Matthew Newman ON: Surviving Brain Cancer

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Life on Purpose. My name is James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Sometimes in life you are fortunate enough to meet a person who can remind you why it's important to live every day with passion and be grateful for the things that you've got. I was really fortunate to sit down with Matt Newman, a brain cancer survivor, last month and talk about his experience of life now that he's on the.

Other side of it.

He's published an amazing book called Starting at the Finish Line. He travels the world as a keynote speaker, talking to audiences of thousands of people. He's a father, he's a husband, and he's an incredible human. I hope you enjoy today's show.

Matt, I'm so excited to welcome you to the Life on Purpose podcast. You are an inspiration. I came across your work and I was like, wow, you have traversed some incredible things in your life. You're a brain cancer survivor, you're a best selling author, you've spoke headaches and you're a dad to three kids. So a huge welcome, man.

Oh, thank you. It's an absolute honor and I was so looking forward to the opportunity for us to have a conversation and delve deep into so many different topics that we all deal with.

Absolutely. Well, tell me first of all, number one priority, tell me about your kids.

Yeah, it's interesting. So, you know, life changes, we hear all the time. And as you have children and you start to age, you start to look at life differently. My first child was born in September of 2007 and I'll never forget that moment. And it's funny, we learn these amazing lessons in life. Not to go off on a long tangent, but we learn these amazing lessons that from our parents or from people that we look up to as young children and it's often these types of these seeds that are planted in us, and they make no sense. But one time when we're older, we correlate directly to them, and they blew. And I remember right before my first son was born, I was living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with my wife, right in the city, right in this beautiful historic area where we had the Liberty Bell, the National Constitution Center. It was this infectious ambiance of young professionals. And right before my first son was born, I remember my father sitting down with me. And my father was a financial advisor, and I learned all about finance growing up. It made no sense to me till I got older and it bloomed, and I realized this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to help people prepare, protect, have a plan in place prior to the negative things that school systems don't teach people. I remember my father sitting down with me, and we're getting ready to do what most young couples do when they're about to have their first child move to the suburbs. And as we're getting ready to do that, my dad's like, what do you say every day to your clientele? Our job is to be there when things are bad. Our job is to have a plan in place prior to the negative. Our job is to give people good news at the deepest and darkest of times so they could take on the battle ahead of them. He goes, and you talk about that through financial planning. I go, yeah, because you do everything you say. I go, absolutely. We've always talked about that. You practice what you preach or you preach.

So you did the basics. Did you do a will? Did you do your power of attorney? And did you do all your life insurance planning as you're taking on more responsibility? I'm like, dad just ran a tough mudder. I mean, beast mode, man. Like, I don't need to.

So you don't practice everything you preach.

And I nodded my head. And over the next two weeks, I took these simple tasks of imposing legal documentation as I was garnering more responsibility as a family started to grow, to make sure they were protected. And In September of 2007, I had my first son, Luke. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. I'll never forget it. And that immediate understanding how life alters and your sense of importance changes. About 16 months later, I had my second son, Jake. So we had two kids that were technically only one year apart, going to be in the school system. And we were getting ready to have my third child, which is going to be my daughter. Her name is Lola. And Right as we were getting ready to have her, we were going to have three kids in 37 months. We had moved to the suburbs. Life had changed, unfortunately, as my wife was pregnant with two kids under two. My father in law was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And that was the first aftershock we took as our family started to grow.

Of a negative timing of something really coming in and hitting us hard.

Wow, that's huge. That's unbelievable. And in terms of being a young family with all of that responsibility and then this massive adversity hitting you as the dad of the family, what was your response to that?

You know, I don't take any responsibility for that. Let me explain what I mean. My first cold encounter with cancer happened when I was 15 years old. And I wasn't old enough to truly understand it or digest the ramification of what really happened. But my grandmother, Grandma Harriet, was diagnosed with cancer. What I remember is one day she was Grandma Harriet, the next day she was wearing a turban and the next day she was gone. I couldn't get it. It didn't make sense to me. But I remember what it did to my mother. My mother cried every single day. My mother became a different person. I wish I could have hugged her. I Wish I was 15. It didn't make sense to me, but I saw this evilness of what cancer brought to the table. And I saw how it didn't care about our family, it didn't care about our lives. It did what it wanted to do, what it wanted and it was destructive and it was evil. My father in law and my daughter and my wife were two peas in a pod. Very similar to my mother and to my grandmother. My wife is pregnant with our third child. We have two kids under two, like I mentioned. And she made it her full time job to do whatever he needed to be there for him. Pancreatic cancer. The reality is you got about six month shelf life. You don't feel the ramifications of it until it spreads all over. He's 60 years old. She drives him down to the University of Pennsylvania hospital, he gets a Whipple procedure, he gets goes through chemo, radiation. Every day she's taking care of her children, taking care of me, driving him back and forth. The responsibility to answer your question was not on me. What I witnessed was the strongest person I ever met and that was my wife. And what I also saw from my father in law was what a warrior is really like. He never complained, he never bitched. But what he told me is had two Goals. One was to see all three of the grandkids born. The other was for them to be old enough to have real life memories of him. That was an honor and an inspiration to be his son in law. But the real strength, the real fortitude that came from my wife keeping everything together.

