Transforming Pain Into Purpose: Matt Brown's Story of Resilience and Mental Health Advocacy

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If I could describe my childhood in one word, I would use the word unsafe. You're bringing shame to your family. Sorry, this may be triggering, but suicide was a very rural friend of mine. A grief where my innocence was stolen from me at the age of three. Bruised face, big sunglasses.

But no one said or did anything. There is a pandemic here happening in our backyard. What was modeled to me was a toxic relationship. Your childhood trauma wasn't your fault, but your healing is your responsibility. In order to heal, we must feel. Shame was something that crippled me for so many years. Their poor therapists probably needed therapy after our session. All of us are longing for belonging and connection. Look up brothers. You're not alone.

Welcome to LEDA on purpose. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world.

Champion musician and and now executive coach.

To global leaders and high performers. In every episode I bring you an.

Inspiring leader or expert to help you.

Lead your life and business on purpose.

Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

This is a trigger warning. What you're about to watch contains conversation about sexual abuse, suicide and domestic violence. If this and these topics in any way trigger you, please do not continue to to watch. For those of you that want to watch, you're going to get an incredible experience with the one and only Matt Brown. He is the founder of the global movement. She is not your rehab. Every man on the planet needs to watch this episode today and every woman that watches it, please share it with a man in your life. Please sit back and enjoy today's show.

I am so, so excited and I know many of you are very excited too. It's an incredible moment that we get to share this space with Matt Brown and we've all been waiting for this. So Matt, a huge welcome to the High Performance Leadership program.

Thank you brother.

I'd like to start at the beginning and for me the beginning of our relationship was I picked up this book, this amazing book called she is not your rehab And I was like, what does that mean? I need to understand that. I want to go deeper with that. So I bought this book, started reading it, and within a few chapters, it moved me. I was very sad at times, angry at times, very, very emotional. I was looking at the book through the eyes of little Matt. You being a young boy and the things that you had to traverse. And each and every one of us, we have challenges, adversity problems, we've got history.

But when I read that, I go, okay, this puts a perspective on things of we. We can live in our past, or we can choose to learn from our past and move forward and heal. Your story, I've never heard anything like it. So please, can I ask you, would you mind with the audience sharing your story?

Kia ora brother Talo for lover Tenakota Katua ko taimalangi Mateo FA fitaima Lito Brown Toku Ingoa Growing up on Christchurch North Utahi. Not many people could pronounce my name so May brownstuck. I was born up in Tamaki Makoto, Auckland to be exact. Mangare to be exact.275, but raised down here on Christchurch Hornby in the east side of Christchurch. Adanui to be exact. I grew up in a very. If I could describe my childhood in one word, I would use the word unsafe. Unsafe. It was unsafe to have an opinion. It was unsafe to think. It was unsafe to speak. It was unsafe to be me. Mat Brown. You know, when the infamous movie Once we warriors was released, I was 10 years old. I sat on the falla, on the mat, on the ground. And my siblings and I, we laughed. We cracked up through the entire film because we were. We thought it was a comedy. We would compare Beth Hickey's black eyes to my mum's black eyes. You know, mum's black eyes are way bigger than Beth's because she would go to church like this, you know, bruised face, big sunglasses.

But no one said or did anything. You know, people knew the violence, people heard the violence, but no one ever spoke up. And so for me, navigating my. My masculinity, my. What it means to be a man around violence was. Was very hard. You know, you never forget.

Sorry if this may be triggering, but you never forget the feeling of another man's private parts on your body as a young kid, you know, at the age of three, to then watch the person who's perpetrating violence on you leave. You leave your body and do the same to your little brother. Like that shit never leaves You. And so.

