their journey. It's going to happen in six months, and then life is good. I'm sitting on the beach with my martinis or whatever. It's not going to work that way. It is hard work. It hurts. It hurts. And is it worth it? Hell yes. If you do it right and you've got grit and perseverance. Let's break it down, though. You're in a crappy corporate environment. It's dominating your life. It's miserable at home. You're not there with your spouse and kids, and you're just not sleeping. And you're like, how can I continue on for decades? That's the mentality, right? You might be late 30s, early 40s, something to this effect. 1520 years in, and you're just like can't continue on step one, create space. I call it corporate autopilot. You have to engineer your job to make sure that it stops overtaking your life. I was working with one client even in the past week. They said to me, Matt, over the last few months before I was dominated by my job. Couldn't unplug. I was awake at 02:00, a.m. Chest was tight, I couldn't breathe, tears in my eyes. And now I don't care. I am doing my job 5 hours a day. And no one knows. The better people respect me, I'm in control. My spouse and kids feel I'm happier, healthier, and more peaceful. And you know what, I just look at it as a short term asset. That's all the job is. It's like a venture fund for my life. And I'm creating this other life over here. That's the mentality to have. I don't want you running from that job. It is funding your life. It's a valuable asset. Use that term. I know that's an important asset on this show. Important word on this show, right? It's a short term asset. Leverage it. And the idea is that once you turn it on Autopilot, by opting out of the stuff that doesn't matter, choosing the things that actually move the needle, engineering your schedule accordingly, developing the mental muscle and the bravery that things won't go south, that things will actually be okay. Everyone I work with so far comes out the other side and goes, nothing bad happened. I have so much more time and energy back. I'm better at home, I have more respect at work. They're talking about a promotion. Goes back to that law of power idea, right? You increase honor and respect by being a little bit more mysterious and scarce. Take advantage of psychology. So that's step one.

Christopher Nelson [00:32:15]:

That's step one. We're going to even go down a little bit because I have some experience in doing this too, is when I wanted to start creating margin. So my story goes, climbing the ladder. I got to the C suite, I was a chief information officer. Got the role that I always wanted. That all my mentors wanted me to have. And as I was sitting in that seat and I was spending time in the office away from my kids, I realized I don't want this at all. I don't want it. And so I had to after six months, unwind that. Which was really a little embarrassing more than anything, because you have people who refer you in, you have all these things. And so then I was able to get a vice president level role, VP of Applications and Project Management office. And the first thing I did going into that role is I said, I'm protecting dinner time with my family. Here's the time I'm walking out of the office, I'm going to go have dinner. And then I opened up a half an hour block and I said, hey, if we need to do some emails or communication. Great. Nothing happened.

Matt Doan [00:33:19]:

That's power. Nobody asked.

Christopher Nelson [00:33:21]:

You said boo about that. Yeah.

Matt Doan [00:33:25]:

What fears might you have had in making that move?

Christopher Nelson [00:33:28]:

Well, it goes back and this is where yeah, I'm happy to have a client call here too, in front of everyone because I was programmed. It went back to the early days in consulting, where to be promoted, to be an important person, I had to be accessible. And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to get a foothold into family first. And the first thing I did is I reflected back, I was raised in a household where dinner time was sacred.

Matt Doan [00:33:58]:

Right?

Christopher Nelson [00:33:59]:

Everybody sat around the table, we all had dinner together. I was like, okay, that's my first foothold. I want to get to that. That's then going to be if I can establish this habit, I can do other things as well. Mindset I overcame is that I don't have to be available at all times. Let me just block off sacred dinner time and let me tell everyone, hey, this is the time. I have young kids, and I want to have dinner with them. I want to do the other things I've done. And to my dismay, everybody respected that. I'm like, okay, you're so intense about that, bro.

Matt Doan [00:34:37]:

Okay, all right.

Christopher Nelson [00:34:40]:

And it was fine. And so then I built off of that and I said, well, then.