That's beautiful. She sounds like an amazing human.

She's strong without question. And the reality that we all take on is we all this perception that strength is the size of your arm, strength is how much you bench press. That's not true. Strength is something that's located deep down in our bellies and at the deepest and darkest. We could find it, we can grab it, we could own it. I saw my wife do it at that time. I dealt with that on my own journey that I took with cancer. But when you have this new perception of what strength really is, you learn to have a new appreciation for those that truly use it because they have something that others don't. And that's a will to win and a will to be there. And it's something that it's inspirational to be a part of.

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Caroline jlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

I love that. I really, truly love that you shared that. And takes me back to a good friend of mine. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in his early 40s, 41, 42 and a couple of young kids. And he's a real high performer, an amazing individual. And sadly, he passed away as a young man. And witnessing him and how he attacked, it was incredible. His mindset and his fortitude, as you mentioned, it's just like those words you describe describe him. And he was a warrior and he fought to the end and he fought for a higher cause and that was inspirational. So I want to turn the spotlight and talk about your personal experience. And I guess selfishly, you know, I think about cancer. My mom has had cancer and survived it. And you know, I've had people around me survive and pass. And I think to myself, wow, that's the scariest diagnosis you could ever have. How would I respond? And I guess selfishly, I want to hear about your journey and think if I ever had to face that, hey, I want to have. I'm not going to call it a formula or a playbook or anything like that. I'm going to call it, I know my learnings, my lessons from somebody, a hero like yourself who's traversed it. I want to know how you did it and think, okay, I could take something from that if I ever need to traverse it or a loved one needs to traverse it. So please, if you don't mind, share your story.

No, not at all. And there's something to this.

There's a way you adapt to things that's really hard to explain in a vernacular to someone. And I remember sitting back, honestly, my father in law, Larry's going through all this cancer. The reality is cancer is like a roller coaster. It goes up, down, left, right, care what we're doing. It doesn't care about our plans, it doesn't care what your goals in life are. It's going to do what it wants, when it wants, and it's evil and it goes the way that it wants to. And as Larry's fighting his roller coaster and it's going up and down in chemo and radiation and the reality is he was doing pretty well. He gets two and a half years into going through pancreatic cancer, which is well above the median right there. And on a snowy, icy, miserable day in a town called Bridgewater, New Jersey, which is about 45 minutes, 35, 40 minutes from New York City, about 45 minutes from Philly. I'm driving and it's miserable out and I see little fender benders all over the side of the road. I'm sitting there going, not today, man. I'm in my suit and tie. I'm just, I'm moving 25 miles per hour. I don't feel like dealing with this. And as I pull up to a traffic light, my car hydroplanes right into the car in front of it. My car flips over. I'm holding onto that steering wheel and all I'm thinking is all the working out I've done, all the fitness that I've been to, it's for this moment right now. Airbag pops, car goes over. I get out without scratch on my body. Police come run over, they're like, dude, you got to go to the Hospital right now. I'm like, nah, man, beast mode. I'm okay. And I call my wife up, and my wife's shopping in a place called the King of Prussia Mall, which is one of the biggest malls in the country. And taking a little break from Larry's chemo, where the roller coaster started going back down. And I tell her what happened. She goes, you got to go to the hospital. I'm like, no, I'm okay. She goes, don't forget about our friend Karen. We have a friend named Karen Mancini, who one day is driving in a town called bluebell, Pennsylvania, and she's sitting at a traffic light and a car comes flying through the light and T bones her. She's okay. But the police come over and they go, we think you should go to the hospital. We just want to make sure everything's good. She's like, yeah, okay, I'll go. So she goes to the hospital and three hours later, two doctors walk into her room and go, we want you to send flowers and a thank you note to the person that hit you. We just found a brain aneurysm. You would have been dead in the next few hours. Wow. Thought about my wife, thought about my kids, and like a type A personality. I got a tow truck to bring my towed car back home, rented a car and went on my way that night. I get home, my head is killing me. I've never really suffered bad headaches before. My wife suffers from something called chronic migraine. She gets them nonstop. My father in law, Larry's sitting on the couch going through, you know, dealing with his chemotherapy. I got three little kids under five running all over the place, and I'm just sitting at the island in our kitchen going, oh, my freaking head, man. This is killing me. My wife Rebecca looks at me, she goes, she goes, doctor, get checked out like that. She goes, I don't want to hear about it. Try getting chronic migraines. Over the next two weeks, the pain got more and more severe every day to the point where it was nonstop. But it wasn't about me. It was about being there for Larry, being there for our children. I was the furthest one down the spectrum that needed to be addressed.

About two plus weeks into it, I lost all ability to sleep. I would pass out on the couch from 8:30 to 10, watching TV with Larry. And I'd wake up, I couldn't go back to bed, the pain was so severe. About two weeks later, I'm giving a speech and I speak professionally. Before I started this type of speaking I was speaking in finance all over the place. So speaking is easy. I always say, if you want me to talk about squirrels for 45 minutes, I'll knock that room apart. I don't know squirrels. It's about the delivery, it's about the connection. And I'm giving a presentation and I go to make a point in front of about called 100 people. And as I go to make a point, I feel a hot flash hit me in the face.

