Matt Balducci: High Performance Men's Coach | The Business Blast Podcast #539

Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Matt Balducci. He is a husband, father, high-performance men's coach, speaker, Amazon bestselling author, and bodybuilder. He runs a badass men's optimization group program called the Healthier, Wealthier, Happier Man where he helps small groups of high-achieving men create badass results. So welcome to the show, man.

Hey, what's up, man? Grateful to have you here.

For sure, I appreciate having me, Tyler.

We were just talking about how you live in Miami and I'm out in Annapolis and I'm— it's actually like 95 degrees and humid here, so I want to— and it's beautiful here, but Miami sounds awesome.

Miami is awesome, but I will tell you in August, man, it is— woo, it's hot.

Dog days of August?

Yeah, dude, you stay inside and you look at your view and you appreciate it, but you don't go out.

Oh no, you know, or you're gonna sweat or get sunburned depending on your skin tone.

Or just right to the water immediately. One or the other.

Dive in the ice coldness, right?

Polar plunge, which you won't find that here either. But yeah, man, I'm pumped to have you on. And we'll jump into the first one. The first question I have for you, Matt, is What is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

I've had an interesting life, and I'll keep it pretty quick. I guess the biggest story is just where I grew up. I grew up just right above the poverty line. My parents are amazing parents, but they taught me hard work. What I learned most was that from my dad. My dad's a great man, but I remember when I grew up, he would basically say, Matt, I remember when I had the opportunity to buy that building, but I didn't do it. Or dang it, I should have started a business when I was younger. Or, you know, I should have did this, I should have did that. And it really carried me into my future. And, you know, and when I was 19 years old, I started my first business and then never looked back. And so from that point forward, I've built 4 different companies ranging from $80,000 to $2.5 million, and I just sold my last business And now I'm basically, you know, became a high-performance men's coach. So I would say that the big underlining value is, you know, obviously be smart when you take risks, but never be afraid to kind of take risks or you're going to have regrets in your future. And I always kind of lived by that. And honestly, it didn't hit me really until a couple of years ago when I started realizing that I was a risk taker. And I was like, why am I so willing to kind of jump jump into something, you know, even sometimes in a bad way, but do a polar plunge when everyone's like, don't do it. But it's because of those little moments when I grew up, I listened to my dad just nonchalantly just kind of say his regrets of how he never took the risk. And you can see it in his eyes that, you know, if he could go back, he would have, that's what he would have done. So I think for a lot of people out there, I think in business, Be smart, obviously, you know, do your research, but I just say, man, don't be afraid to jump in and just take some action. Don't be the person who has to have everything lined up before you figure it out. Like, just do it and then figure it out as you go. Like, try, fail, and adjust. So that would probably be a big quick story for everyone.

Yeah, I can relate. And honestly, I think what's interesting is it's like when you first start out, like, failure seems like kind of scary, but it's interesting. It's like when you start and you have some success, there's always going to be failure along the way. I almost enjoy it now. I just love falling into things. Maybe we're similar with the risk-taking behavior, but I don't even think twice about it anymore. I'm just like, okay, I have an idea. I'm going to go for it. I already know it's going to fail 10 times before it succeeds. I'm like, I can't wait for those hits. They're fun.

Interesting for sure. It's funny, I don't know who said this freaking quote. It just hit me as you said that is that, I don't know if it was Tom Beale or someone who said that no matter what, you're guaranteed, you're not guaranteed to succeed, but you're guaranteed to fail no matter what. So why not fail? Why not go after things that you really want? It might've been Jim Carrey, I can't remember.

Oh yeah, yeah, Jim Carrey, 'cause he talks about 'cause his dad was an accountant.

Yeah, yeah, there it is. It hit me, I was like, it was such a good quote and it just makes so much sense. Why not? Why not? You can, in my opinion, you can always recover even if you were to blow up like your life and go bankrupt or whatever. And I've never gone bankrupt, so obviously I can't speak for anybody who has, but I'm sure that they figured it out and fixed it. Most people I've talked to that have, it's like they figured it out and sometimes they even come back bigger and stronger. So it's just like going to the gym. Yeah, man.

And just wanted to, for anybody listening, if you haven't listened to Jim Carrey's commencement speech. That is freaking awesome.

It is good.

So yeah, man, the next one I have for you is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry? I know it looks like you have a few, but maybe the high performance because I think that goes along with fitness and business overarching.

