Matt McMann How you can change careers and live a minimalist lifestyle.

You are listening to episode number 14. Thank you so much for joining us today. My goal with these conversations is to explore different types of people and their successes as well as their failures in navigating and mapping out their lives so that you too may have more insight in what it takes to build the life that you envision for yourself. I believe if you take action each day the life that you want can be closer than you think. Welcome to Work That Out, guys, your guide to connecting authentically, living with purpose, and having no regrets. This is a show that gives you real stories and real examples of people working it out and creating the life that they want. My guest today is a personal development blogger, a musician, and an author working on his third novel. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Conversation with Mr. Matt McMahon. Ladies and gentlemen, today my guest is none other than Matt McMahon. How's it going today, Matt? How are you doing today?

Beautiful. It's a gorgeous day. I can look out my window to my Sacramento Park across the street. It's a good day. I get to talk to my friend Travia Steward.

We're all good. So just to, you know, get the— get our listeners up to speed a little bit, you know, I know you from Mesa, Arizona. I followed you and your wife, of course, you know, I taught your kid, but today it's all about you. And so tell me a little bit about who Matt is and what gets him excited. Excited to get up? Like, today is a Monday morning, right? And most people who have not created their life are like, oh, it's Monday, I hate Monday. And I used to be one of those people as well. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what gets you excited even on a Monday.

Who I am is an interesting question. I think a lot about identity. It's one of the things that I write about in my personal development blog a lot is identity. There's an author that I love named Robert Fulghum. He wrote the book All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten way back in the day. And he tells a story where he has a business card and the only thing on his business card is one word. It just says Fulghum. It's just his name. And so when people say, who are you? Like, what do you do? Whatever. He just hands them that business card. And I always thought that was interesting. Yeah. So in terms of who I am, identity, I think, is something in some ways that we can choose. And I've chosen to base my foundational identity on I am God's child. That's my bedrock. That's my foundational identity. And I've chosen that because I feel like everything else that I've kind of hung my hat on over the years in terms of my sense of identity It's all changeable. If I base my identity on my job, well, that can change. I can lose my job or I can retire. If I base my identity on a relationship, people can come and go out of my life. I base my relation, you know, my identity on finances, you know, we all know how those can go up and down these days. And whatever else you can hang your hat on, I feel like is malleable. And so that's why I've kind of chosen My identity is God's child, that's my bedrock. Then on top of that, I layer in, I'm a husband, I'm a dad, I'm a son, I'm a friend, I'm a retired musician, I'm a personal development blogger, I'm an aspiring children's author, and I'm a new YouTuber. So there you go.

Nice.

That's who I am.

That's who you are. I love that because I have, you know, I've delved really, really deep into identity myself. And so, and one of the things that I find, which I knew, that you and I would have a great conversation because I've always felt, especially lately with your transition, how much we have in common. And I think identity is so important because had I known when I was 8, the things that I know now, that I really have the power to create my world, create my days, create my identity. Oh my God, things would be so different.

You know? Yeah.

So I know that you were a music minister for 26 years, right?

Yeah.

And when people are like— I remember when I was making a transition from high school teacher to full-time performance and life coach, and people are like, girl, you're gonna quit your job? Are you crazy? What do you mean you're gonna quit your job? You know, and this was right when COVID was starting. And so I was like, yeah, I'm gonna make the jump. It's like, oh, you're crazy, you know. And so there's so much motivation with, you know, just staying in that certainty and that security of having a a paycheck, knowing where you're going. But I realized that I was no longer living.

Yeah.

And so tell me about your motivation for, you know, you're a music minister for 26 years and you're like, you know, I'm just going to make this huge leap at this time in my life.

Yeah. I'd say the first reason was because I felt like that's what God was kind of nudging me to. And I learned a long time ago that God's smarter than I am. So when I get a sense where I feel like God's kind of going, you know, I think your direction should be this way, it's a pretty good idea to listen. And that it works out better for me in the end because God can see around corners and he knows what's better for me than I do. So that was the first thing. Um, the second reason was I was starting to lose my passion for it. I still believed in it, um, and I still loved music. I still loved the people that I was doing, uh, music with and I just, I could tell when I was on stage, it just didn't have the same level of joy that I used to have. And then third, I always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a kid, I'd wanted to be a writer. And then, you know, I ended up in, you know, which is a whole other long story, kind of taking the music route, and that led to a whole career in music, right? But the opportunity, the, the love, the idea of circling back to that childhood passion of wanting wanting to be a writer was intriguing. And then we were at a season of life where we were empty nesters and my wife, Lisa McMahon, very successful New York Times bestselling author, her career was at a point where we were at the very fortunate position. We didn't need my income to pay the bills. So I had the opportunity to jump and I jumped. And you talked about cycling back to that first question that I didn't really answer. You said, what, you know, help me get excited to get out of bed in the morning? Wow. I get excited to get out of bed every morning because I am loved by God. I'm loved by amazing people in my life. I get to do work that I love, living in a place that I love with the person that I love. And man, I get to live in a way that I love, that we've chosen to kind of carve out for ourselves. So how could you not be excited about that?

I love that. And so, you know, just talking to you right now, it's obvious to me that you lead from a point, from a place of gratitude, right? I mean, you just listed off all these things. How has that really impacted your life? Have you noticed a change? I mean, I know you've always been a Christian guy, you know, but have you always led with, you know, I'm thankful today because I've been a Christian all my life, but I've never put gratitude at the forefront. The way that I do now. Tell me a little bit how gratitude has just enriched your life, if it has.