Matt Doan [00:34:46]:

I.

Christopher Nelson [00:34:46]:

Was building out this private equity company, the real estate. So I did the same thing Maurice did. Now I start blocking off the morning. I'd always had a morning routine where I got up 430 and I did my exercise and stuff. Well, now I'm going to block off from six to eight. I'm going to block that off. That's my creative time and crickets, because I already have the other block. Now all of a sudden, I have this work hour and it goes back to what you said. Then you do a survey and you're like, I read your stuff, so I'm using your terms too. But you do the survey and you say, what are just the BS meetings? Like, what are the meetings that are just killing time, not value? And the lens that I started using is, what are the meetings where we're talking about work versus we're doing work? And if it was my own team, I said, stop right there. You're going to do the work first. We're going to go to the meeting and you're going to make sure everyone knows what we're doing there's agenda set beforehand. We're not just going to go in and talk about the work and then do it prep. Be more prepared. Like, take that proactive stance. One of the things I did learn from a great mentor of mine is if you start instilling discipline in your team, that discipline starts spilling out because people realize, like, oh, you're running a tight team. Everyone's going in, having these crisp meetings. What are we doing? Too? All of a sudden it starts emanating out and then people see you as more efficient and they're like, oh, wow, could you do this? They start creating opportunities for you as you get more efficient.

Matt Doan [00:36:19]:

Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. Everyone's lives improve because you were assertive for your own reasons. And then everyone goes, wow, could we have that too?

Christopher Nelson [00:36:29]:

Well, because the thing is and I remember that there was a way that I used to work, and it reminds me of when I rode motorcycles when I was younger, on some of those fast bikes, you feel like you're just hanging on by your fingertips because these things are crazy. Hope Mom's not listening, but out of control a little bit. And the reality is, you're right. We can all of a sudden opt into this work style of everything is manic and we're stumbling from one meeting to the next. And that to me, is another. Big mindset shift is when you start blocking off, like, my space, my time, my family, my health. Then the second thing is you go through and you say, what's my work style? I may be playing a tape of frantic going from thing to thing, feeling like, yeah, I walk in the room, I make the big decision, and then I'm out to do that 15 more times a day. What if I want to get really proactive and I just want to do that two times a day and I'm going to change the way that I work from more active to proactive? I think that's a mindset as well, too.

Matt Doan [00:37:37]:

You don't have to be the senior most person either. I think that's where a lot of people say, if I'm not the top of the food chain, I can't call the shots. In reality, most people are suffering together as a team. And I think if you are the one who is assertive enough to say, like, here's my limitations, but also, here's a way that we could introduce a new process. We could turn this meeting into something asynchronous, here's a way that we could go from three times a week to one time a week. Here's how we could just do a midday check in versus 08:00 a.m. Every day. When people are trying to start their day with families, you would lose their creative time. Good leaders are open to suggestions. And if you are the brave soul that says, here's what I'm seeing. Here's an opportunity to make things better, here's how we create deep work time for everyone on the team so everything's more efficient. A good leader should be very receptive to that and willing to test other things out. Now, if you have a toxic leader who's like my way or the highway, that's another signal that you might have to deal with and say, shifting teams, shifting companies. But most environments, like good companies, are pretty damn workable. And if you're in a good local culture, because all cultures are local cultures, essentially, you should assert yourself and see what's possible. Everyone will probably be pretty beneficial and rewarded because of it.

Christopher Nelson [00:38:52]:

It's so true. We have this sort of this step one where all of a sudden you're starting to create margin. You're blocking off your calendar, you're removing a lot of the noise. There's a big mindset change what comes next in sort of this progress of creating the space, creating the margin.