At that moment, slur and gurgle poured out of my mouth and I had no idea where I was. I remember seeing myself standing outside my body going, you're having a stroke. You are having a stroke right now. It felt like an eternity. It's probably about five to six seconds. I kind of got myself together. I'm like, oh man, having trouble sleeping. They have a sinus infection. Let's bounce back into this. Finished the presentation, went to my car and I was pretty scared. Over the next called six to eight weeks. I had nine more of these. I had one way. I was training for a run called the Broad street run. It's the largest 10 mile run in the United States. It's in Philadelphia. And you run right all the way down Broad Street. You go past everything. It's just absolutely beautiful. City hall. We've been doing it for years. I had one when I was driving, one when I was giving a presentation, another one I was talking.

On May 13th, excuse me. On May 13th, 14th, 2013. As I mix those numbers up. I had my 11th one of these types of strokes.

As I was going through it. I turned my back on everybody because I feel a hot flash hit me in the face to point to a PowerPoint to kill this five to six seconds.

That was the moment I decided, I'm going to the hospital right now, right this second. I finished the presentation. I let the five to six seconds go off. I finished what I got to do. And about 30 hands go up pretty good, right? You're giving a presentation, 30 hands go up. People are ingrained. They want to hear what you're talking about. They're captivated. Everyone remembers. My head dropped. I answered one question. I said, I'm so sorry, I'm running late. I have to leave. I got to go. All these wonderful people, clients of mine, relationships. Hey, Matt, I got one quick question. I want to ask you something. This is going through my mind. If you don't get away from me, someone' getting put on the ground right now. That is not me by any stretch of the imagination. A Couple people walk me to my car. One more question. There was a great point you brought up. I peeled out of the parking lot.

I don't do that. That's not me. I needed to get away. I call my wife, who's again at the King of Pressure Mall dealing with Larry's roller coaster. Tell her what's going on. And we decide we're going to meet at a place called Capitol Health in Hopewell, New Jersey. It's about a 90 minute ride and my head is all over the place. All right. They're going to figure this out now. It's been going on for you eight, nine weeks. Maybe I'm going to die. I don't know. My head shooting all over the place. I pull in the parking lot. My wife's there as well, too. We hold hands. We walk in and they go, we got to give you a CAT scan. I'm like, the CAT scan, It's like an X ray, man. Right on. So they give me a CAT scan. Three, four hours later. They walk in, they go, Mr. Newman, we know the problem. Like, yes. Diagnose it, fix it. What's the deal? Let's get this done. Enough's enough.

You have a lesion on the left frontal lobe of your brain. Now, when I heard the term lesion, unfortunately, regardless of the occupation that you are in, you speak a vernacular that the average person has no idea what it means. It's like when my mechanic talks to me, goes, matt, let me tell you what we're going to do. Here's what's going through my mind, dude. How much does it cost and when.

Can I pick it up?

I have no idea what you're talking about right now. When I heard lesion. A lesion to me is a cut or a bruise. You know what I'm thinking? Car accident. I probably ding. I probably don't remember it. That makes sense. Okay. You are having massive pain. I'm like, yeah, this is causing you not to sleep. Yeah. Mr. Newman, you're not having strokes. You're having seizures in your speech and memory because that's what's on the left frontal lobe of your brain. That's what the lesion's pressing into. As difficult as this sounds to digest, I was like, yes. Yeah. Okay, what do we got to do? Well, we got to do an mri. Mri. All of a sudden, I was actually like, okay, someone, they get it now. Let's fix it. So I go in the MRI tube, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. At 3 o' clock in the morning they say, Mr. Newman, you gotta do one more MRI and MRI because you have to have contrast in it so we can get a better view. My wife tells me, she goes, I'm go home. I gotta find a ride for my dad for chemotherapy. And I'm gonna make lunch for our three kids. I'll be back in an hour.

Take your time. I'm gonna be in the tube for an hour. And the nurse comes walking in with a wheelchair, Goes, all right, Mr. Newman, last one. MRI. MRI with contrast. I'm like, no more wheelchair, man. I could walk. I just did the broad street run eight days ago. I'm cool. Mr. Newman. Liability.

Great. So they get in the wheelchair, and they grab the clipboard off the back. They go, right, Mr. Newman, MRI. Now we gotta do a contrast so we could see how big your brain tumor is. Oh, my gosh. I go, it's a lesion. And that was the moment of 39. I was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Wow.

Wow.

Didn't expect it. Didn't understand the vernacular. And they brought me to a tube, and I was in there for about an hour and a half. My head's all over the place. And they bring me back, and they plugged me into about 30 different machines and put me in a bed. And I just started to cry. And I started to have retrospective on my life. And I started to think there must be something I did to cause this. I started to think of myself as a father. I started to think of myself as a husband and a friend. And as I mentioned before, when you learn what strength really is, all of a sudden, I saw strength. I grabbed it. I owned it. It was mine. This is my life. Cancer is just along for the ride. I will never allow cancer to define who I am. I' and anything you want credit for, you're not going to get. I didn't know I had this in me. But when I saw it sitting there, I had every right to take it. Everybody has that deep down in their stomachs. And once they have that opportunity to grab it, never let it go, because that's you. Learn how you can give some type of legacy to others on the fight that you put up and the way that you present yourself and the memories that you leave. And I grabbed it. I took it. And I have no problem. Titans. I just started cursing my brains out. And the nurses come running in and tell the story to the like, oh, my God, are you okay? I was like, I'm fine. If this is my pity party, I'm going down swinging and the surgeon comes walking in, my wife. And my wife's wiping her eyes. Your dad's got pancreatic cancer. He's gonna die. Reality is, you hear your husband has brain cancer. He's gonna die. And he looks at me, goes, let me tell you what we're gonna do. I go, let me tell you what you're gonna do. You can get this crap out of my head, and I'm gonna take care of the rest. He goes, Mr. Newman, you're gonna have a major craniotomy on Sunday. It's Wednesday. We're going to cut a huge C in your head. We're going to pull the skull out. We're going to take the jaw back. We're going to take a tumor out. We won't know the severity of it for 10 days. He goes, but I want you to read something.