Oh man, that's such a great question. I've made a practice every day to start and end the day. Mm-hmm. Gratitude. I usually, like, every morning, this part of my daily routine is I'll go out on the our balcony, and I'll have— that's where I have my kind of my time alone with God, my, you know, where I'll meditate and I'll pray and I'll read some kind of inspirational or spiritual development type of book. And in my prayer time, I always lead out with gratitude. I always start with thanking God for the good stuff that's in my life. And then I do that same practice at the end of the day. At the end of the day, go out on the balcony, look up at stars, and just, you know, no matter kind of how crappy my day has gone, what, you know, curveballs came along, I can always think of things to be grateful for. And I just feel like if we choose to make gratitude a practice, that it really doesn't prevent problems from coming, but it makes them feel smaller. Right.

Right.

And it makes life sweeter.

I get that because it's all in how you react to things. Because, you know, in life it's 10% of what happens to you, but it's 90% of how you react to it. Right. So we can always choose to see the glass half full.

Yeah.

So something you said, and I've mentioned this to a couple of people before, for the longest time I've always wanted to meditate. And now I have this huge practice with meditating 3 times a day. But for the longest time, I could not get my prayer time and my meditation time to mesh. I always felt like they needed to be separate, you know, because, you know, but it was a story that I was telling myself from my mom because my mom was always like that, woo woo, you know, that's the devil, that Satan stuff, you know. So it took me a long time to realize that those two can go hand in hand. Have you always realized and known deep in your heart that you can meditate and pray in the exact same setting?

Short answer is yes. Long answer is I developed that yes over time. One of the things that I realized was that when I, I used to teach spiritual practices at one of my previous jobs, and one of the things I would teach my students is tools like meditation are just that. They're tools. A tool in itself is not inherently good or inherently bad. It's just a tool. It depends on how you use it. You can take a hammer and you can build a church, or you can kill somebody. That doesn't change the essence of the hammer.

Yeah.

So meditation, where some people like you had mentioned, like, oh, meditation, isn't that that weird Eastern woo-woo thing? What is that? Yeah. No, it's a tool that you can use to connect with God or use it in any way you want. So the other thing that's really been helpful for me, when I think of meditation, a lot of times I just think of in terms of a conversation, in terms of marrying meditation and prayer. Well, what is prayer? Prayer, in its essence, is just a conversation with God. And there's two parts to a conversation: there's speaking and there's listening. So most people, when they think of prayer, they're like, okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to list off a litany of things. I'm going to talk at God. And then say, thanks God, and then I walk away, and that's prayer. Well, that's half of prayer. The other half is, well, what might God have to say to you? Did you ever stop to listen? And to me, that's what meditation is. Yeah, it's giving space for God to bring something to my mind, bring something to my heart, to speak to me in whatever way. That he wants to.

Yeah, I love that. Recently I've been able to better tap into hearing the voice, hearing and feeling into my intuition. It took me a long time to really realize because I would ask myself these questions, you know, and, you know, you know, just like we all do. And I've gotten so much more clarity. And because I was like, how do you hear that? How do you feel that? You know, I would always ask, like, my sister-in-law and my brother are evangelists. They co-pastor pastor of church and she's like, you know, I clearly heard the voice of God. And I was like, I've never heard the voice of God, you know? And so I just struggled with that for a long time, but I realized for me it was just very, very subtle. And I, yeah. And I also realized that whenever that intuition and that voice was speaking to me, everything just felt relaxed in my body.

Yeah.

When the answer was, take caution, that's probably a no. I'd always get this tightness right here.

Yeah, you know, yeah, I totally relate to that. And, and for those listeners, or people that are watching this and are going, these guys think they hear from God, they're not— these people are insane. You know, just to clarify, we're not talking about writing in the sky, we're not talking about audible voices, and all that. However, I do believe, as crazy as it sounds— well, one, you start with, I do believe God exists. Two, I believe that he wants to have a relationship with us. Right. And three, that a conversational intimacy with God is possible. And that part of that is learning to hear God's still small voice. And, uh, there's an incredible book that helped me with this particular aspect of my relationship with God more than anything other. It's called Walking with God by John Eldredge, and it's basically— it's how to have conversational intimacy with God, how to learn to hear the voice of God, right, in your life. And so yeah, I know it sounds crazy.

It does.

It is possible to begin to understand the difference of, you know, the things that God brings up into your own mind and your own heart and just what came from the pizza you ate last night. Right, right.

So I've been following your blog, you know, Becoming You, Becoming Yourself. And so, you know, and I get, I get the reminders that, you know, Becoming Yourself is, there's a new book. And I find again, you know, evidence that the two of us have so much more, so much in common to begin with.. And I just love, and I find so much insight from the things that you write. So what I want to talk about right now is your relationship, your marriage, and you've shared some of these things in your blog posts. How long have you and Lisa been married?

Uh, it was just 29 years a couple of weeks ago.

29 years. And so I am a performance, and I'm actually an advanced relationship coach. And I work with clients because, yeah, I work with clients and the basis and the foundation of a really good relationship, I believe, is communication.

Oh yeah.

You know, you align those values, you have communication. So that's my perspective. What have been like a couple of secrets and a couple of things and gems that, you know, have really, really worked to hold together that 29 years?

Yeah, I think step 1, marry up. Marry somebody better than you. I love that.

I did that.