Yeah, so with my men's group that I run, what I did was I built a pull together pretty much and put together a program that had everything that I wanted in a program, which was health optimization to productivity hacks to being able to figure out how to increase your income to mindset. I looked out there for a program like it, and obviously there's a million great programs out there, but I figured I would have had to hire 6 different groups and pay all this money to have all those different things. What I discovered that's kind of the one overarching, I guess, thing that covers all of them, fitness to business to income to happiness to whatever you're going after, is structure. What I mean by structure is that a lot of people don't realize that we're just really creatures of habit. Every single decision we make every day is actually just a habit that we formed over time. It's really not— I know this is going to get a little strange here, but we're really not making all the decisions. Our brain is mostly unconscious most of the time, and our unconscious mind is actually making most of the decisions. If you can basically jump into your habit loop and bring out some of the better habits in yourself, whether it is not to go eat the donut or to go to the gym or to make that extra phone call every day, or maybe you're working on trying to be happier, maybe it's just going for a walk every day instead of sitting on the couch and watching TV for the night. There's so many different habits you can create, but it all comes back to structure and understanding that when you put the structure in place, what you're doing is you're actually reprogramming your unconscious mind to basically put yourself in that optimal place where you want to go. Again, it could be whatever the goal is, but what I've discovered is all just habits. Wherever you're at right now is based on the habits of what you've done in the past, so you got to realize that what you're doing today is where you're going to be at in 5 years. You might be starting small depending on if you're running a business, you're trying to become a bodybuilder, you're trying to work out or lose weight or whatever it might be. It's just creating those little habits along the way and structuring it in your life to the point where it becomes unconscious. I would say that I've studied the brain and studied how that all works over time. I would say that that's just a huge component. Now again, feel free to pick up a book called Power of Habit or Another book, it's called Incognito. I forget the author's name for that one, but both of them talk a lot about how our brains work and how you can build habits. And I think that that's a huge success principle for anyone that's trying to succeed in whatever. I don't care if it's I want to be a better husband. You can easily turn that around relatively fast by just understanding the structure and habits in your life are what are creating that result.

Definitely. My next one is usually more general, like what's your best piece of business advice? But just because you work with high-performing men or you help them become more high-performing, so on the business side of things, what do you see as common traits of high-performance men on the business side?

I actually do some business coaching on the side in regards to more tangible, technical, let me show you how to grow your company. If I were to give any piece of advice to somebody who's trying to start a business is that as you're growing it, you want to structure and systemize out your entire business. See, what I mean by systemize is sometimes too many people build a business and they're the linchpin in their company. You want to try to build your business to where eventually you're no longer relevant, which is a great thing. I know ego-wise you want to be the man, you want to be the woman, but What really it comes down to is, can your business function without you? And that's what I did in my last company that I sold. The business became— I became irrelevant, which was great. You know, if you look at Steve Jobs when he built Apple, obviously, you know, the whole story of him getting booted out of Apple, but it's the truth is the business— he was still multi-bazillionaire and his business grew even bigger than he did by creating systems in his company that allowed for it to grow. So that I would say that's just a tip is when you're growing your business, look at everything, every role, your role, all your scripts, sales scripts, what is your systems? People buy systems. If you're ever gonna sell your company, they buy systems and people, they don't buy you. And then the second thing I would say that I've noticed among high-achieving men specifically that are business owners is that a lot of times what people forget to do is they forget to actually enjoy their life outside of work. Sometimes when you see the person who's kicking ass but they're overweight, they're unhappy, all that kind of stuff, I've noticed that the best business owners out there are the ones that are healthy. They find time to go to the gym. They spend time with their family. They know how to relax. If you're listening, I know you're probably hearing the message from Gary Vaynerchuk and all the people out there like grind it out. Yes, go work your ass off, especially if you're young. But at the end of the day, you still need to schedule in time to enjoy your life or else you're going to get to the end of— you're going to get to the Super Bowl win and you're going to be pissed off that you won the Super Bowl and you have nothing left. So those would be a couple of quick tips for that.

Yes. And just a great resource for anybody listening, you may have read this book, Matt, but it's called Built to Sell. And that is a great resource for what Matt was talking about, kind of with like building the systems in your business. Business so that it's not reliant upon you. So next one I have for you is if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

I like this question. How young do you want me to go, Tyler? Which version of me am I? So I'm 30 now, so am I telling my 21 or 16 or who am I talking to?

Oh, that's a good— dude, I like that. That's a good question. Well, okay, so you know your life best. I feel like whatever— was 16 or 21 tougher for you? Like, which one was a harder part in your life?

I don't know, they were both way different, but I would say 21 was— I was running my second business. Okay, yeah, if I can go back to that Matt, one is I would have sat him down and taught him everything I know now. I grew that business for 3 years and my 3rd year I blew it up like a dumb dumb. I would have easily been able to turn that business into a much larger company, but I made a couple of rookie mistakes along the way. I would have told myself to hire the right people the right way and don't overpromise.