As you have some time now. I said, yeah, it's fine. So he brings me a study from the American Medical association on recovery. There's some diseases they will take us physically. They will never take us spiritually. And if we allow ourselves to be remembered for the disease that took us, like I mentioned earlier, that's on our shoulders. We control our legacy. We control the way we're remembered. We control the memories we leave for the ones that we love the most. But there's some diseases you have an opportunity to fight, and you have an opportunity to stay present, stay prevalent, and actually survive. What do you think the number one thing that helps people take on these challenges and fight is?

No idea.

Attitude. We've all heard the story of the married couple for 50 years, where the wife is healthy as a horse. Husband gets cancer, he dies. What do we often hear happen six months later, she does, too. Once you fall into something called the downward spiral, it takes all this fight out of you. It drags you into negativity. What drags you into that spiral is regret, resentment, things I would have done this. I should have done that. I could have done this. You start to get a new set of lenses on life. You see things differently. You have a new understanding of living in the moment and appreciating the now. Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happened yesterday, is irrelevant. This is our moment right now. We get to use it. No one could take it from us right there. And once happens as you go through these and you wish you would have had it, you didn't do this, you didn't do that. You didn't do the planning for your family. You didn't protect them. You didn't do this. And now you're taking your legacy and you're tainting it, and you're making it worse and worse and worse. And you start to fall down. This. All this urgent did is pour kerosene on my fire. If I wasn't going down and I had every bit of strength, I took care of all this stuff. Let's freaking go, man. Let's do whatever we got to do. And my wife looks at me and she goes, our parents are on the way over. Here's reality. You know, your parents here. You know your son's got brain cancer. He's gonna die. So I said, do me a favor, give me the iPad. She goes, yeah, do you want to, like, watch a movie? They'll be here in 20 minutes. I'm like, just give me the iPad. That was the moment I realized I needed to make sure everything was intact, that everything was organized. Because who knows where things are going to go. First thing I did is I pulled up my will.

It's done, by the way. A will, anybody, regardless, you could do it online for like 19 bucks. This isn't about investments or mutual funds or anything like that. This is about legal documentation. So your wishes are carried out the way that you want. The next thing I did is I looked at my power of attorney. What a power of attorney says is, I'm going to dictate who could make all the decisions. It's two signatures. It's not a lot. I could avoid probate. There's all these other things I can go through.

Pulled up all my life insurance. It's all done. You know, most people want what they can't get. They want life insurance when they're uninsurable, they want long term care. When they're on the way to a nursing home, they want a financial plan after this 30%, they're looking in the rearview mirror instead of focusing on what's going outside of the windshield. Having a plan in place in advance, and as I'm going through this, my investments, my mortgages, college for my kids has nothing to do with the amount of wealth you have. But that was the moment I realized every speech I ever gave was actually about me. I was the shoemaker whose kids had shoes. I didn't have to worry about any of that. I was ready to take out any fight at hand right there. Because God forbid it didn't work out. My family will never get over me. They will. The grieving will have a permanency to it, but they will maintain their lifestyle. They will remember that I did everything in my power to make sure that they were able to be the people they wanted to be, avoid this regret and resentment that could possibly build up and define the way that I was looked at when I was no longer here to rectify that situation.

And Larry, my father in law, and my mother in law, Jackie, walk in. Larry didn't say a word to me. He nodded his head at me, I nodded my head at him. He wasn't my father in law. He was my cancer partner. And he was there to show me how to act, how to have dignity, how to have the ability to fight, act like a warrior, and to truly express yourself to your family. And it hit me at that given moment then I see my mom and dad walk in. My dad gives me this look. He's like, hey, bud, how you doing? But I saw it in his eyes. I saw the fear, so the anger. I saw the tears building up. I said, dad, do me a favor. Come here, sit down. He goes, yeah. And I pulled out the iPad, and I'm laying in a bed connected to a million machines. And I showed him everything I went through. And I took that iPad, I threw it on the bed. When I was done, I go, dad, there's only one thing on my mind.

He goes, what's that? I go, getting better. I don't got to worry about that, any of that crap. I'm going to fight like a warrior, because that's what I am. And there's no way I'm going anywhere. And you can position this any way you want. My father's from the Bronx, New York. He's got a thick accent, he curses a lot. And for the first time in my life, I saw my deck, right, and he broke down. And I wasn't breaking down. I was in the mode. He looks at me, you're just going to beat this. I go, no, I'm going to beat it. And these are the stories you're going to share. This is the perspective you're going to give to others. How having that in place allowed you just to fight and not worry about your family and not sit here crying out of resent and regret, regret and resentment. And that's when clarity sunk in. And this is going to sound odd. I was never scared. I went through major surgery. I think health and wealth are directly correlated. Let me make that clear. I think too many people separate, that.