So seriously though, I would say the first thing I'd say is don't settle. Don't compromise. It is better to be single than to marry the wrong person. That's my starting belief. The second thing I'd say is the best thing you can bring to a marriage is a healthy you. So just a real sense, a positive sense of identity, you know, personal security, self-love. If you're bringing in that to a relationship, that's going to put you on a really good footing, right? And then I think, you know, if I would just rattle off, like, you know, once you're in it, once you're in the marriage, you know, what's going to make it work? My number one thing is right with you. It's communication, being willing to say the hard truths in love and to say them early before they fester and just to say them with gentleness. That's number one. Number two, right behind that, I'd say is respect. Respecting the other person, respecting your— the differences that you have. Um, and then number 3, I'd say a heavy dose of grace because there's going to be a lot of mistakes on both sides, intentional, non-intentional, right? So really share those, share that grace. And then the last thing I'd say is healthy expectations, realizing that your spouse is not the answer to your problems or the solution to all your needs. Your spouse is a life partner, not your savior.

Right.

So I think having those components in place and practicing those on a day-in, day-out basis, that's what's, you know, given us the marriage that we have.

Right. Oh, that's perfect. That is incredible. 29 years is a long time. So congratulations on 29 years. There was a word again that jumped out during, you know, your answer, and you said expectations. And so delving into expectations a little bit, as a Coach, I know that, you know, well, before I started on my Coach training, I would just expect these people to do things, right? Like I would, you know, I would just expect and then I would make assumptions, right? And so I would just assume that You know, people knew the very basic things and sometimes they had no idea. And so I would have these expectations that if I treat you, you know, the way I want to treat you, that I would expect you to treat me the exact same way. Well, then I realized in my life that expectations were not working for me. And so expectations versus making agreements. So one of the things As far as in a relationship, because like, I realized that there were times when it's like, you know, let's say in a partnership, right? We all have our love language. You know, like my partner really likes acts of service. Well, that's not my top love language. And so, but I know to sort of do those things, but there were expectations of you're expected to do this, expected you to do that, you know, go do this, go make this, make that. And so I became internally a little bitter about that. And so, because there was an expectation. And so we sat down and said, okay, I can't be expected to do these 4 things just when, you know, just because you expect me, let's have an agreement. I will do these things on Saturday and Sunday.

Perfect.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So yeah. So we threw out all those assumptions.

Yeah. It's communication, right?

Yeah, it's clarifying. It's expectation management. When I've talked with other, uh, when I've taught some classes and when I've talked with other couples who have come to me or to me and Lisa jointly for some marriage advice, right, we talk about that expectation management. It's, you've got to be, you cannot expect your partner to know that, well, when I grew up, my parents functioned this way, so I'm I'm expecting you to function that way too. And the fact that you're not means that you don't care about me or you don't value me. It's like, time out. I didn't grow up in your house. I don't know. I didn't know how your parents functioned. And I don't know that that's what you're expecting of me. And neither one of us are mind readers. So if we clarify those expectations about what we think about, you know, how we spend our free time, how we spend our money, what, you know, place is God going to have in our relationship? How are we going to raise our kids? If we're willing to just sit down and talk about those things and, you know, with respect to the other person, realizing that we all have different personalities, different strengths, different backgrounds that we've grown up with, and come to those agreements that you talked about, man, that's gonna bleed so much tension out of your marriage, you will not believe it.

Yeah, it's so true. It's so true because you can't expect people to be mind readers. You just can't.

Exactly.

You got to tell people what you want and what you need. So, so one thing I loved in one of your posts where you were talking about, you gotta have like these 3 people in your life. I love that. Love that. Love that. You need a Paul, you need a Barnabas, and you need a Timothy, right?

Yeah.

And so explain to the listeners what those 3 mean, what they represent metaphorically, and also attach. Who are those people for you?

Oh, okay. So Paul, Barnabas, and Timothy are characters in the— people in the Bible from Christian history. And Paul was one of the primary authors of the New Testament, one of the principal founders of the church, and he was known as a wise elder. So that's Paul. Barnabas whose name means son of encouragement, was known to be a real encourager to his peers. Okay. And then Timothy was known, uh, as Paul's protégé and known to be a promising young leader. And so from that, the kind of the, the teaching has evolved in some Christian traditions. I didn't invent this. I stole it. That, hey, we all could benefit from having a Paul in our lives, a Barnabas in our lives, and a Timothy in our lives. We all could benefit from having a mentor who has walked the road that we want to walk, who's kind of living a life that we look at and go, I want to emulate that. Where that person is, that's where I want to get to. So having that mentor in your life is going to be a really key component to reaching your personal development goals. And then secondly, we need a Barnabas in our lives because we all know this: if personal development and reaching all your growth goals was easy, everybody would do it, right? Everybody would be who they wanted to be. It's not easy. So when you're walking that road, it's so key to have somebody who can be that Barnabas to you, be that support, that encourager to walk beside you and keep you going when you don't feel like, you know, you can walk anymore, and to hold you accountable to those growth goals that you shared with them. Give you that motivation. And then finally, I think we all need a Timothy because it's a way to pay forward the gifts that the Pauls in our lives were giving to us. It's a way to keep that growth cycle of humanity going. Um, you know, we can all see with everything that's going on in our society right now, a perfect example, we need all the growth we can get, not just as individuals But as a society, and how is that going to happen? It's by people who have put in the time, who have put in the effort to better themselves, improve themselves, become better spiritual, emotional, mental, physical versions of themselves, to, to then turn around and reach back and help other people who are trying to do the same thing.

Absolutely.