Matt Doan [00:39:11]:

Yeah. So once you have space and you have room to breathe and explore and at this point, we're still not building a business yet. I encourage people in this situation to start thinking about their future. Selves. I love this term. Ben Hardy talks about it all the time. But essentially think three, five years into the know, paint that picture for yourself. What's time freedom, financial freedom, all those characteristics look like when you close your eyes and you just get so excited about what that is. Then think about essentially how that version of you, who's living that life into the future, how they think, speak, act? What are they doing? Take those things and then bring that into the now. What are they saying yes to? What are they saying no to? What are they tolerating? What are they not tolerating bringing that into the moment. This is thinking about the latest research in psychology and neuroscience. And how do you program your mind to become a new identity now? Because it's identity that pulls you forward. It's the whole idea of being. You need to be someone in your own mind first. Be someone that values time, freedom, and controlling your work and doing work that you love and being there for family. Be that person in your head. Then do things that are in accordance with that identity. And then, voila, you have those realities in your life. I am choosing to be someone who values their family and their time. I am doing things that engineer that into reality. And all of a sudden, I have that reality where work is five hour work days, no nights or weekends. I am free, I am calm, I am healthy again, be do you have that's so powerful?

Christopher Nelson [00:40:49]:

I've never heard it phrased like that, and that is incredibly powerful. So thank you for that. I think there's such a mindset shift when people start envisioning their future and I talk about it. Tech careers and money talk is really formulating your exit plan, because ultimately our goal of working is to exit. And I think in this day and age, we can exit into this portfolio lifestyle where we have some investments, we have some work that we do that feeds our heart, feeds our soul, and continues to contribute and make an impact. But it starts with allowing yourself to have that vision. So, okay, we start creating the margin. What are some of the questions that you ask people when you want them to start really envisioning what they want to be?

Matt Doan [00:41:44]:

Yeah. Well, one of the exercises I give all my clients is list out 100 wants you have for you, just envision wildly. Just go on a walk, pull out your phone and just put it in dictation mode. I want this, I want this. I want this. I want this. Dream it up. Think ten times bigger. Don't think a little bit bigger. Think ten times bigger. Something that excites you beyond words. I want to ski this mountain. I want to have four houses. I want to control all my mornings and never have a boss again. I want to be having lunch with my spouse every single day. I want to take six trips a year with my kids to exotic locations. You let it all out. This is literally rewiring and giving yourself permission to have something so expansive that you've never thought possible. And you put it out there and you stare at it. You go, my God, that's actually not that improbable. I could see how I could pull this off now. I'd have to be very dedicated and I'd have to make certain moves. I'd have to be very bold about what I'm saying yes and no to. I'd have to take on some opportunities to make some exponential income, things like this. But it's doable. Let's have a go at it, right? Get them wanting it at a deep level and then you come at it with different angles. We also say, like, what energizes you? What drains you? Take all the drainers. Like, let's minimize this crap out of our life, get it out of it. You just attack it from different angles. You're training the mind to say, I want this, not that this, not that. And dream big. Dream so big. You're like, oh, my God, I don't know if I can handle this. This is like monumental thinking. No one I know dreams this big. And then you surround yourself with a community of people. That's all they do. When I got into the strategic Coach program, I was in an environment with people living far beyond what I ever imagined. But I stepped into that world and ever since then, I've never relinquished that. I keep surrounding myself, investing into communities, masterminds coaches, peer relationships. Like you and I, I very much value our relationship because we are aiming big. We have freedom, ideals, things we want to accomplish and have impact in this world. So it's that tribe that you surround yourself with, that identity you pull out for yourself, that's what pulls you forward into a new state of freedom that you define for yourself.