I always try to work out and eat healthy and all stuff like that. You don't have to be that rigorous about it. But I got major surgery on Friday.

I went home on Sunday. And I 100% attribute that to being in good shape and being fit. Why do I correlate that to wealth and health? I want you to think how much it costs to stay in a hospital connected to all those machines per night. That's not what somebody should be thinking. You should be there to get better. But the better shape you're in, the more energy you're going to have. The better you can fight, the quicker you can get home. And I remember leaving the hospital, I wouldn't know the severity of this now for about nine and a half, 10 days.

And they brought me down in a wheelchair. And my wife gets in the car that I dropped off there six days earlier and she comes around to pick me up and I get in the car and I've got a second head. I look like a train wreck, man. And she brings me home. We all hear the term home is where the heart is. And we pull into my driveway, we have one of those side entrances you can walk to. I walk in and my three kids are home signed, saying, I love you Daddy, thank you for coming home. I started to cry. I didn't cry out of fear, I didn't cry out of negativity, I cried out of happiness. This was my moment with my children. Cancer has no impact on it in any way whatsoever. It's about me spending time with them in this given moment. Whatever happened yesterday, tomorrow don't care. We own this. I went up to my bed, I passed out for 13 hours. This is where I wanted to be. And I started to have this new understanding of life, of how fragile it can be. And these basic lessons were starting to hit me because I went through this shitstorm. These are things I should have known like these are basic things. So I told you Day 10 I would know the severity of it. Day 5.

I'm walking around my house, I'm a train wreck. And my son Luke is having his five year old father son picnic at school that day. And he goes to a school called Pennington Montessori School. At that time I have a five year old, a three year old and a two year old. And my wife says, you do not have to go to the Sega. I will never miss this, never in a million years. I will be at everything for them going forward. So that morning we take my three kids to school. I can't drive, I'm riding shotgun. And my wife takes my two boys, Luke and Jake to their class. And I take my daughter Lola, my two year old daughter, and she's Got her little pink jacket on. And I walk her to the classroom and she takes her little jacket and she puts it on the little hook.

And goes, thank you, Daddy, for taking me to class. I love you. I cried again. But I cried out of appreciation because let me tell you what it was in the past.

I wonder who's calling me. I wonder where my next meeting is. I never.

I learned at that moment it wasn't about me, it was about Lola. And I had been giving her instruction that it's okay to not make it about the person that you're with and make it about yourself. And I had to go through this to learn that this was her moment. And I was taking her to school to be with her. But in the past, it was always about me. I had no anger, I had no animosity. This was a lesson I was going to take, I was going to own, I was going to make it mine. It's about them. I could separate things. You're going to tell me five minutes. I couldn't have left my phone in my car. I did that day. And I would always do that going forward. So I come home and I'm talking to my father in law and I'm going, this is a gift. There's gifts inside of here. There's silver linings that I'm taking, that I'm never going to give back. I'm going to own them. They're mine. I earn them. And at 11:30, Rebecca goes, you can't go to this lunch. You're a mess. I go, I will never miss this. She takes me up to lunch. Luke's waiting at the door for me and gives me a hug and goes, I love you, daddy. And I am. Rainbows and unicorns, I'm smiling everywhere. This is our moment. We own this. And we walk back and we sit in the backyard and we got a little brown bag lunch. We have 30 minutes we're gonna spend together, and then all the dads are gonna leave. And as happy as I am, and as much as I'm focused on him and looking him in the eye, I look up and I'm gonna tell you what I saw.

I saw every dad like that.

That was me. I had a BlackBerry and an iPhone at that point. I didn't. I wasn't mad. I didn't look at these people as bad. I was like, that was me. But I went through a life lesson to learn how precious the moment is, how fragile life really is, how we all think with this Teflon, you know, feature where that we can get the rending, we're bulletproof beast mode. We could do what we want.

Shouldn't have to go through a negative experience to get some of the basic lessons life offers you about appreciation and love. And this is something that I was going to take and I was never going to give back. And it started to become part of my normal life, that regardless where things were going, I was never going to take for granted the gift that I was given. And it took cancer to make me understand that. And here's the crazy part. I was pretty good before this. I wasn't a bad person. Yes, I work a lot and I was driven and goal oriented and all that other stuff like that step. But it took to go through something like this, to transpose that going forward, to become better. And these are things that you shouldn't have to pick up on for many when it's too late to do anything about it. And I was going to make sure it wasn't for me.

That is incredible. Very, very emotional experience for me just sitting, taking that in. It's incredible. And, and it's funny because I've talked to a lot of high performing dads, former prime ministers, world champion athletes, and one of the things that they get taught, most of them anyway by coaches is to when you get home, just before you get home, check all your emails, make your last calls, turn your phone off when you go in the door for those first five minutes, make sure your phone doesn't exist. So that is not a normal behavior. And you know, I see a lot of people hooked on their phone. So how can an individual, let's say dad, because you and I are both dads and other dads can relate to this. How could a dad who hasn't faced mortality actually embrace life for what it is and live presently and fully?