So I that's really passionate, obviously, about not only personal development, but then sharing that with others. And that's, you know, in terms of how those people work out in my own life, my dad is one of my Pauls. I've got a great friend Susan that I met through the blogging world who is one of my Pauls. My wife Lisa and my friend Ty, who has been my accountability partner for the last 12 years, are my Barnabases. And then so far as Timothy's, I mean, I try the best I can to be a mentor to my kids. Obviously there's a couple of other people that I've got, you know, somewhat semi-formal relationships with in terms of mentoring. But then that's one of the big reasons that I write my personal development blog, Becoming Yourself, is to kind of try to pass on some of this hard-won knowledge, right, that I've gained by working on personal development over the last 40 years to whatever Timothys may be out there reading.

I love that. And that comes from such a selfless place, you know. And I, I mean, I'd be remiss not to mention that the empathy that I felt when you were talking, and I could just feel the emotion that was, that was coming outside of you, coming from within you, you know, that, you know, as a high school teacher for 24 years, I've always wanted to help people. But there's a difference, you know, that it's helping on just a different level.

Yeah.

People really, and like when, like I could just visualize when you said, you know, you know, in a nutshell, get your stuff together and then pull these people up, you know, you climb to the top of the mountain and then put both hands down, put a hand down and help people out. And it took me a long time. I never really felt like I was a selfish person, but I've never wanted to reach back as much as I want to reach back and help people as much as I do now. I think that's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. You know, and when we're talking about that, just coming from that selfless place, you know, Tony Robbins talks about 3 types of people in your life. And so that's destructive people, you know, people who are— you're probably still hanging around with them. You're probably still maybe having dinner with, but they don't really have much value to your life. They're the negative Nancys, the negative Neds, and those kinds of people, but they're still in your life. Then you have your family and your friends. But then you also have your 7th power tribe. Your 7th power tribe are people like people that help you grow, people that when you need, like your accountability partner, you know, people when you need that extra motivation, people who see your potential when you can't see it on a Saturday, you know, people who really inspire you to be your absolute best when you can't do it yourself.

Yeah.

Who is that 7th power tribe for you?

I would go, I would go right back to the 2 primary Barnabases in my life, right? Lisa, my wife, believes in me sometimes more than I do. And she has given me the courage to do things that I didn't think I could do. For example, when I, you know, was playing with this idea of, man, maybe I should become a writer, maybe I should become a writer, you know, I've always wanted to do that. She's like, do it, do it, you can do this, you can take this risk, step out. And she really believed in me and encouraged me when I wasn't— didn't have the strength or the self-belief right, or the courage to do it myself. And then my friend Ty as well challenges me on a regular basis. I mean, that's part of what an accountability partner does. I mean, aside from my wife, Ty's my best friend, and we have all the camaraderie and the jokes and the fun and all that stuff going that friends do. But in addition to that, we've, we've given each other permission to speak into each other's lives. And we formalize that, you know, we've met every Thursday for the last 12 years. And no matter what the specific, you know, every once in a while you have scheduling conflicts, but pretty much every Thursday. And even since I've moved, you know, that we started that, you know, back when I was living in Mesa, Arizona, now that I live in Sacramento, We just went, we never missed a week. We just went online. Yeah. So every Thursday at noon, I'm doing this with my accountability partner and he's like, okay, what's going on? What's going on in your life? How's the God stuff? How's your marriage? How's, you know, this? He knows the questions to ask me. I know the questions to ask him because we've given each other permission to do that. So I would definitely say Lisa and Ty are like kind of my 7th Power Tribe, people that push me to do the thing that I don't think I would do on my own.

That's so incredible. And you know, just what you're sharing with me right now speaks volumes to the communication, the love and the respect you have in your marriage. So Lisa's this, you know, New York bestselling author, and then you're like, I'm going to leave the ministry and I'm going to now become a writer. And in some relationships, that would be like, what, I'm the only writer in this house, you should stay in your lane.

Yeah, totally.

You know, but here you are, who's the wind beneath your wings?

Lisa. And we had that conversation early in the game when I started talking about this. I mean, that was one of the things that connected us, you know, when we first met was the fact when I found out she wanted to be a writer when we met in college, And I was like, oh, that's cool, because I always wanted— I'm not a writer and I'm going into music, I'm studying music, but I've always wanted to be a writer and I think that's really awesome, right? So she always knew that that was a passion of mine, and she was the one that was the biggest encourager when I started my blog a few years ago, when I thought, who am I to think I have anything to say? Um, you know, who am I? Who's going to read anything that I write? And all of this. And she was the one, no, do it, do it, you've got this gift, you've got so much to Hey, you got this. And then when it came time to talk about writing novels, which that's her gig, that's her thing, like, I was like, hey, I don't want to step on your toes. This is your thing. And she was like, are you kidding? This would be awesome. We could do this together.

That's incredible.

It would be amazing. So yeah, yeah, like I said, I married up. In all, in every way, right?

Yeah, that's incredible. So I want to transition a little bit. So you and I are— I think we're the same age.

So I just turned 51.

Okay, I turned 50 in February. Okay, so you're 1 year older.

Okay, I got you.

My brother-in-law said to me last year, we also are about the same age, and he goes, you know, Trey, we have more years behind us than we have in front of us. I was like, What? No, sir, I'm gonna be 100 at least, you know. And to think that somebody wakes up going, okay, I'm on the way downhill now, rather than striving to constantly achieve something, was just so mind-blowing to me that I cannot go Well, this is it for me. I may as well go and get the cane, get the rocker right now because it's on the downhill. Right. And so again, so talk to that about you made this big career transition. You also are looking forward to doing these massive things in your life. So also tell me about, you know, what you're looking forward to as well as maybe something you wish you knew then. That you know now?