I left him at 15, trying to navigate my masculinity. Suicide was a very real friend of mine, a companion who sat on my shoulder continuously throughout high school. And so my option was either take my own life or speak up. And so I've been speaking about the harms of domestic violence, sexual abuse since I was 15. You know, when we're all given our three minute speech in English, I courageously chose to speak up and talk about family violence in school. And I still remember my peers, my Pacific community, my boys challenged me. You know, bro, the shit you're talking about, like, we know it happens to all of us, but you're bringing shame to your, to our culture, you're bringing shame to your family. But for me, the option was take my own life or speak up. And so I spoke up, left home and 15 at the age of 15, that was hard. I moved out of home into a boy's home. And when I was surrounded by these other boys, I soon learned that I wasn't alone in my own journey. And so I fell in love with barbering. I started cutting hair in my little garden tin shed in Aranui here. And the more it was from this space, cutting here, where I soon learned that we were more alike than we are different. Their shame, pain, trauma, family violence did not discriminate. You know, I would have men in gang patches, two men in uniforms, you know, firefighters, policemen, two men in suits, suit and tie. And when I cut these men's hair, I soon learned their stories. And fuck, we are more alike than we are different. And so being a barber listening to men's stories has been the greatest honour of my life. And so that book at the back really came, was birthed from the place of my lived experience, experience watching my dear mum be a rehab centre to my father. By the age of 10, I lived in every woman's refuge home here in Christchurch. And that was hard, you know, lining up at the food banks, not knowing if we were going to, you know, eat that night. Being homeless and sleeping in the car because we were kicked out. And I would always question Mum, like, you know, my dad's going to kill you one day, why don't you just leave him? And her response was always the same, like, son, I don't have any other options. And so, yeah, that's the beginning in a nutshell.

Thank you for sharing that.

How did you navigate your way out of that? Most people would not be sitting here, would not have written a best selling book, have a global movement, have an Incredible gallery in the city center. Most people that wouldn't be a reality. What started the development here and here that allowed you to move forward in a really positive way?

I was curious. I was curious, like when men started telling me their stories in my little garden tin shed when I started cutting hair 15 years ago.

It was the empathy that sat listening to these guys stories. I would judge them. I had my preconceived ideas. This guy, he wore a suit, he didn't look like me, didn't talk like me. But when I heard his story, he also struggled with shame. He also had his own pain and trauma that he didn't talk about. And these men were gifting me their stories. Stories that they had never told their wives, their partners, their parents.

And so I thought, man, like the simple act of cutting her hair, the power of just cutting hair and connecting with men was healing for myself. You know, it was in the chair where I learned how to be a father, asking dads, you know, what were your failings? Or what did you do wrong? How can I be better? It was in the chair where I learned how to be a good partner. You know, how do you treat your woman? How do we talk to our woman? Because if you've never growing up in a household like me, if you've never ever witnessed what a healthy relationship looked like, you know, what was modeled to me was a toxic relationship, was mom getting the shit beaten out of her endlessly. And so to then think, am I going to become a perpetrator? Am I going to, you know, reenact, carry on this, the cycle? I soon learned, no, that's not who I want to be. So it was from these conversations, having these courageous conversations in my barbershop and my barber chair, where I really learned how to navigate of what men, of what kind of men I wanted to be incredible.

And what kind of man did you want to be? If you had to picture that or define that, you had this example of your dad, that was your example as a kid. And for most of us, our biggest role models and people that impress the most thing on us are our mom and dad. So you had this model here. How did you know to even construct what this might look like, knowing that this was all you ever really knew?

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 Blocks. 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. Carolinejlochlin.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show. Notes.

This is all I knew. I knew that this is not what I wanted to be. I knew the fear, the shame that I carried, the mama, the pain that I carried. That was something I never wanted to transmit onto my children. My greatest invitation to becoming the man that I wanted to be, that I always dreamed to be, was when my son was born, you know, this little thing who came out of his mum, and all it did was scream and cry and shit. But I fell in love. It was love at first sight. And I then learned if I was to be the father that I never witnessed, the partner that I never witnessed, I had to forgive. I had to heal. And when I talk about forgiveness, I'm not talking about condoning the violence that I was subjected to, but it was letting go, you know, because, you know, your childhood trauma wasn't your fault, but your healing is your responsibility. And I knew that if I didn't heal and forgive, that pain, that mama, that bitterness, that anger, that resentment towards the people who perpetrated violence would transmit on onto the most vulnerable of society, which was my children, our children and our partners. And so I swear, I had to let go. Because, you know, people who perpetrated violence from my older cousins, babysitters, men and female, I don't know what they were doing with their lives. You know, they could. For all I know, they could be sleeping peacefully. I was the one that was left with the pain, with the shame of it. And so I had to let go of it so I could be the best dad to my kids.