Got it.

Don't overpromise. Those would have been my 2 for business, Matt. Those would have been my 2. And then I probably would have told myself to have more fun, but, you know, have a little bit more fun. But besides that, I would say those would be my advice.

Yeah. Were you like always like— yeah, because you said— wait, you started your first business at 19?

Yeah, I started business at 19, and then my second business I started at 20, right after that business. And that one I ran for 3 years, but it grew. It was doing about $12,000 a month in revenue, but I blew it up. Third year. We ended up doing about half a million total in 3 years, and I just completely destroyed it with over-promising the clients and being too much of a sales guy.

Got it. So the next one I have for you is kind of a different, a little bit of a different path, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness? And maybe you kind of touched on it, like the structure, and it kind of To me, it also kind of means balance, but I'll let you answer it.

Yeah, so my answer is going to be a little different than that. The reason I created this men's group is I realized in my life as a 30-year-old man that ultimately what it came down to was I was missing the old— when I played baseball in high school and football in high school and when I was in my fraternity, and I was missing that group of guys that I can go to and You know, say I had a fight with my wife, you know, say, hey dude, I had a fight with my wife yesterday, and like have that kind of group to kind of do that. Or if my business, if I needed this, you know, kind of bent a little bit. And I think as men, you could probably relate to this, Tyler, you know, alpha males like both of us are, you know, we tend to keep in our emotions and we tend to not tell anybody when shit's hitting the fan. And, you know, it's because we don't want anybody to look bad. Like, I don't know, at least for me, it's because I don't want anybody to think I'm like failing or sucking. But what I discovered I actually read this a million times is that we actually succeed faster and we also feel better and happier when we're in a group. It's a group of people who are going in the same direction. Not to downplay anything because I have a blast and I have a ton of really good buddies, but the traditional 30-year-old, 40-year-old man, you get together with a couple guys and you go watch football and you drink beer and eat wings. You don't talk about anything relevant that's going on other than fantasy football. Again, I have two fantasy teams. I have a draft next week, so I'm not downplaying that as a part of life, but we never talk about our future goals or anything that we're doing. I've discovered that I'm the happiest when I'm around people. Then, the second thing I would say is always giving back. When you're doing things for other people, giving value. What you're doing right now on your podcast, right? You bring guests on and you're giving value out to people and it feels good. Or going and donating time or money, you get a huge dopamine hit of happiness because— and it's funny because you would think it would be the reverse where you would want the other person. Typically, you get more happiness and more excitement from giving than they get from receiving. I would say those would be two things with happiness. Two things we focus on in my men's group too is We have a little bit of an aspect of jumping into actually some philanthropy things as well because a lot of times we just forget to do that in our life, especially if we're busy with families and kids and wives and work and businesses.

Yeah, I think giving is a huge part of it and giving without any expectation. I think Gary Vaynerchuk talks about that a lot. I'm a huge Gary guy.

Yeah, me too. I like Gary a lot. I mean, if you really study any of the crazy successful guys, if you really talk to those guys, I mean, or watch them like Ed Mylett or Tom Bilyeu or Grant Cardone who's out there by you in Miami or Tai Lopez, any of these guys, I guarantee you right now behind the scenes, man, they give a shit ton of money and they are giving out free value constantly, just helping people. There's a reason why they're at the highest peak level of financial success, but realistically, I'd rather be giving than— I'd rather get to the highest level of financial success while giving versus get there and I'm hoarding everything.

Totally. I think it's actually easier to get there by giving. Grant actually talks about that, and this is maybe going a little deep in psychology, and I think it is kind of true though. He's like, when if you're like afraid to like spend or like give money and then you're, it's like in your subconscious and then you're trying to like sell people to like buy into your things. Like you may not be aware of it, but he says, he's like, dude, if you're not like a free flow of money, then it's very hard for people to free flow money to you. So like, I don't know, that's what he talks about in sales, like getting your mind right. And then with Gary, it's like, just giving all of it away for free, like all the content, because 99% of the people don't do anything with it anyway, is what he says. So I think both kind of are interesting. So yeah, you'd rather be helping and giving on your way up, I think, is definitely a better path. So I'm excited for your answer on this one because if I had to guess, you probably read a good amount. But what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?

Ooh, I like these questions. So, well, first and foremost, I'm sure Tyler, your audience knows this, but you guys need to read more. So here's what happened to me is I fell into a complacency about 2 years ago and I stopped reading books. And the crazy part is literally with that, my business still grew, but it didn't grow as fast as it was when I was reading. And so this year I made a pact to myself I was gonna read 80 books. And so I'm at book 50.