Oh man, okay, okay, here we go. Okay, so that question reminds me, you know, we just talked about turning 50. So I remember a year ago when I turned 50, um, I wrote a— I ended up writing a blog post about this because I was thinking about it a lot and thinking, okay, 50, this is like a big deal, right? This is supposed to be like a big deal. Everybody says it's a big deal. And they're like, "Da da da da da da, 50 arrives." And I'm like, "Where's the big deal?" Feels like yesterday. Yeah, it was no big deal. It really was no big deal. It wasn't this like momentous moment of my life. It wasn't this like, oh, regret over my past, you know, my fading youth. But whatever. And I was like, well, I do have a very contemplative bent. So I like the whole meditation thing, you know, peel my own onion, personal development, all that stuff.

Yes.

So I thought, hey, it's still, it's still 50. I'm going to use this as time to reflect. And, and I wrote this blog post about how I spent a lot of time kind of looking back at my past, looking around at my present and looking ahead at my future. And after all that looking around, kind of the things that stood out to me that I felt like were aha's and like, oh, I wish I would have, I wish I would have realized this my whole life. And I kind of translated that into 3 gifts. I want to give myself 3 gifts for my 50th birthday. And the 3 gifts I gave myself was forgiveness, gratitude, and hope. And so I look back on my past and I thought, you know what, man, I have screwed up a lot. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've done a lot of dumb things. I missed and squandered a lot of opportunities. But you know what? As long as I learn the lesson from those things, me wallowing in regret helps nobody. It sure as heck doesn't help me, and it doesn't help anybody else. So what's the point? Of doing that. So, you know, I decided, you know, to give myself the gift of looking at my past with forgiveness. Chose to look at my past with forgiveness. And then the second thing I wanted to give myself was looking around at my present with gratitude, which is what we talked about earlier. That idea of choosing— choosing, because it is a choice— choosing to look at your past with forgiveness is a choice. Choosing to look at your present with gratitude is a choice. Right. And then look in terms of the future, choosing to look ahead to the future with hope. Because I might drop dead tomorrow. I have no idea what the future holds. I know that there's going to be hard things coming in my life that I have no idea what they're going to be yet, right? But why focus on that? What's the point? Why not choose to focus on hope? Choose to focus on the good things. Choose to focus on the incredible opportunities that you have to do what you want to do, to spend your life the way you want to spend it with things you're passionate about. Um, worthy goals to chase whether you meet them or not. It's fun. The joy is in the chase. Yes. Yeah. And there's relationships to be had and experiences to, to to go out and find that can fill your life with so much hope as you look towards the future. Instead of this, oh my gosh, I'm 50, my best days are behind me, and now I guess I'm just gonna drift into death and retirement. It's like, right, what, why? That's a choice. That is a choice to have that perspective. And I encourage you not to do that.

Exactly. No. And so, you know, I've always been a glass half full person pretty much my entire life. I've allowed, you know, some stories, some limiting beliefs to kind of creep in it, but I've always been able to see the positive. I've always been an optimist, you know? So, you know, the name of this podcast is Work That Out. And so every episode I ask someone, you know, what was your work that out story where you felt like this is just not going to work out. I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. Oh my God, but you worked it out. What is your story?

Man, there's a lot of work that out stories. Here's the one that comes to mind, um, because it's pretty recent. So, all right, so I'm in that place where I'm in a music career that I feel like is dying that I just feel like my passion is dying. My role is diminishing in, in the ministry that I was in, um, for a number of reasons. Not a bad thing, that was a good thing. It was part of God kicking me in the butt, telling me I needed to get out. Um, but then I was afraid. I was really afraid to take that step. Um, and I really needed Elise to encourage me to do that. And then I finally did it. I, I overcame my fears. I made the leap. I worked my way out of music ministry, started into my writing career. And then I write my first book, and I'm thinking, you know, my first book, this is going to be a— it's going to be a practice novel. I've never written a book before. It's just going to be practice. I'm going to throw it away, and, and then I'm going to go, okay, I learned a lot from that. Let's make my second book better. Well, it turns out my first book got me my agent. I got signed by a literary agent on my very first manuscript that I ever wrote. I'm like Dang, this is awesome!

How does that happen?

Well, that's the second story. We can talk about that if you want.

Okay.