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That's beautiful. And the book, like, I look at the book and it's. To me, it was almost like a handbook for me as a dad, for me as a partner to look at. Okay, these are things that we can do. We can carry pain, we can have resentment, hatred, but actually there's a pathway to forgiveness. There's a pathway to moving forward through all of our challenges. What was that pathway for you to forgive and to move forward, man?

I mean, I don't believe in a one size fits all approach when it comes to healing because all of our journeys are different. All of our pain and trauma are different. For me, it was really, you know, this is the first generation we've ever told people to feel, you know, my dad's generation, our father's generation was, you know, the school of hard knocks. Their job was to go to work, put food on the table. That was the way that they showed you that they loved you. Feelings, like, what the hell is feeling? And so for me to do different and be different, I had to feel all those feels. I'm a massive believer in order to heal, we must feel. And so what does feeling actually look like? How do we even navigate through these feelings of, you know, what lived beneath my anger, what lived beneath my resentment and bitterness. And underneath that, when I searched and navigated those hard waters, I found grief. You know, the grief of a childhood I never had. The grief where my innocence was stolen from me at the age of three. All these feelings I hate to feel. And I just wept. You know, when my son was 3 years old, not many people know this. Every day I put my boy to sleep, I cried. I cried because this kid, again, lives a completely different life to how his father was raised. You know, he's going to sleep peacefully. He lives in a home where mum. And he's not listening to his mum screaming and crying, getting the shit beat in and of her, I cried every night. My son was 3. When he turned 4, their crying stopped. But allowed myself, I allowed myself to feel those feels and it wasn't, you know, I didn't fall into the dunfol of feeling sorry for myself. I surrounded myself with men, with people who could help me navigate those hard waters. You know, I signed up to therapy. I talked to men in the barbershop who were beautiful fathers who weren't, you know, again, transmitting their pain onto their children and partners. And so, yeah, incredible.

Thank you. And so I want to talk about this. You started in a tin shed cutting hair, and then you had the most incredible barbers in Rickerton. And this was a barbers that for three or four months you couldn't get booked in. You had to book in advance. Like, it's incredible, like it's a household name in Christchurch. What gave you the confidence to go, I'm going to start here. I've never done this before. I'm going to grow it and build it.

So I never started out to be the greatest barber or have the busiest barber shop. I really just wanted to cut hair.

You know, and cutting hair became a bit, you know, I'm a creative first and foremost. And so I attempted to shave portraits of, you know, famous movie stars, rappers, sports stars. And I kind of. I went viral on social media when I did a portrait of Tupac, my favorite rapper, Tupac. I grew up in the 90s, so I did this portrait of Tupac. I put it up on Facebook. I woke up the next day and it had over a million likes and shares. I thought I was the man.

And then that went viral and barbers from all around the world were reaching out and wanting to connect on social media. So that kind of gave me a little push of a moment of inspiration. Oh, man, I can do this. I can take this further. And so my best friend at the time who was living up in Tamaki Makoto, Sarah, she.

Said I wanted to take my barbering seriously. And so she said, oh, if you're serious, come up to Auckland. And my father owns a hairdressing academy called Seville's. He has a barber and he can teach you. And so I was like, oh, yeah, sounds good. I went up to Auckland for a few months. Cut here out of this high end barbershop just off Queen Street. I learned under this fourth generation Turkish barber. And I'll never forget the day I walked into his salon barbershop and I said, oh, kia ora. My name's Matt, put my hand out and he looked at me, he goes, all you young barbers are full of shit. I'm like, oh.

You know, I said nothing because I learned that this guy was 10th Dunn black belt. So I was like, okay, sweet. And so I just swept the floor And I just watched this man and the way he serviced, like his haircuts, it was high end. Like the cheapest haircut in that barbershop was $150 for a 30 minute haircut. I'm like, that is very expensive where I come from is $10. But you know, I was just like this. All the men that were coming through were wearing suits, suit and tie, all businessmen. And I was sweeping the floor. But the way this guy served us, served the men in the chair and just listening to the conversation. His English wasn't the best, but these men were opening up their hearts to him, telling him their stories. And I thought, that's what I want to take back to my neighbourhood. And so I came back and then Christchurch men started opening up and I thought, man, I'm only one barber, there's only so many heads I can cut. How do we create a bigger impact in this city and normalizing the conversation around mental health? And so I had a dream to open up a bigger barbershop. And I reached out to Sarah, who was now living in Rarotonga. She was coming back to New Zealand, said, I'm coming back to New Zealand. I said, man, do you want to come to Christchurch and help me build this business? And she said, yep, I'll give you a year, I'll give you a year. And I said, sweet. So Sarah's background, my wife, I ended up asking her to be my girlfriend, which now we're married and three kids. Her background was marketing and events. And so she gave me a year. And that year.

