In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Matt Marek, a healthcare CEO specializing in mental‑health and complex medical needs. Marek shares a formative story from his early twenties where, despite repeated rejections, he persisted and eventually secured investment for a healthcare venture, illustrating the power of resilience. He explains his organization’s unsiloed, interdisciplinary model that integrates mental‑health services in‑house, noting that roughly half of Americans will experience a mental‑health need in their lifetime and emphasizing the need to destigmatize and openly discuss these issues. Marek offers broad business advice: always focus on solving the client’s problem, keep innovation at the forefront, and stay empathetic to evolving needs. He advises his younger self to trust intuition over conventional wisdom, and defines happiness as self‑awareness and meeting one’s own needs rather than relying on others. He cites Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Drops Like Stars as transformative books, highlighting themes of meaning, gratitude, and creativity born from suffering. His favorite quote, “Act without expectation” (Lao Tzu), reflects his belief in embracing the process over outcomes. Finally, he directs listeners to his LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram profiles for further connection.
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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 Merrick with us. He's a CEO of a healthcare organization, so welcome to the show, Matt.
Thank you, appreciate it, Tyler. Glad to be part of the show.
Of course, thank you for joining us. We'll dive right in. The first question that I have for you is, what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
I guess one of my favorites is at the age of 23, I was sort of interested in entrepreneurship and starting an organization in the healthcare space. And so I was working for a lady who owned one of the largest, I would say, home healthcare organizations in the state of Virginia. And at the age of 23, went to her with an idea that I had about starting a business and was asking her to invest in this idea. And I was probably told at least 40 or more times that it wasn't a good time for me in my life and I needed to be a little bit older and wiser in some ways and to come back to her when I was at this place in life. And later I set up sort of a meeting for her to get around some people who would allow her to see more about what the insights were to the idea I had. And was able to convince her to invest in this idea. But I would say that went on for about 6 months or more, maybe even closer to a year before she pulled the trigger on that. And I would say resiliency is the value of that message because it's really easy for us to be told no even once, twice, several times and just give up. And I would not be where I'm at today if I wasn't resilient about the idea that I had and what I was trying to get her to invest in and to understand the future interest that I had and where it could go. So resiliency to me is a really strong feature or value that I believe if you want to be successful in anything in life, you must figure out what that means for you.
Yes, man. Thank you for sharing that. That's an awesome story.
Thanks.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that is within your expertise or industry?
In the space that I'm in, in healthcare, I work a lot with, with mental health and sort of complex medical needs. And I would say resolving some of the concerns is difficult because the resources that people need in healthcare often siloed, and we've created a different approach to providing services that's pretty unique to what we do, but we've unsiloed the resources by bringing them more in-house and have interdisciplinary teams that work together and collaborate to solve problems for our clients. I would also mention that in the mental health space too, most people don't realize that from a general population standpoint, 50% of all people in our nation at some point in their lives have some sort of mental health need. And I think, I think that's really important to address because we ignore the subject a lot and are afraid to talk about it, and there's a lot of stigma around it, and there really shouldn't be. Um, there's, there's a lot of opportunity to create open dialogue and to, um, in some ways allow people to feel accepted for the fact that they have a a concern going on, which is no different than, you know, you'd go into the primary care doctor if you have a cold sometimes. We just look at it differently, you know, in our society.
So, and what's your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?
Um, I would say never lose sight of solving the consumer or the client or patient's problems. Um, Oftentimes we come up with an idea of what we think works, and maybe it does work over a span of time, but great organizations, I believe, continue to always put innovation at the forefront. So innovation to me means that we are consistently looking at how things are changing, the dynamics to what we're doing are changing, or how things are changing with the new knowledge that allows us to gain further insight into what that need is that someone has. And to be able to solve those problems for them means that you have, your organization has a very empathic, like, point of view. And I would say connecting to people. So it's easy to create a product. It's very difficult to sometimes say we need to change that product because we need to validate the need of the consumer. Hmm.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Follow my intuition. I believe a lot of times we're afraid to challenge conventional wisdoms. You know, there may be an expert in the room who has all kinds of knowledge or background or degrees in certain subjects, but there's an understanding sometimes that we have, and everybody has those feelings about— those gut feelings about decisions that they're making. At the end of the day, I believe that is more knowledgeable than a lot of the things that we're taught academically or the conventional wisdom that we're handed. Without following that, we don't necessarily always understand who we are and what we desire or need in our lives.
In your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Being aware of your own needs. And not placing the expectation of others or on others, a desire for them to fulfill your needs for you. So, I think a lot of people aren't really necessarily aware of what it is that they need in their lives or that makes them happy. And so, they put that expectations on others to be fulfilled for them. You know, nothing comes easy. Discovering who you are and building a life that you sometimes want for yourself is difficult. And I think, um, the key to happiness is being accepting of who you are and understanding the desires that you have for yourself and placing the expectation on yourself for fulfilling like those desires that you have in your life.
And what's the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, was always a really powerful one for me. I read it in a time in my life where I was dealing with some really difficult challenges with my business. And I would say it gave me really great insight and motivation to read something about someone who was faced with a really difficult challenge in their life and the realization that It's a mindset for us all to understand that the challenges that we face can be dealt with, with being able to have insight into the feelings that we have about the environments we're in. So, I mean, he was in a concentration camp in a really difficult situation, but he chose to see life differently than the other people that were around him in some ways. And gratitude. Was really, I think, what he put at the forefront and continued to challenge his own thinking. And I would say one other part of that is a book called Drops Like Stars that two gentlemen that I've become acquainted with over the years and got to know wrote, who was Rob Bell and a very close friend of mine, Mark Boz, which is a book about How Suffering Breeds Creativity. There's just endless stories about people who face challenges and did something amazing with those challenges.
That sounds awesome. I've read the first book that you mentioned. That is a life-changing book, so I highly recommend everybody listening to check out those books. What is your favorite quote and why?
I have many. I would say one of my favorites is, "Act without expectation." which is by Lao Tzu. And I enjoy that a lot because I think sometimes we don't do things because we have a fear of, you know, will the outcome that I have a desire for be met? And I think once we rid ourselves of this idea that something is going to perfectly unfold that we get ourselves involved in, or we have the perfect plan to make it happen, and then we'll do it, um, then we can live life sort of in this free understanding that it's not about the expectation, it's about enjoying the process or enjoying the journey.
And, uh, yes, man, 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?
Um, LinkedIn, uh, is probably a great one for those who are involved in the business communities. Um, I'm of course on Facebook and Instagram.
Perfect, brother. Thank you again for coming on. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, thank you, Tyler. Appreciate it. The podcast you just heard was recorded with Anchor. If you want to make your own, download the Android or iOS app completely free from anchor.fm/podcast. That's anchor.fm/podcast.