Christopher Nelson [00:43:53]:

Wow, I think people are going to get so much from this because you're breaking it down. And what I love about that hundred list exercise and I'm going to do it. I'm literally going to do that tonight, because you're right, sometimes we limit ourselves. Well, there's ten. And I think sometimes it's so easy, even when you have goals and you have focus, to, oh, well, let me put a little limit on that. Or let me put a limit on that. No, when you are imagining your future, let it go. Because what I really appreciate about what you said is about your story. So let me do a little synthesis. This is one of my little superpowers if you were somebody. When you tell your story, it's about being institutionalized, right? You have the church, you have the military, these big institutions where it's like, no, don't go be an entrepreneur. Get in there. Be the best institutional robot you can be. You realized as you sat with these entrepreneurs, I am rewiring my brain, the hardware. And for us getting out of the cage, you create space and then you rewire. And you do that by sending these positive, huge vibes of imagination and possibility. And then when you put that into a community of people who are actually doing that, then you're being that you see it being done, you're going to take a step and you're going to have, oh, I got one done, I got one done, I'm going to get another done. And everyone else is pulling you along the way, encouraging you. This is how this all works.

Matt Doan [00:45:34]:

This total works.

Christopher Nelson [00:45:35]:

This is how you get outside the cage.

Matt Doan [00:45:38]:

And this is the big point, if you will not do this alone. This is a meta theme here. If you just try to say, I'm going to read all the books and the podcasts and just do all the social posts, if you say, this is going to activate me and I'm somehow going to find the willpower to make this a reality, you're done. You are done. This is how humans work. We are nurtured for the community. We have to be with a group that is pulling us forward, thinking like a bunch of high speed boats going together. We are going together. We are shooting across the water. I'm going with the high powered boats. I'm not going to bring out this dinghy and try to go at their speed. It's not going to work. Okay? I'm going to be a high powered boat and I'm going to go with all these because they're going lightning fast towards the destination that excites me. And it's thrilling. We need community energy, structure, and accountability. I'm not going to let you fall down because then I'm going to fall down. We need that accountability working together. We grow as a group. But the group that was handed to you, say, in a corporate environment, by default, your local team, your manager, you did not pick them. The likelihood of them thinking this way is near zero. You have to actively go out there, seek your people, determine what their value system should be, learn from them, gain ideas from them, and then start behaving like them. This is how you do the be do have, right? You find the people and then you start envisioning yourself to be like them. You do things like them and then suddenly you have things like they have, right?

Christopher Nelson [00:47:05]:

And it's not things like material things that you have experiences, you have community, you have the life that you want because that's ultimately what this is all about, right? We're not sitting here advocating for the bigger house, the bigger car, but it's the time freedom, the experiential freedom, the location freedom. These are the things that honestly, I think energize us and motivate us.

Matt Doan [00:47:32]:

And let me not discount the material things. I was talking to a client the other day and he goes, matt, I'm a little ashamed to say this, but I really want this house on a hill in Laguna Beach. It's a $5 million house, and I think about overlooking the ocean every morning with coffee in my life and what that would do for me energetically, to wake up every day. The thrill I would have, the start to my day. And it's like to someone who wants the Ferrari, if you want it for reasons that give you inner joy and you will feel alive and energized and you will be a better human being because of it, I applaud you. That's a healthy reason to want a Ferrari or the house on the beach. We don't have to tell ourselves we don't want that. It's like, if you want it, you go on the list. I want the Ferrari. I want the Laguna beach. Now, it shouldn't all be material things, because that's going to lead you down a bad path. But you got to give yourself permission to want certain things that maybe you felt were selfish. But if they know, they energize you and they make a better you, and then therefore, you can be a better person for your family and your clients and whoever you serve in this world. I said have at it.

Christopher Nelson [00:48:43]:

I think for myself where I saw people caged, and so this is I think it's important to delineate, right? Caged versus uncaged mindset. When you're caged, sometimes there's a, oh, I need the two Teslas because they have the two Teslas and they're the VP at Google and I'm the VP at Apple and I need to look the same. And then there's this keeping up with the Joneses type mentality that is part of the cage life versus maybe actually I only need two Corollas, and I need to be investing in some coaching or mentoring that can actually get me to this point of getting to my full uncaged lifestyle. So that's the only reason I sort of tease that out.