Our social media presence was massive. And she said, how about we start teaching people, you know, you want a barbershop? The way we're going to raise this money, not drug dealing, not doing bad things, was, you know, working legit. And so I said, well, how can we do that? And she said, how about we start running barber these events? And I said, no one's going to want to come and learn from me, like I'm just a boy from the hood. And she said, no, people want to come, people want to learn how to do this here out the portraits that you're doing, like no one's doing that down under. And so we did, we put it up online. We did three shows around New Zealand, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The first 10 minutes it sold out and 50, 50 barbers and headdresses came to this and I was like, again, this gave me another window to life. Oh, this is possible for me to open up this barber shop. And then seriously, how about we take this tour to Australia, I said, oh, man, no one's going to want to come listen to me in Aussie. Like, people don't even know me over there. Anyway, Sarah put it up on social media, on our Facebook, and in the first hour, 29 shows sold out in nine cities. And so we did that in two weeks. We did that in two weeks. We came back in that two weeks, we made $80,000. And that was just working hard, working hard. And I came back, I was depleted, tired, and we had enough money to open up our barbershop in Rikkitan. And so for me, I share that story to the boys in my neighbourhood because, you know, growing up in poverty, growing up where, you know, you weren't served the best cards on the table.

It was a different window for a lot of my boys and my neighbor to see, man, you can work hard, legit, not go down this path of gang culture and drug dealing and make a living.

So amazing. You've totally rewrote that narrative for so many young men that will be in a similar situation that you were in as a child. It's incredible and amazing to watch your brand just explode globally. It's amazing. And Sarah, like, you've mentioned Sarah, tell me a little bit more about Sarah and the impact she's had on your heart, had on your vision, man.

The wisest, the most business decision, the wisest business decision I ever made was Sarah to be my girlfriend.

We were best friends for four years. Sarah had a daughter, our oldest girl, Oceana. I came into Oceana's life when she was 6. And so I knew again from my childhood that what kind of man I didn't want to be. And so I knew, you know, I treated carefully, you know, with these two precious wahine in their hearts, I treated carefully. I didn't want to be that guy that led on Sarah and then, you know, broke Oshi's heart. And so we were just friends for four years. All my clients were like, I'm sure you guys are hooking up. I was like, nah, we're not. Like, I have trust issues, you know, because of my own childhood, I have trust issues and Sarah's got her own issues. And so, yeah, it came to the end of that year that Sarah gave me after Rao Tonga, she was going to move back to Tamaki. And I asked her, you know, do you want to be my girlfriend? And she said, look, I love you, Matt. She was shocked. She said, I love you, but you need to check your ass into therapy because your issues and your pain is not mine to carry. I'm here to support you and cheer you on, but it's your responsibility. And I swear to God. That poor therapist probably needed therapy. After our session, I went blank. Here's my story. Put me back together, but it was beautiful. Sierra's the love of my life. I would not be the man I am today if not for her. I don't adhere to. Behind every good man is a great woman. She's not behind me. She's right next to me doing the mahi, doing this work. She is a strong manawahine from Te Rawa nga Puhi of Mori descent. And she is just. She is the creative force behind all the work that we do. I'm a very shy, introvert guy, so I hate public speaking. I hate being in the, you know, in the limelight. But my wife is like, you get your ass out there and tell your story. So I'm like, so, yeah, I married a very strong wahine.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And, you know, I hope you all get to meet Sarah. She's an incredible speaker, too. Please do look her up when you're looking Matt up today. Sarah's incredible. And he's right. She stands in her own right alongside Matt. She's an inspiration. I want to ask you about the work you do together. I've been following your journey for a while now, and you and Sarah do some incredible work together. And I believe you've been in it and working in prisons as well. Tell me a little bit about that work and why it means so much to you.