It's a great question because sometimes it takes the negativity to trigger that emotional connection. And I'll share something with you that I did. So what I started to do is when I went through this, I started to write. Remember I said at the beginning of our conversation, there are these seeds that are planted in you from your children, from your parents, and often they will bloom later in life. My father was a financial advisor, my mom was a teacher. That didn't bloom on me until I was 39 years old. So what I started to do is I started to write. I started to write about my optimism, my new perspective on life, the new lenses I'm looking through, this gift that I was given from cancer. Let Me make this clear. I never sat down to write anything. I never had any goal to get anything done. For all the optimism I had, there's negativity and fear that you're pushing deep down into your belly. If you don't find an outlet for that, you're going to combust. My catharsis and outlet all of a sudden became writing. I never wrote in my life before, and I would share it with friends, and I would share it with family, and I would just get off. I could tell you I never read one after I sent it. It was like vomit. I would get it out of my system. Matt, you have to go for a cancer test. I found out I had a grade three astrocytoma. I had to go through chemo, radiation, aggressive cancer. Every three months, you got to come back and get a test. Then we'll go to four months. Fine. Every time something happened, I'd be sitting in the hospital, I would start writing. I never sat down to write.

So the reason I'm sharing this with you is as I was writing more and more, I started having new understanding of life. Four years into it, I had 20,000 people following my emails. I was not on social media. I never cared. Hey, Matt, could you put this person on? Yeah, whatever could you do? Yeah, sure, sure. No problem. I started to understand, like, cancer is like buying a car. When you buy a car, you leave the lodge. Ever notice you go, oh, look at that. There's car. I see this car everywhere. Wrong car was always there. You never noticed it. So you had a direct connection to it. I started to have this nuance that cancer everywhere, but it went deeper. I started to see that people who were depressed needed to read something. I started to see people who weren't treating their children rightly, people who were suicidal. And when I realized it's not the disease you're taking on, it's the issue we all have. So what I started to have a better understanding is people are sick of the shtick. Some dude giving them the perspective, reading from their cue cards and a bunch of statistics they don't care about. They want to know they're not alone on the journey that they're on. And that's when I learned the power of inspiration. And I learned that when you connect with people and you read that life is not all rainbows and unicorns. We put up this facade that we're keeping up with the Joneses and everything is perfect and our children are great and all this. We all got our scars. We all got our battles. That we go through. We all got demons that we fight. That's the way it works. Anyone who says otherwise, you're a liar. Let me throw that one out there. So what I started to have a deeper understanding was I was doing this for me. It just made me feel better. But I started to understand that when you can use social media in a positive way and find people that give you that little kick, that little inspiration, those little things that you need don't go too deep. There's an underbelly that's evil into us if you just use it for the right reasons, to be able to find other people that are on similar journeys that you're on and use that tool to give you that little pop in the morning, that pop night, to give you reminders and stuff like that.

There's a value to be able to maintain the understanding that others have taken on difficulties and it won't be perfect forever. And if you understand that prior to the issue.

You can fight like a warrior. If you don't, unless you got it in you and you find it, things can go very differently.

That's amazing. And talking about the book. So tell us a little bit more about the book. I'll put a link on Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube description for people to go buy it. But please tell me about the book, the name of the book, and the summary of what people can expect to experience.

Yeah, so the book's called Starting at the Finish Line. I have no problem telling you this. I never planned on writing a book. I told you, writing became my catharsis. So about four years into it, as I was getting all these people following me and everything, and that was on email, I figured I'd write a book 100% for me to make myself feel better, to alleviate. Because no matter how well I was doing, no matter where things were going, I was going to the hospital every three, four months to continue to get checked. This is my journey for the rest of my life. And it's my journey, like I said, cancer. Just like, you know, ride with me sometimes. So what happens is I decided I was going to write a book. There was no business plan, There was no ghostwriter. I really had no idea what I was doing for the majority. But I used those lessons that my mom passed on to me to convey my perspective and thoughts and. And it just made me feel better. It was something I could use as that outlet more and more. So my book came out on March 23, 2018, almost three years ago, and I called my mom in a town called Parsippany, New Jersey. And I go, hey, Ma, the book's coming out tonight. She goes, you know no one's ever going to read it, right?

It's about me. I'm some jerk they care about me for. She goes, but you're going to put three copies in your safe so when your children are old enough, they'll be able to read the realities of what really happened. I said, yeah, and the realities are crazy. It's not just me, cancer, my father. There's helicopter crashes, there's. You almost wouldn't believe it if you didn't read it.