Matt Doan [00:49:31]:

Yeah, I get it. There are healthy and unhealthy versions of obsession. Like if it's driven by comparison and jealousy don't go down that path.

Christopher Nelson [00:49:39]:

Yeah, that's right. The negative emotions. So then if we're talking about all of a sudden we block it out, we create the margin, we create the space. Now we've got this vision. What is really the third step?

Matt Doan [00:49:58]:

Entrepreneurship. I think entrepreneurship is the highest form of self development that any of us can go through. Having lived this myself, having seen so many others, you go through a gauntlet. You are forged in the fire of self discovery, of understanding what you really want out of life. I think people that go into entrepreneurship, there's different reasons. One model, which I know you have experience in both models I'd say there's like a pure cash flow model of entrepreneurship. And then there's the other model, which I'd call more of like a passion model. The cash flow model is not where you're trying to fill a void in your soul. You're just trying to make smart decisions that give you optionality later in life, right? We want that sort of thing like a smart real estate portfolio. You don't have to be passionate about real estate, but it could be some smart moves. Build it because it gives you optionality in other aspects of life as you go smart. Like I do some of that. I'm not all into the level that you are, but I am in that game. It doesn't excite me to my core. But then there's the passion side of entrepreneurship which says what if I built something, a business that got me so excited I was jumping out of bed on a Monday morning because I couldn't wait to execute that mission. I couldn't wait to serve the people in a particular way using my superpowers. And I often talk about building a business that's a full expression of yourself. How do you unearth all that? Is all that your superpowers, your interests, your experiences, your skill sets? It's kind of a career capital plus type mindset and inject that into the core of a business, that's what my business is. It's a pure passion play. Makes good living in that sense. But I also can't wait to do it every day. I'm so beyond grateful that I get to do this. I know I'm saving lives. I have proof that I have saved lives, marriages, and relationships with kids. I think literally I've saved some lives. I can stand behind that statement and it's too far from the level of conversation I've had with certain people and I feel so blessed to have that. But that's an example of a passion business where it's kind of the core of what you do and it makes good money. And of course you compare that in the portfolio mindset. I also have these investments here. I've got this stream over here. It's not one or the other, but it's a delineation about what excites me versus what is just providing cash flow.

Christopher Nelson [00:52:16]:

Right? And I talk about this from leveraging your career capital to grow the resume to grow somebody else's mission to now leveraging career capital to grow the legacy. I call that the impact time, because this is where when you do and I haven't thought about this as like you're fully transcendent from a business perspective and you go to entrepreneurship, you're really serving people. You could serve other businesses, but there's people who own those businesses. Ultimately you're serving people. And it is the opportunity to be able to lean into highly developed skills, highly developed passions. And what I love about it is we're helping people solve problems that we couldn't solve. Right. Or that we had to figure out this long, painful journey. And it's like let me shorten this for you. Not saying I'll take out a lot of the heavy lifting. It's not anything that happens very quickly all the time or easily, but it's going to save you an amount of.

Matt Doan [00:53:22]:

Pain and mistakes totally, exactly. With your mission when you're compressing what might be four decades of work that someone doesn't actually like, and you show them how to concentrate it, how to cut it in half, maybe to be in roles and situations that actually excite them more, where they're leveraging their career capital using their skill sets in a way that's more exciting. What a gift, what a priceless thing that you've been able to bestow upon these people that would otherwise spend four decades doing something they don't like for a mediocre outcome.

Christopher Nelson [00:53:54]:

Right. Moving it in and front loading that and then also very similar to you, is like you're using your career capital, you're trading it for equity, but you're also getting the chance to get the experiences and build skills like you don't leave that off the table. And then how do you transition that to a portfolio lifestyle? And for me, it's really creating that exit plan because to your point, real estate is very much a cash flow play, especially when you're a limited partner. There are some great relationships there, but it's a thing. But to me, it's then being able to create the opportunity to teach. And for me, it's to educate, serve, and connect. I mean, that's really where I want to be spending the rest of my life.