Well, you know, when we were approached by Penguin, our publisher, to write this book, we had been working on this book for a while, for a few years. And so when Penguin came along, I said my dream was to actually get this book. We wrote this book to get into prisons because I was the kid who waited patiently every time dad did a long leg in prison. I would wait patiently, hoping when dad got out that something would have worked inside, that the light bulb went on or something. Someone said something to him that would change him from abusing us. Unfortunately, that day never came. And so the heart in writing this book was getting it in the hands of men who had this opportunity to be sober. No negative surroundings around them other than other people incarcerated. But they had this time to really do the work. And so, you know, when we proposed it to Penguin, Penguin said, well, our mission is to actually give. Is to actually sell books, not give them away for free. But I said, how much would this cost? And at the time, there was 2020, 2021, there was 9,350 people incarcerated in this country. Over half of that are indigenous people, Mori and Pacific. And so Penguin said, this is going to cost you 9,350 people in prison. This is going to cost you guys about $100,000. And so we went knocking door knocking on different people, organizations, government, the police. And they all gave us this put here, gave us this money. And so wifey text, Penguin said, I have the money. Send me the invoice, send me the books. And so 2021, every person incarcerated in this country was gifted a book for Christmas. The letters, the messages that we've received since then from men incarcerated, women and men incarcerated has been worth. It has been the greatest honor to have messages from children write to us and say, you know, this is the first time I've ever heard my father apologize. This is the first time I've ever heard my father apologize to my mum. Apologize to us. My mum and dad are now walking around the house like that. Back in high school, you know, in love, like the book has, it was taking all the psychobabble, academia, language, and simplifying it for our men, black and white. This is what you need to do. This is a roadmap, my roadmap of how I healed.

It's possible for you.

It's really powerful. And what I loved about it was, you're right, there's all this psychobabble that I don't understand. And you were able to distill it all. And I could connect at a heart level and a head level and go, this makes sense. And the one thing about the book, probably I want to reiterate, is I read it not in prison, in a healthy relationship, but going, oh, I could step up in that. Oh, look how Matt handled that. That could really help me feel better, experience more joy, interact better with the people I love most. It was one of those books that impacted me. So I think it's written obviously with that specific in mind, but it actually.

Applies to all of us, definitely. And I mean, it's. We've been doing this work now for 15 years, talking about these hard conversations that are very tapu. Very sacred, very taboo, you know, and it started from the barbershop in a real place where men come, you know, to converse and, you know, to look good. And I still remember, you know, the government, our government reached out to us and said, you know, how can we collaborate, collaborate with you, because we're seeing the work that you're doing. Grassroots. You know, a lot of these men that you're working with are not reoffending. You know, every person, 100% of the men who have come for our barbershop have come for our programs, have never have stopped reoffending. And, you know, psychologists and corrections are like, what is the blueprint? You know, what are you doing with these men? And for me, it's. It's just walking alongside men and listening and being empathetic with them, you know, showing up for them, telling them that I see them. Because all of us are longing for belonging and connection, Every single one of us. You know, I've been a bible for a long time. All of us are longing for connection and belonging. And so when the government approached us, you know, my first. My first response was, hell, no. I want a collaborative of the government. Like, you know, where I come from, like, we don't trust you.

Yeah.

But, you know, Sarah, my strong wahine said, no, we're going to do this because we can get into spaces that you won't be able to get into. And so we did. We took some money, and my dream was to run these wananga, you know, wananga, a gathering, a conference for barbers, again, teaching other barbers around the country how to have these conversations. And we ran four. The government gave us enough money to run four. So 50 barbers per waananga came to these. And I remember at one of these wnanga, every wnanga, I always share my story quite raw to barbers. And I always run this activity called the Circle of Courage. And one of the questions I always ask in the Circle of Courage is, you know, I mean, I ask it here, hands up, in this room, if you've ever felt misunderstood.

So all of us, right? And so I ask these questions to the barbers. Step inside the circle if you've ever felt heartbroken, you know, so the old guys stand in the circle. The young guys are giggling outside. And one of the questions I get to is, step inside the circle if you've ever been sexually abused.