One week later, we're number one on Amazon in four different categories. And my jaw hit the ground. There was no expectation. There was no marketing plan. I wasn't even on social media. I was like, that can't be right. Like, there's no way. That's when I learned what connection really was. When you hit people on the heartstrings, when you let them know they're not alone on the path that they've been thrust into, that they had no choice on. When you let them know that the battles they're fighting, there's other ones that are out there doing it. I started to have a new perspective on life and why people wanted to read it. They want to know, well, if this guy did it, maybe I could do it. And it wasn't just about cancer. It was about any type of disease or obstacle that they had taken on. And I had clarity that kicked in. So I told you I was in the financial services area and I always spoke. So I start to get asked to speak. And it's funny, speaking is like being in a band. You know, the first place I spoke at, and I always spoke on these big stages on finance and all. And first it was like. It was like a band. You start in a bar with like 20 people, and I was like, I can't believe 20 people came. This is so cool. And then a year later, you're speaking in Las Vegas in front of 10,000 people, and you're like. Like, I can't believe that this happened. But I got it. I got it. Of what people are truly looking for. They're looking for that deep rooted connection to know they can find inspiration and motivation because it comes from rawness and purity, not from anything canned. And if you give it to people the way that you feel, that you know how to. And if you share from the bottom of your heart, heart. And you open yourself up, that's something that changes the Connection that you build with someone else. And I always kind of understood it. But like I said, it provided a complete clarity to me at that given moment.

Unbelievable. Amazing. It's so interesting, Matt, because, you know, prior to our interview, I said, okay, I want to ask this question. I want to ask that. I had all these questions and I haven't looked once or thought once.

I'm sorry.

But it's a great sign. It's a sign that this is just amazing and you're truly sharing so much that's going to inspire so many people and people that have been down the cancer journey, people that may, and they don't know that they're about to head down, that they'll be listening to this and it'll hit the right people at the right time.

I'll share something with you, James, though, real jump in for a second. You just said something there. I think the reason that that happened was because my catharsis went from writing to talking. It was just a movement when you're doing something somewhat for yourself to get it off your chest with nothing there. The more events I would be speaking at these huge events, there'd be the person with the PowerPoint, they're reading off this and you're just gone.

There's nothing to that. When you can connect with people and you're doing it for your own virtue, your own reason.

And they know you're just sharing the honest truth with them, it creates something that is very hard for words to encapsulate because it gives them that inspiration and motivation to take on the next obstacle that comes on their path. Because they've now witnessed, well, if someone else could do it, I could. I'm nobody special. I'm just a guy who used writing as a catharsis. I'm just a guy who wanted to be there for his family. Just a guy who learned what strength was. What's interesting is from all the speeches I do, the pod, everything, the connections I get from others, they don't realize they're the ones inspiring and motivating me and keeping me going. And I wish I could convey that in a better way to them and be more thankful that I am.

That's beautiful. I never thought of it like that. That is beautiful. And I have to say, as a young dad, call myself young, I look at you and I see who I want to become. And, you know, like, I look at, you know, being a dad as being the greatest privilege. And when I have my own forms of adversity and I've had them over the years, how do I want to tackle those? And when I look at you, it's like, whoa, you've done what I need to do the next time I get hit in the face with a spanner. And that's amazing. And I thank you for taking the time to do that, because there's many people who wouldn't have the skill set or the desire to share that story in the way that you have with so much vulnerability. It's beautiful. And you mentioned that. No, it's stunning. It's stunning. It's. It's a real gift to the world. You mentioned band, and I see some guitars behind you that. Are you a musician? No.

And I'll share a quick story with you. And. Because I think things happen for a reason. Before I got sick, I'll tell you, I used to believe in irony. So when I was called 13 years old, I grew up right about 20 miles outside of New York City city. And I really want to play guitar. I was a good athlete, but I really wanted to play guitar. So my parents gave me guitar lessons, a place called Village music on Route 46 in Parsimony, New Jersey. And I'm all fired up. I'm going to be great. I stunk. Let me throw that out there. So what happened is then you move on to eighth grade, you go to high school, and sports really started to take off for me. So see you later, guitar. Go through high school, get a Division 1 scholarship to college, go play, move on to start. Move to Philadelphia, start my career in finance. And all of a sudden I meet some guy there, plays guitar, and we start playing together, and I'm like, this is great.

My career takes off. See you later, guitar. Nice talking to you. I go through surgery, and I'm just walking around my house. I'm like a zombie. Like, there's no place I can go. I can't do anything. You know, I look horrible. And I go in my basement and I see that guitar right there, and I'm like, we brought that here when we moved here. I had lived here for a while at that point. Now I probably hadn't picked up a guitar in 20 years. We brought that here. So I told you about my son Luke, who had the father son picnic. His teacher is a guy named Arun. He actually owned a music studio and is a gifted musician. And I went one day with Luke to school to drop him off. I said, hey, Arun, I don't even know how to string a guitar. Can you fix this? The look he gave me of, yeah, man, I'll 100% do that for you. I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm like, thanks. So he fixes the guitar up for me and brings it over the house. I have no idea what I'm doing. I mean, so I start playing a little bit, and my wife's like, oh, my God, close the door. That's terrible. I never played with the Internet. That's how long it had been. I used to have to go buy tabulature books for all your younger people on there. You have no idea what I'm talking about. So all of a sudden, I start practicing more and more, and I could play chords. Like, I can solo that. Well, whatever. And I start playing, and my wife read. It was really, like a study on therapy and therapeutic things, and playing music was one of them. And I remember her giving it to me. Gone. It makes you feel better. Keep playing. And I would start playing more and more, and next thing you know, she's buying me a Fender Stratocaster right over here. And one year, she gets me lessons. I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. I can't believe I'm going to get lessons. This is so great. So I go there and I look at the guys going to email us, go, let me make this clear, man. I suck. I'm terrible. I'm just so happy to be here and appreciate this and all that other stuff because, well, let me teach you what a chord is. I'm like, dude, I know what a chord is. You want me to play a bar chord down chord? He goes, what, you can play all these. I go, yeah, what do you mean? Because I thought you said you suck. I go, oh, I'm terrible. I'm awful. He goes, what do you mean? You know all these chords? I go, well, I can't solo. He goes, you could play these chords. Next thing you know, me and him are literally sitting there playing Pink Floyd, just jamming out. And I'm like. I literally was, like, giggling like. Like a little kid. I'm like, this is the greatest thing ever. It was another thing I found that 20 years ago I thought would never happen again. And now it became something I do every night. We all have to find our therapy. We all have to find our catharsis. Whether it's yoga, meditation, playing music, something. Something you could take for 15 minutes a day will put your mind in a better spot and help the things you want to do with friends and family, because you're almost cleansing yourself and this was eight years ago in May, I got diagnosed. I still probably play 15, 20 minutes every day because it keeps me on point to be the person that I want to be.