Matt Doan [00:54:40]:

Yeah. Would it be accurate to say, based on what you just said there, that the real estate stuff for some period of time is more of a cash flow thing and then the core of the tech career and money element that you're building is the thing that lights you up?

Christopher Nelson [00:54:55]:

Oh, yeah, definitely the real estate thing. And so I actually just recorded my last solo episode about this where I actually built out the general partner portion of my business to help people as well because so many people wanted they didn't realize in their portfolio how to start getting cash flow. I wanted to show them, okay, here's what a great investment looks like, so you can do that. But it was never my intention. To do that forever. I think it was part of this journey of now realizing, okay, here's how you can leverage this career. Capital, work for equity, get this evergreen portfolio and then how do you launch it into your exit plan, which is truly having an impact. Because of technology employees, we want to solve problems. We don't want to sit on the sidelines. You don't get into technology being a sideline person. And I actually have this interview with a guy who transitioned from special forces, leading special forces in combat to being a chief revenue officer of a tech company. And it's like you're taking fire in one way or the other. And so I believe that this is where bringing it home for people is. That when you are getting uncaged from corporate and you can see your way out, you're going to want to make an impact. The old way of retirement, of taking a service offline and going into this garden, leave, that will kill you. I think it will kill you. I think that living with a purpose, having a mission, serving other people will. Like you said, I get up every day. I thought about this podcast today I was looking forward to. I'm like, I got a jam with Matt. I get to have these conversations and I'm having realizations of being able to process things that happened in my past more, thinking about ways that I can help people even more. It's truly energizing. I usually get off these podcasts and have to go run a few laps because I'm just so juiced, dude.

Matt Doan [00:56:55]:

That's the state that I think so many people want in their lives. It's a void in their soul. And they keep trying to say that if I switch jobs, switch companies, that's going to fill the void in my soul. And my response to that is hardly anyone in this world will feel passionate about a mission that we did not create ourselves. That's right. Right. If we plug into another system, especially a corporate system which is aligned for profit, that while maybe a year at most is going to feel energizing, like, yeah, I love the mission of this company. It's going to wane. It is going to dissipate. You're going to find cynicism, politics, all that stuff creeping in you're like, this was not what I created. I have this void in my soul again. And you're like, maybe the dream job is over here. No, there is no dream job. There's the dream and there's the job. Two separate things. The dream is of your own creation. We are building a vehicle or set of vehicles to unlock that dream. The job is a tool to support the build out of that dream. Nothing more.

Christopher Nelson [00:57:56]:

That's right. I could go on, man. We could keep jamming. But we're going to go right now into the fire round where we ask five questions. We're going to put a bow on this thing. So I'm actually looking forward to your answer on this. What was the worst career advice that you ever received?

Matt Doan [00:58:20]:

I was going through my head on this one for a little bit. Matt, you need to become more technical. I heard this for years. It's because I didn't fit the model of success in a technology consulting environment. I lived in the clouds. I think frameworks, big picture. You can tell I live up here and it's like you're not like everyone else. You need to become more technical. Learn these technical skills. Learn how to do threat hunting. I'm like, I can't stand threat hunting. I want nothing to do with threat hunting. Get out of here. Right. And what I figured out is that by differentiating and living in my zone of genius, I was unique. And then I found a way to complement everyone else who was following the crowd and that was the thing that got me promoted more than anything.

Christopher Nelson [00:59:05]:

That's amazing. I love that story. How do you keep learning?

Matt Doan [00:59:14]:

I keep upgrading my tribe. Now that tribe can look like books, podcasts, conversations like this, investing in coaching masterminds. I keep trying to level up the person that I'm surrounding myself with and just the byproduct of that is being exposed to their thinking, to their wants, to their worldviews. And it just rewrites the code in my personal operating system. And I think differently, I behave, I want things differently. The whole be do have cycle gets refreshed as I upgrade my tribe.