Nice.

And so how I do it is, a lot of people are preaching this now, but instead of reading the actual physical book, listening to them while you're driving. For me, I listen to it while I drive or when I'm at the gym. So now I'm kind of double dipping in my day, so I don't have to, you know, the excuse of I don't have time to read goes out the door. And then you can actually up the speed of the book to 2 to 3 times the speed. I'm at about 2 to 2.5 times the speed now. It took a while to get there, but I'm able to get through one— sometimes I can get 2 to 3 books. It just depends on the week. But what I do is I take notes and I stop the book in the middle of it. But I just wanted to share that if anybody's out there listening and they're like, how can I— I'm too busy to read. Dude, do it when you're at the gym. Now you have a reason to go to the gym too. But the book that I mentioned earlier, which is— so if there's one book I can only recommend, For people that are listening, it is Power of Habits. By far, though, it changed my life. It's probably the biggest book that I've read. I've read a ton of books, but it literally goes through how your brain actually creates habits. Once you understand that, you can actually look into your life and start pinpointing the ones that are actually not helping you, and you can replace them. I'm going to give a little cheat here. I know you said one book, but I'll give the second book that everyone should read. This is for business owners specifically out there. Is The E-Myth. So it's very similar to Build to Sell, but it actually helps new entrepreneurs that have never ran a business before. It explains exactly what you're going to go through mentally and all the sucky parts and what happens when you do scale your business. How can you scale the right way? And it's just an all-around good technical business book. So Power of Habit or E-Myth, both great books.

Yes. And what is your favorite quote and why?

Oh, okay. This one's an easy one. So obviously, I'm a high-performance men's coach. And the reason— I'm not through Brendon Burchard. I have no affiliation with Brendon Burchard. But he wrote the book High Performance Habits. And this quote, honestly, I probably have shared it in some of my speeches. Probably 50% of the time, I mention this at some point, is when you have a large goal, go and shout it from the rooftops. And what's gonna happen is the village idiots are gonna come out and try to stop you, but the village leaders will come out and try to help you. And what I discovered by this quote is it's so true. Like when you start trying to go after a massive goal, and it might, here's the hard part, the village idiots might be your family. It might be your mom, it might be your dad. And you know, don't, you can remove the word idiot from it, but it's just people that are afraid for you. The reason they're afraid is that they don't want you to get hurt. Then the crazy part is if you keep going, the right people come out of the woodwork. I'll give an example of this. I started my coaching business in March this year. It was a whole transition from my other business. I started putting out content all over social media and YouTube in December. People started out calling me saying, "Man, I didn't know you did." I'm like, neither did I. And all of a sudden I generated a couple clients, and that's what actually triggered me to sell my business and move forward and start a whole new business. And the crazy part is that people are coming out of the woodworks like, how did I get on your podcast, Tyler? I was on another podcast and I just ask at the end of all my podcasts, which if anybody gets on podcasts, ask this, you know, do you know anybody else that, you know, have podcasts that you refer me to? And what ends up happening is it becomes this web and all of a sudden you get trickled down. And I'm pretty excited. It's not a done deal yet, but by doing that, I ended up getting in touch with Dave Meltzer out in California. He's a multi-millionaire and there's a chance that in 2 weeks when I'm in Cali, I might even be able to get on The Playbook, which is his podcast. So there's a— it's just how— it's just basically yell your goals like you're— but then obviously I love that quote, but then you got to go take action. So don't be that person who's just like talking a big game and then You know, then the village idiots have a reason to talk shit to you.

Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is where's the best place for people to find you online?

So right now the best place is, you know, there's a— you can go get any free content from me on my YouTube at Matt Balducci, go to my Facebook, Matthew Balducci. But really the best place to do if you want to learn more about my group, men's group, the Healthier, Wealthier, Happier Man, I can go into more details with you, but I just launched that. We're launching one on September 14th. I'm only allowing 12 men into the group. I launched literally 2 days ago. I don't know when this recording is gonna come out, so it might be, might be even closer to that date. But if you want more information on that, shoot me a private message at my LinkedIn @MattBalducci. I do have a website, but it's getting updated because I'm adjusting what I was doing as a as a business coach. So, and if you want to schedule a call, you can go to go.mattbalducci.com/momentum. And that's my scheduling page to schedule up a call if you want to chat about the program. And I appreciate you, Tyler, letting me do that here at the end.

Of course, man. Thanks again for hopping on.

No problem, buddy. Thank you.

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