Out of 50 barbers in this one whananga, 47 men stood in that circle. Wow. 47 men who had never, ever told their stories with their words, with their lips. But you see, to me, that tells me there is a pandemic here happening in our backyard. And these were not just brown barbers. These were like barbers from all different walks of life. 47 men who stood in that circle and just cried and weeped. And I said, look up, brothers. You're not alone. And so the reason why I bring that, because I'm not a fan of what we will see on the statistics table because society is not safe for men to open up. And if we do open up, what are we going to be met with? Shame. Humiliation, you know, Mocking. And so creating a safe space where men feel safe and seen has. Has been the honor of this work. And so taking this into prison, like over 90% of people who have perpetrated violence who were incarcerated were once upon a time a victim themselves. And so the reason why I do this work, because when you can heal the victim or the person who was, you know, abused, when you heal that victim, you heal the man. When you heal that man, you heal the whnau. You heal our community. And so it's important because these men come out and you have little mats, little James, who are waiting for their Superman super mom.

To be healed, to be better. And if they don't, the cycle just carries on. They'll leave that relationship, get a new partner, and carry on the cycle.

Your vision is just incredibly clear. It's from here I can see that. It just makes sense that here's what I'm trying to do, here's why I'm doing it. But I imagine there's been roadblocks, there's been obstacles, there's been challenges. Maybe days of, this is so damn hard. Why are we doing this? What keeps you doing.

Is hard. I mean, this is not a very popular, you know, topic to talk about. It's not a popular business plan. You know, step one, get a barbershop. Step two, start crying with your clients.

But what makes it worth it is our children, my children, the children who write to me. I mean, I spoke at New Plymouth Boys High School last week, and I have received over 100 messages. I spoke to 400 students, year 9, 10, and 11.

And over 100 students have all written to me on social media, connecting with the message, you know, resilience, building resilience.

What it's like for young boys growing up in society today. And so for me, it's just being authentic with who I am. You know, I don't come with a massive degree on how to connect with people and heal. I'm just a barber. I'm just a dad who wanted to help my community. And owning my story in its entirety. The abuse, the trauma, the pain, but also the healing and changing the narrative has been my greatest superpower, I suppose, is owning my story 100%.

And imagine if we could all own our stories. We talked yesterday about Coming into the room. And we have this mask that we put on when we engage with others in the world. And often that's because we haven't owned our story. So in the book, you talk about owning the story. So how could someone sitting in the audience right now begin to own their story? What does that look like?

I know how it feels.

How does it feel?

How it feels is scary. Scary as fuck.

And I say scary because in order to earn your story, you have to be vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable. I'm vulnerable with every guy who sits in my chair. And when I say vulnerable, I'm vulnerable with my story first. When you're vulnerable with your story, you give permission for other people to be vulnerable in their story. And so being vulnerable is scary as hell for men in gang culture, the neighborhood that I grew up. If you're vulnerable, that's used against you. And a lot of society and a lot of sports clubs. If you're vulnerable, that's used against you, especially in male culture. And so owning that and telling my story, you know, getting pushed back from when I was 15, from my own boys. Don't talk about that shit. You know, it happens to all of us. But, you know, you're bringing shame, all those things. It's hard. You know, you and how it feels is, you know, shame feels like sweaty hands. You know, your stomach's rumbling like a washing machine, all those feels. But the only way through vulnerability is. The only way to get past vulnerability is to go through it. And I feel it's been my greatest power, being vulnerable, owning my story. I mean, no one wants to hear about you being abused from the age of three. But I stand in my power. I stand in the mana that that was my story. But that's not who I am today.

And so it's hard. It's hard. You know, I remember the first time I ever talked about the hardest chapter in that book to write was chapter four. If you do get to that chapter, it's called she Is not yout Shame. Shame was something that crippled me for so many years. And when I talk about shame, I talk about it in the book where I was one of my. One of my parents tactics of disciplining me as a kid was stripping me naked. Stripping me naked and laughing at my body parts. And so that shame, like, haunted my entire childhood. It was the reason why I never, you know, I didn't lose my virginity until I met my wife, because that shame just crippled me. Like to have people laugh at your, you know, masculinity from a young age was haunting, to say the least. But owning that story has been so freeing. You know, the first time I ever shared that in public, I just stood there and cried. I cried in front of my barbers telling that story. I can tell that story now.

