What You Learn When Facing Death

This week’s episode with Matt Newman is, well, different.

What Matt shares with Luke and Josh isn’t about strategies and tactics that are meant to help you grow your business.

Instead, it’s more about perspective.

Like the kind of perspective you get when you learn you’ve got brain cancer.

Matt is the author of Starting at the Finish Line: My Cancer Partner, Perspective, and Preparation. In it, he chronicles some of the darkest times in his life and what it took for him to beat the disease that killed his grandmother, was trying to kill his father-in-law, and now threatened him.

It’s a story that is both heartbreaking and inspirational.

During his interview, Matt talks about things his unwavering belief that he’d beat his cancer; his refusal to succumb to the downward spiral of despair; a belly-deep strength he didn’t know he had; and the support of his wife, children, parents, and his father-in-law who was going through chemo at the same time.

And he talks about how writing his award-winning book was the culmination of his effort to give an outlet to the negativity that a disease like cancer spawns. What he didn’t expect was the impact it would have on others.

Among the many lessons he learned from being sick and writing his book are:

• The job of a financial advisor is to make sure there’s a plan in place before bad things happen that protects the people you love and care for. Only then can you focus on what’s at hand.
• People want to know they’re not alone; they want connection; they want honesty. People want the real experience of real people going through what they are going through regardless of what it is. And if that’s you, then you have an obligation to help.
• Business means everything . . . unless you’re talking about family.
• Time with his children is their time with their dad and not dad’s time with them.
• Appreciate what you have, but there’s no point in being the richest guy in the cemetery.

Key Points

• The real job of a financial advisor is to help ensure their clients have a solid infrastructure.
• With change you can either be complacent or find the opportunities because there are always
• Genuine relationships, authenticity, and honesty are what people want the most.

Action Item

You’re here for a unique purpose. Bring that authenticity to your business and your life and whatever happens, you’ll know it’s for a reason. Stop for a moment and think about where you are in your life and whether you’re making it about a bigger purpose.

Connect | Resources

You can find Matt’s book, story, TEDx talks, social media pages, and more at https://matthewsnewman.com/.

You can also find Matt at the The Mollie Plotkin Group (https://mollieplotkingroup.com/speaker/matt-newman/).