Christopher Nelson [00:59:49]:

That's beautiful. I love that. How do you recharge?

Matt Doan [00:59:59]:

My morning routine is my ultimate reset. I actually call it a ritual. I think a routine can feel robotic in my mind using language. Ritual is something that I can't wait to do. I love it. A series of meditation, high quality coffee, reading, journaling, visualization. I compress all of that into about 90 minutes every Monday through Friday. I don't do it on the weekends. That's one thing. I coach baseball, which lights me up. My inner child comes out again and I get to do that with my son. And then just having random unplanned family time. That is beautiful for me. I didn't get enough of that with my kids when they were young and now that they're older and still around before they go off to college, I just relish that beyond words.

Christopher Nelson [01:00:43]:

That's beautiful. What advice do you give your younger self? Working in tech, working in consulting.

Matt Doan [01:00:56]:

Put in the time now to relish it. Learn all that there is to learn and be very aware that at some point you're no longer going to want that. And when you no longer want it, you have to pay attention to that voice. And then you have to go seek the mentors that will show you the next chapter. There is great utility in quotes, paying your dues, but your inner voice will get very loud over time and you have to pay attention to it, it will not stop talking.

Christopher Nelson [01:01:28]:

That's right, it won't shut up. So it is tech, cruise and money talk. So what's the worst money or investing advice you ever received?

Matt Doan [01:01:39]:

Who OOH. 401. I think about all the other ways I could have used that money in a different way. My friend Mike, he talks about this a lot. We were just chatting with him about it today. He's like, think about if you do company matching, for example, and you're like, oh, I'm going to put this money in because I get to vest at what, 59 and a half or whatever, and I get to use it then. Well, think of all the life energy that's gone by the time you're that age and you get to utilize that money. What if you actually invested the earnings or the income you had? Not in matching what your employer puts out there, but actually investing in self education and mentorships and coaching and experiences that expose you to New Worldviews. Just think of $500 here, $1,000 there in your early to mid 20s, how does that compound in self investment? That self investment is not taxable because it's always inside of you. It's always there, it's always compounding. So when I think about putting money away for the long term, my God, who's to say that we have a long term? Who's to say, what could we create with those resources now that isn't a ten times better future than we could have ever imagined in the first place? When you just follow general investment principles, like, I'm going to let the stock market go for 30 years and then be happy when I'm 65, like, no, I want to be the happiest person I can be now, the most impactful, joyful person. I want to leave an imprint on my kids life, on my wife's life and everyone that I come in contact with. And you know what? Money is a tool for me to be the best person I can be right now. So I'm going to invest in myself, invest in experiences that make me feel alive now. So that all came from 401K, but it comes down to self investment now in a big, big way because the compounding is insane.

Christopher Nelson [01:03:23]:

So true. It is so true. I think about some of the stuff that I know now. If I knew and I had that knowledge then things would be so much different. I love that.

Matt Doan [01:03:35]:

Gives you the chills. Almost like, if I knew what I knew now, 1520 years ago, whoa, what would life look like, right?

Christopher Nelson [01:03:42]:

Be amazing. But we're passing that on. That's for everybody here. Thank you so much, Matt. We appreciate you taking the time, and I'm sure we'll see you around again.

Matt Doan [01:03:52]:

We will. Thank you.

Christopher Nelson [01:03:53]:

Christopher, I hope that you enjoyed today's episode with Matt. I got a lot out of it. My ask for you is, please subscribe to our podcast. We're on Apple. We're also on YouTube. We have a video version of the podcast. Subscribe there if you'd like, and please leave us a review. We need to know what value you're getting out of the podcast. And number three, send us an email. Let us know what you want to talk about, what questions you may have. Ask ask@techcareersandmoneytalk.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much. See you next time.