Because I've gone through that vulnerability, you know, and I own that story. But in saying that, that chapter has been the most powerful chapter. It's a chapter that most men around the world have written to me and said, you know, I've struggled with body shame. And these are men who I think, bro, you got like eight abs. You know, like, I've struggled with body shame. And so to hear a guy talk about body shame is.

Being freedom.

Thank you for sharing that. And for the last day and a bit, we've been talking about high performance leadership. And I look at you as the ultimate high performing leader. And that's because high performing leaders lead self. They don't start by telling other people what to do. They start by leading self and working on self. Now, you've made some big moves in the last year, so the barbershop is now sold and you've turned your focus. So can we learn a little bit more about what your vision is now, why you made that huge decision, and now you're focused on this.

So, yeah, a barber shop on Ricketon Road, my father's barbers, we closed down a few months ago. Our lease came to an end, so we were asked to renew the lease for another four years. I said, I'm hardly here now. I've been traveling a lot, talking about these awesome subjects. But, yeah, the book's taken off. It's just opened up so many doors. We are about to drop a mental health app for men that I've been working on for three years. This mental health app is called Inner Boy. This was actually birthed around Covid. During lockdown, I jumped on national television and did an interview with Dr. Ange Jury, who is the CEO of Women's Refuge. And something came over me and I said on national television, if there's any brothers out there, any men out there who are struggling with violence or struggling with their mental health, please reach out to me. I promise I'll respond. Nick minute, like thousands and thousands of people were messaging me. I was up till three o' clock in the morning every night for that six weeks writing back to me, you know, and I didn't want to copy and paste. I wanted it to all be, you know, genuine and unique messaging. But what really broke my heart was receiving this message from a 12 year old boy who said, matt, I watched your interview last night on television. You said that you help men who struggle with anger. Can you please help me help my father from stop abusing my little brother? When I read that message, I thought, this is not our children's responsibility to regulate, grow on as men and their emotions. This is not their responsibility. And so I jumped online. Me and my wife jumped online. I tried to find help.

What was online and there was nothing. And the stuff that was online was outdated, inaccessible, cost money. And I thought we need to create our own thing. And so we created this mental health app called Inner Boy. It's all our work that we've done over the last 15 years put onto an online tech platform to help and teach men how to regulate their emotions, how to navigate anger, you know, because anger is a good emotion if it's used properly, you know, but anger used wrong can be destructive. You know, I teach people to use anger to change the world. You know, I'm angry at my childhood, you know, but I'm not going to use that on my wife and my children. I'm going to use it in shifting culture and normalizing these conversations. So that mental health app drops on Monday.

It's coming Monday, this coming Monday. And it's called Inner Boy.

Inner Boy. So it's not on the app store yet, so you have to actually put it on the address, the web searches, innerboy nz. So it's really connecting with the inner child again. Like I said, when you can heal the inner boy, the inner child, you heal the adult. And then we've also opened up an art gallery here in town. This was the evolution of our Kaupapa. You know, she is not. Your rehab is very triggering for a lot of brothers. You know, I get messages all the time. I've had men sit in my barbershop waiting to have a conversation with me and I'm booked out for the whole day. But they've sat there for two hours till my lunch break just to tell me they don't like the title. Like, what about he is not your rehab? And so for me, I always say, yes, like violence happens both ways. We know that. You know, women also abuse men. I have men in my chair who are crying because they can't see their children or they don't have access to their kids or their partners have abused them. Some women do hit men, but we cannot deny the fact that we are losing women and children at the hands of unregulated adults. Men.

Nearly once a week in Australia, we lose one woman once a week at the hands of a man. And so. But then my thing is we are also losing men at the hands of men. We're taking our own lives because we're not. We don't know how to regulate these hard emotions and feelings. And so the evolution of our Kaupapa was we posed the question to our socials, if she is not your rehab, then who is she? And so we wanted that question. We wanted men to answer and engage. And so we put that question on socials last year, White Ribbon Day, which was November, and we had over 3,000 men from around the world write in a word of who she was to them. So it could be. It was targeted at their partner, their mum, their daughter. And it was beautiful. My job was to go through and read every single submission and then choose the top hundred. And so we chose the top hundred. I reached out to a famous, well known mori artist called Mr. G from Tauranga. And this guy is so busy but he managed, he loved the Kaupapa and he wanted to fit us in. So he came down, flew down and we painted 100 canvases and we painted 100 words. And so the most submitted word that men submitted over 300 times was the word home. She is home. And so we crossed out not yout Rehab. And we put on the affirming word of who she was to them. And so Mr. G flew down. You know, a guy who is headhunted after Marvel, he's done stuff for Marvel, for Star wars, for celebrities all around the world. And this guy, you know, he gave us time for free for this co popper. And so that's our art gallery in town.