Um, so I'm like, dang, this is amazing, this is fantastic. Um, and so we worked that novel, get into shape, and then my agent says, I want to send this out on an exclusive submission first. So for people that don't understand, basically the process for getting a book into the world is Number 1, you write a book. Number 2, you, you get an agent to believe in you enough to sign you and pitch that book to publishing editors in the publishing world. Number 3, uh, an editor says, yes, I will buy that book and work with the author to get it in shape and get it out into the world. So that's the 3-step process. So step 1, I'd written the book. Step 2, I got an agent on my very first manuscript. And then step 3, it goes out on submission, it's called. So my agent decides, hey, you know what, there's somebody, an editor at one of the major publishing houses that I want to pitch this book to that I think would be a good fit, and I think it might benefit us to go on an exclusive submission first, which means that they only give that— the book is only shown to that one editor, and that editor has a chance then to say yes or no before it goes out wide, they call it, which it goes out to a number of different editors at different houses. So my agent pitches it to this editor, and she likes it, and she's like, wow, this is really good, this is good, but hey, there's some more stuff that, you know, this isn't really working for me, would Matt be willing to work on it a little bit? And so I cleaned it up and sent it back, and she's like, oh wow, this is really good. And it got all the way to like the final step in the process to where she like took it to the higher-ups. And I was thinking, this is amazing. I'm going to get a freaking book deal on my first book at the first— with my first agent, with my first editor. And then it got cut off at the knees at that level. And it fell apart. And it didn't happen. So I thought, ah, dang. That's disappointing. But that's okay. It was only the first editor. And now my agent said, well, we'll go wide with it. And so we went wide with it, and then came the first rejection, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and the ninth, and the tenth. The whole first wave, wide wave, everybody passed. Send it out again for a second wave— rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. And in the publishing world, everything is painfully slow. Okay. So this whole pitching process, my first book that I was so sure and excited, this is going to be amazing, I'm going to get a book deal, it was out on submission for a year and everybody passed. And so it went on ice. My agent, in the meantime, it takes so long for that process, I had already written another book and my agent's like, well, you know what, your second book's better anyway. We're not getting consistent feedback on your first book enough for me to tell you what you should change. So let's put your first book on ice and let's focus on your second book. So that was a real kick for me because I had built up so much that I'm like, oh my gosh, this is going to happen. My lifelong dream of having a book published, of getting a book deal, is going to happen. And then it didn't and it crashed, you know. Um, so that's been something where I had to go, okay, Right. How serious are you about this? You know, is this really— are you gonna let this define you? Are you gonna let this derail your writing career? Are you gonna say, well, I give up? And I had to go, okay, no, I'm gonna work it out. I'm going to dig deeper. I'm gonna work harder. I'm gonna study my craft more. My second book's better than my first book, and dang it, my third book's better than my second, which I've already completed my third book. While we're in the process of getting my second book ready to go out. So that's kind of what comes to mind about my recent work it out moment.

That's really incredible because, I mean, a lot of people are like, well, it didn't work out the first time, then that means I'm not a writer, then this is not what I'm meant to do. But you, you know, proved that you have some grit and, you know, you're hanging on and I'm just going to try harder. Okay, you say no 12 more times, I'm going to try even harder. Talk to us about what, what kind of writer are you? What's your subject? Like, what, where do you get all of your— like, for instance, um, a guy that I had on the podcast recently, he writes for theater, television, film. He gets all of his material from his family because he writes a lot of comedy, you know. Where do you get your stories? Is it your imagination? Is it your real life? Tell us a little bit about your process of when you decide this is a great idea, I'm going to write about this, and this is my passion?

Yeah, um, well, I would talk a little bit about kind of the two halves of my writing brain because I do two very different things in terms of my writing. One is I love to write personal development. That's my, you know, the focus of my blog is a personal development blog, helping people to become the best emotional and spiritual version of themselves. Right, so that's that part of my writing brain, and that's what I write about. The other part of my writing brain is, is it almost feels like the opposite. It's middle grade fantasy adventure novels for the 18 to— or for an 8 to 12 target market. So it's like personal development, children's fantasy. Those are two things that I write about, but I love equally, but they're very diverse and very different. And so the places that those stories come from tend to be different too. For personal development, where I get my ideas for what I write about, it's just literally my life. It's literally— I am already doing the work, uh, constantly trying to be aware of myself, of how I'm feeling, where I'm at spiritually, where I'm at emotionally, what are the hurdles that are tripping me up, what happened today that triggered something in me that made me see myself in a new way, made me see God in a new way, made me see what my role in this world is in a new way. Be it, you know, the conversation I had with a homeless person, or be it, you know, the walk that I had through the park and the way that I saw the roses were in bloom, or the, you know, the interaction I had with the checkout person at the grocery store. All of those things, if your antenna are up, your life is filled with opportunities for insight that you can then use as a topic for a personal development blog post. So that's my main source for that, is just things that I experience in my everyday life. For my novels, that's something as simple as Well, the example for my first novel was we used to have it in our old house in Mesa. It had a tile floor like most houses in Mesa do, and just outside of the bathroom there was a tile where if you stepped on it just the right way, it'd just go tink. It would just tilt. Yeah, just a little bit. And Lisa and I were joking about that one day, and she's like, oh, wouldn't it be funny if there was like you know, that tile flipped up and there was a tunnel to a world, you know, under there.

Yeah.

And we had joked about that for years, and she always joked like, I should write a book about that, I should write a book about that. And she never did. And so when it got to the point where she and I were talking and she's encouraged me, you should write a book, I'm like, well, what am I going to write about? She's like, do that, write about that tile. And that literally became— I started chewing on that and I think, oh yeah, what if there was? What if there was a tunnel? What if that tunnel was magic? And what if that magic tunnel was really, instead of outside of a bathroom in Mesa, Arizona, it was in, you know, the dungeon of a castle in England? And what if that magic tunnel led to other castles all over the world? And what if a 12-year-old boy discovered that? And, and so then you just let your imagination go, right? And by just asking that what-if question Start with something very simple like that. Yeah. A tilting tile in your house. And then ask the question, well, what if? What if I lifted it up? What if there was a tunnel? What if that? Oh, that's— we were driving down the highway once and saw this giant 50-foot-high fence out in the middle of nowhere. I'm like, why in the world is there a 50-foot-high fence with razor wire at the top out in the middle of absolutely nowhere? There's nothing here. What in the world needs to be 50 foot? Tall, you know, needs to be kept in by a 50-foot tall fence. And so that was the basis for my second novel. It's like, well, what is behind that 50-foot fence that those kids found in the middle of a remote wilderness area? Why is that there? And what happens when they go in and explore? Wow. So those are, those are ways that I get some of my ideas.