That's beautiful. I love it. And I can really relate. I was a drumming teacher for 15, 20 years.

You were good then.

I don't know about that. And I loved it. And I still drum regularly and it's cathartic. And a lot of people do lift up drumsticks or a guitar for that cathartic experience. And I want to share one quick story with you about New York and we'll just, we'll wrap up here shortly. But I grew up in Northern Ireland and it had its fair share of challenges and conflicts, as you can imagine, with different things that happened in Northern Ireland. So I used to sit in the front step. I lived in a small town called Ballyclair. Just sit in the front step of my house and in the distance I could see these big jets taken off from Belfast International Airport. And in my mind, as a five year old, I thought every single plane took off and went to New York. That's where every plane from Belfast went to. It was probably going to Glasgow, but that's okay. So in my mind it went to New York. So from a young age, five or six, I had this desire to leave Ireland. Like I wanted to go to New York, I wanted to go to New York. And so I was about 13, 14, my grandparents took me to Calgary to see some family up in Canada. And then I got the opportunity to move to Vancouver over in the west coast of Canada. Beautiful, right?

Oh, gorgeous. One of our favorite cities.

Oh, you've been. That's cool.

Oh yeah, Vancouver, it's stunning.

So I spent time there and then I started traveling around the world. Southeast Asia, all over Europe, Australia, New Zealand. I'm 34 and I almost 35. I still haven't been to New York City.

So I got to throw something at you, man. I'm going to tell you this. And everybody watches. You don't want to go now.

Now is not the time to go. I would tell you it's magnificent. You know, one of the things that happens, you get desensitized to things when you grow up near it. Like if you grow up next to the Statue of Liberty, you don't feel the need to go to the Statue of Liberty or anything like that. New York has this captivating essence to it that it just never gets old. It's amazing. It's a wonderful place. We love going on. Me and my wife, we go once a quarter every year. We go up together because I could be there in 45 minutes. It's simple. It's a shame what's happening over here right now. In a lot of the major cities, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, you have people flooding out of the urban areas due to a variety of things. There's cost of living, there's taxes. But you also have a lot of the opioid problems have become very, very bad during this pandemic and nobody's really sure what to do. Everything will come back at some point, but it's more going through the negative time. Oh, I wish New York was this way. I wish. Gotta learn to appreciate in the now because you never know how things are going to change at some point.

Point. That's right. I want to make it to the East Coast. I'm going to give you a shout and if you're free, I'd like.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Now we'll go. We'll go up to New York and have some fun. Then we'll get you cheesesteak down in Philly. I like that.

I love it. Hey, I've got one last question for you. So what's your definition of leading a life of purpose?

It's a great question and two things just hit me there. So I'll kind of answer it in two prongs. The first is being you. Don't be what's perceived to be you. Don't be how you want others to look at you. Be yourself. When you define yourself as being you, you're leaving a much deeper legacy than you realize. The other thing I would tell you is find your passion. Whether it becomes an outlet, a catharsis, whatever it may be, find what really hits you in those heartstrings, makes you take pick and utilize it. Because when you want it, it may not be available at some point.

That's beautiful, Matt. I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for sharing your story.

My honor, thank you for having me.

No, it's. It's an honor to connect with you. I'll be getting your book. I'll be sharing it with my followers. I'll be putting the link below where people can get it. So I want to thank you so much.

And I'll tell you this, too. I want to give my website for this reason. It's Matthew. M A T D H E W S Newman N E W m a n matthewsnewman.com the only person that calls me Matthew is my mom. Let me throw the one out there. But the reason I want to give everyone that website is for those of you going through difficult times, taking on challenges, issues. You can contact me directly. There's all our social media, but there's also direct email on that. If there's any way we could help. If you know a family member going through a difficult disease or something like that, please don't be bashful. Whatever we can do to pay it forward, it's our absolute pleasure.

That's amazing. I'll put that link below, guys, directly to Matthew's website as well. That's amazing. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for listening in today and investing in your own personal growth. Please hit that subscribe button and I would love, love, love if you'd leave me a rating and review as it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks and folks, it's that time. Get out there and live life on purpose.