You got to go check the art gallery out. It's phenomenal. It's a beautiful place. People get married at the gallery as well. And the artwork is next level. Like it's incredible. So I've got my name on the, on three of those. They go and sell in July.

Yes.

I want them at my office. They look amazing.

One thing we're doing is, you know, I've never asked, I'm not someone to ask for money. And so we're doing a crowdfund come July. So we've completed stage one of our app. Thank you to, you know, funding from msd. But stage two, we have to find the funds ourselves. And so we had this idea to, to sell art prints. So there's 100 paintings. We're going to sell a limited edition of each art print at $365. So a dollar a day, 365. Mr. G, his own art prints, a minimum. He would usually sell for 600, no more than 600. So for us, all this money will go back into phase two of our app and creating this tech to help support our men and making this accessible and free.

Amazing. And if there's someone here that goes, actually, I know someone who knows someone, or I've got a thing that can help, or let me introduce you, then please do that. If someone's listening to this online, listen to this on the podcast, same thing. Reach out. We'll connect you in with Matt. But Matt, the work that you're doing is needed. We chatted earlier about New Zealand being world champions in child mortality, in teen suicide, in domestic violence. And it's the wrong kind of records that we want to be setting. And the work that you're doing is directly impacting that. So if we were to sit here in five years time, which I hope we get to do, and you were to look back and be most proud, what would be the thing that you would think? And that's the one thing that I want to achieve.

Normalizing this conversation. Normalizing this conversation. I think we have, like, I mean, even when getting into barbering, I would have traditional old school barbers message me 15 years ago and say, bro, shut up, stop talking about this mental health stuff. Like, you're a good barber. Stick to cutting here. Covid hit all those same barbers who were like messaging me negative stuff. And I reach out like, bro, my mental health is not good. Like, you know, how do we have these conversations in the barbershop? So normalizing that conversation. I think I'll be proud of, you know, talking about men talking about their feelings and not just talking about their feelings. There's a massive narrative out there right now telling men, you know, reach out, speak up. But my thing is, what after we speak up, you know, if we speak up, are you safe to speak up to? You know, are you safe for us to open up to? And so my challenge always is, are you safe enough? Because it's fine telling people to speak up and reach out, but if they reach out, like, what are they going to be met with? So my thing is, are you safe enough for these men to reach out? You know, be safe, be that safe person? And how you be the safe person is you have to model that yourself. Sorry.

But yeah, I'll be proud of that in five years time that we have really shifted, that made a dent in our statistic. You know, numbers come down or family violence.

Yeah. And suicide, 100%.

And we can all help with that. That's the thing. Each and every one of us has the capability within ourselves and our families and our communities and the places we work to actually help Matt with that vision by normalizing the conversation, by creating safe space, by working on self.

It's a wee problem. Like whether you like it or not, or if you sit behind your white picket fence, like, this is a wee problem. This has cost, domestic violence alone, has cost this country, us, the taxpayer, $80 billion the last 10 years. And that's policing, that's incarceration, that's health. It's just domestic violence alone. It's cost us $80 billion. So when we think, you know, when we want our roads to be, you know, fixed and all that stuff, like our money is going to this stuff, to domestic violence. And so it's a we problem, 100%.

And one last question, just before we open up to Q and A. If we were to fast forward very, very many years into the future and you know that it's your last day here on earth, and someone very young, maybe a great grandchild or a grandchild, says to you, matt, how can I lead my life on purpose? What might you say to them?

I've never been asked that question.

A young person.

I would say.

Own your story and love your mum. Yeah.

Beautiful, Matt. Thank you so much. Please put your hands together.

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I've got some amazing guests lined up for you in the coming weeks and leaders.

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And lead your life on purpose.