Yeah. Okay, so you're working on your third novel right now?

I've finished self-edits on my third novel, and actually Lisa's at it. So I write, I write a rough draft, I do self-edits, which is I go back through and go, oh wow, that's a mess, and clean it up and clean up as best as I can get it myself. Then I hand it off to Lise. She reads it, she gives me her— all her notes and changes and things that is lacking and things need to be fixed. I fixed all of those.

Okay.

Then I pass it on to my agent and he reads it, gives me his edits, and then I clean those up, and then it goes out shopping for a book deal. Right.

So number 3 is shopping right now, or number 2 is shopping?

Number 2 is Getting Ready to Go Out, to be out.

Okay, what is the title of that and what can we look forward to? Like, I want to— like, like, hook me to where I want to go into— or probably go online, I'm not going into any bookstore, let's be real— that I'm gonna go on Amazon and go, I want to read this 8 to 12 year old novel because it's so— it sounds so incredible. What is the title, and just give us a little bit of a hook.

Yeah, well, okay, so book 1 is called The Castle with the Tilting Stone, and the idea is when 12-year-old Lucas visits his favorite aunt's castle in England, he discovers a secret network of underground tunnels that magically connect castles all over the world. And as he explores the tunnel network, he inadvertently releases an evil druid and in the resulting chaos learns there's more to his aunt and himself than he ever imagined. So that's book one. Okay, my first book.

Intriguing.

My second book is called The Fence, okay, and it's the story of two 12-year-old friends, Max and Mia, discover a giant 50-foot fence in the middle of a remote wilderness area and discover that it's a pen for giant monsters. And then they, when they go and explore, they get trapped inside and have to fight their way out through a forest of teeth and claws. So that's book 2. And the 3rd book, I'm going to keep under wraps right now because that's still a mess. So I'm still cleaning that one up. Got it.

So when you get up in the morning, what is your process? So like, are you a kind of guy who's like, I work 90 days, I always accomplish something 90 days, I write every single day? What's your process for getting it done?

Yeah, um, writing process-wise and then broader process-wise. So writing process The blog is a weekly thing. I usually conceptualize and rough draft on one day, and then I edit and produce on another day. So that's something that just happens every week. For novel writing, it's a little bit different. For when I'm in the process of writing a novel, I will— it's all about word count for me. That's how I track my progress.

Oh yeah, I saw that.

Yeah, I do a minimum of 1,000 words a day when I'm in my writing, when I'm, when I'm in my novel writing phase, but sometimes it goes in chunks and then you're in editing and then other things. But in the novel writing phase, I write 6 days a week, at least 1,000 words a day, sometimes more. But if I do that, that means just by doing the math that I can write a 75,000-word novel in 3 months. And so that's my process in terms of when I'm sitting down and doing it, right? And then after that goes the editing process that I described where I do self-edits And I do Lisa's edits, then I do my agent's edits. So do you segment?

Do you segment certain times of the day? Like, I know, like, I get my best work done in the morning because I'm fresh. I do my workout and then— so do you have very specific times? And then it's like Lisa knows you're writing, then there's a Do Not Disturb sign, get it done, you turn your phone off.

Yeah, I'm a huge routine person. I find a lot of help in routines. So my routine is wake up between 6:00 and 6:30. I do some stretching and some light yoga. Then I go out to the balcony and I have my time along with God. It's my meditation, my prayer, my kind of personal development reading time for about 45 minutes to an hour. Then I go work out while listening to podcasts. Personal development podcast. So you're up next. And, and that— then I come back from that, I do catch up on the email and news for the day. I play Lumosity, which is free games online that are just specifically geared for mental development. So I do that kind of waking up and alive in my mind to keep my mind sharp. And by that time I do all of that, it's usually about 9:00, 9:30, and that's when I start what Lisa and I both call, since we're both writers, we've found that the best thing that works for us is to break our day, our work day, into two sessions. Because writing is, it's very taxing, creative, mentally, emotionally, creatively. You can't just go, okay, I'm gonna sit down and write for 8 hours. You would absolutely explode and die. Because your brain doesn't have the capacity to do that, at least not to do it well. Right. You know, what you write in hours 6, 7, and 8 are going to be pretty sucky. So starting at about 9:00, 9:30 is session 1, and that goes till about 12:30 to 1 o'clock, and then we break. We do intermittent fasting, so that's when I eat the first time of the day.

I just love you guys. My God, we do too.

Oh, yes. Yeah, we could talk. We could go off on a whole interview. We could.

I haven't even eaten yet.

Yes, exactly. So that's my window is typically 1 to 5 is my eating window. Yeah. So open the eating window at 1 o'clock. We watch some news to catch up on what's going on. Then we'll watch some fun TV shows to kind of recharge our creativity. You know, we'll watch fun things. We're big reality TV. We like Great British Baking Show and Top Chef and Survivor and all those kinds of shows. We'll work on a puzzle. We have a puzzle going constantly. Yeah, on our table. So work on that. We'll take a walk. And then at around 5 o'clock or so, I'll use that time to go get some task work done. I'll process the mail, I'll pay bills, I'll do chores around the house. And then by about 6 o'clock, we'll start second session. And second session is from 6 to 9, where we do more writing, or for me, it's working on YouTube, developing my YouTube channel. Which I am doing right now, and then at 9 o'clock, we kind of go to bed and we read in bed and lights off at 10.

There it is. Wow.

Yep.

See, I am a regimented person just like that, and I love that, and one of the things that I found that I love the most about, you know, being a full-time Coach now, I never set an alarm anymore.

Isn't that the best?

It is. And I still get up usually about 5:48, at some weird time. At the latest, it might be 6:30. But I wake up on my own. And I used to— before I started reframing that, as a friend helped me reframe that, I was like, oh my goodness, I just can't get enough deep sleep because my mind is racing and I got so much. And my friend Kathy Plantard said, It's just because you're excited about the day.

Yeah, there it is.

7th Power Tribe right there, my friend. You know what I'm saying? That's the kind of people you need in your life. I love that. So as we begin to wrap up, I know you've already accomplished a lot of stuff in your life. Tell me some big dream that just doesn't even seem possible today that you would love accomplish, you know, in your next 50 years?

I guess honestly for me, what I'm focused on, what really excites me, what I'm passionate about, is really just launch— is being able to take this second career that I've launched at basically age 50 and of becoming a writer and have that manifest itself into a degree where I can actually say I'm not only a published author, I'm a successful— by my definition, not the world's definition, right? Successful in that people still want to buy my books, people still want to read my books. I'm able to make a living doing this thing that I love. And I've got it set up right now. Like, when I started this path, I said, okay, I'm gonna have 4 goals. Goal number 1, write a book. Just the physical process of actually sitting down and actually cranking it out from page, you know, word 1 to word $75,000, I'm going to actually physically do it. I'm going to write the whole book. I did it. I did it. I wrote a book. If nobody else ever read it, nobody else ever saw it, I accomplished the goal. I actually wrote a book. Goal number 2, get a literary agent. Get somebody to believe in me enough where they're going to go, I believe in you. I believe in the book. I'm going to sign you. Did it. Got that. Third goal, get a book deal. Don't care for how much, for with what publisher or whatever. Have some publisher go, okay, we believe in this book. We believe in this author. Or we're going to sign him for a book deal. That has yet to be accomplished. Goal 4 is make $50,000 in a calendar year as an author. That somehow I, through writing, I make an income of $50,000 in a year. And it's not so much that I'm hung up about the money. It's the idea that there is an element of one of the metrics of success in terms of the publishing world, in terms of how many people are reading your stuff, is how much money that comes in the door. So for me, that's just a random way of going, okay, I, I, it's the next step beyond just publishing one book, right? It's okay, I published enough where, wow, I'm making some decent money. Yeah, as an author. And then once I get to that, I'll make some more goals after that.

Nice, nice. I love that. Does Lisa ever critique your work? Or is that like a separate thing?

She is my biggest critic. Yeah, she's tougher on me than anybody, which is exact— as painful as that is to my ego. Yeah, that's exactly what I ask for because I know that it's like, look at this incredible— I'm the luckiest aspiring author in the world. I have Lisa McMahon New York Times bestselling author of 25 books and counting. I have her as my personal writing coach and my personal first editor, right? So for me to go, you know what, just stay in your lane, Lisa, this is my book— like, how dumb are you, right? How stupid are you? So I had to actually do a mental frame when we started this process of going, okay, Lisa, you are my instructor, I am your student. I will do what you tell me to do, 'cause you've proven you know what the heck you're talking about, and I would be an idiot to not just do what you tell me to until I can learn this business. So that's kind of the mindset I had taken into this relationship.

That's a smart guy. I love that, I love that. So Matt, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I've loved our conversation. Will you share with us all the different places where we can find you, connect with you, talk about your YouTube channel, all those great things?

Yeah, uh, start with my YouTube channel. That's a new venture for me. Just started a YouTube channel that you can find by just, you know, typing in Matt McMahon, and I come up. There's 3 of us, but I'm the only one that's actually doing something. So Matt McMahon, and that channel is focused on, um, book reviews, writing advice, and personal development. So would love it if people check me out there and watch those videos and subscribe. That would be awesome. Um, the second place you can find me is, uh, on Instagram, Matt_McMahon. Um, and you can also find me at my website, my blog, becomingyourself.net is my personal development blog. And you can reach out to me through the contact page there, through the comments. And my email, mattmcmahon@icloud.com. People are welcome to email me as well.

Perfect. Nice. So you are, you're doing it. You are really doing it. You know, it's encouraging. It's inspiring. I remember when you first shared this journey on social media, because I was at a point in my career, you know, when I was like quitting my job, I was like, nobody else is doing this. Who does this? And you don't really have a security blanket. Who just jumps and it's like, it's the Indian Ocean, you know, you don't have a life raft, you know, it's the way it felt. And I was so, I felt encouraged and supported from a distance without you even knowing that I'm doing this because you were doing it. And so because you were going through that journey, it made me know 100% that I too could do that as well. So you didn't even know you were motivating me and inspiring me, but you were. So thank you for that.

Uh, thank you for sharing that. That means a lot.

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So thank you for spending this time with us and I get so much value from your Becoming Yourself blog every time I read it. I do. I do. So I think you are very talented. I mean, even in your blog, I mean, you can tell that you are an author and I know you said I'm an aspiring author, I think you are an author. You write like an author. You take on the identity of an author. You are an author. So congratulations.

That means a lot. Thanks, my friend.

Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Matt. And I will— hopefully we'll talk soon.

That sounds good. Okay.

All right, guys. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to know more about what I'm up to, head over to TraviaSteward.com. If you like seeing the videos of the podcast, every episode is on my YouTube channel. And if you like what you hear, please do me a favor and subscribe to the show. And remember, life is about connecting authentically, living with purpose, and having no regrets.