Ep 097 – Matthew Fox – The Power of Self-Discovery in Leadership
Listen & subscribe on the platform of your choice
Featuring: Matthew Fox
In episode 097 of Agency Bytes, I had the pleasure of speaking with Matthew Fox, a project leader, trainer, and operations consultant who specializes in conscious leadership and helping teams work better together.
Matthew opened up about his personal journey with imposter syndrome and how it led him to dive deep into self-development. Over the years, he’s explored frameworks like The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership and the Drama Triangle, which have shaped how he approaches leadership and team dynamics.
One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation? Project managers often spot cultural issues before leadership does. If your projects are struggling, it’s probably not just an execution problem—it’s a reflection of your agency’s culture.
We also dove into the importance of self-care for agency owners—something too many of us neglect. Matthew shared how shifting from reactive, fear-based leadership to solution-focused, conscious leadership can improve team morale, retention, and overall agency success.
Key Bytes
• Conscious leadership is essential for agency success.
• Self-discovery can lead to better team dynamics.
• Project managers are key to understanding agency culture.
• The drama triangle can hinder project success.
• Cultural challenges often stem from leadership styles.
• Self-care is crucial for effective leadership.
• Time management can improve agency operations.
• Creativity flourishes in a supportive environment.
• An open mindset leads to better problem-solving.
• Personal growth impacts professional relationships.Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Conscious Leadership
01:25 The Journey of Self-Discovery
03:27 Integrating Conscious Leadership in Agencies
06:16 Understanding the Drama Triangle
10:12 Cultural Challenges in Agency Leadership
11:34 The Shift from Command and Control
16:56 The Role of Self-Care in Leadership
20:50 Time Management and Agency Culture
24:03 Creativity Under Pressure
26:33 The Importance of an Open Mindset
27:31 Final Thoughts and Personal Reflections
Matthew Fox is a project leader, trainer, and operations consultant with a strong background in public speaking and critique, skilled at delivering constructive feedback that inspires action and change. A true people person with the ability to gain consensus among multiple stakeholders to drive projects to completion and achieve company objectives.
His professional background includes various positions in technology implementation, project management, facilitation, and end-user training. And has led and mentored cross-functional teams.
Matthew loves to give back. He is actively involved in several volunteer organizations, including the Digital Project Manager and the Evolutionary Power Institute.
Contact Matthew on LinkedIn.
-
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:01.984)
Welcome to Agency Bites, a podcast dedicated to helping creative entrepreneurs thrive. I'm Steve Guberman from Agency Outsite, where I coach agency owners to build the agency of their dreams. Today, I'm excited to introduce Matthew Fox to the show. Matthew is a seasoned project leader, trainer, and operations consultant who's passionate about helping teams work better together. With a strong background in project management and technology implementation, he's no stranger to leading cross-functional teams.
mentoring talent and delivering training that sparks real action and change. Welcome to the show. How are you? Yeah.
Matthew Fox (00:34.409)
Thank you, Steve. I'm excited to be here and throw the day in.
Steve / Agency Outsight (00:39.126)
I'm excited to have you. I'm excited to dig in. We're going to talk about conscious leadership as it relates to agency ownership and project management. And that's kind of an area of expertise for you, right?
Matthew Fox (00:51.262)
Yeah, definitely. I have been passionate about the general topic of self-development for decades and in the last 10 years have really doubled down to not only understand my role, but to understand how these tools and how this process can benefit your organization and each individual in the organization.
Steve / Agency Outsight (01:16.718)
So let's go back 10 years. What sparked this passion for these tools and learning about it and implementation in your life?
Matthew Fox (01:25.095)
Yeah, in a bit of self-disclosure and vulnerability, I very much have had and have a script that I continue to work on of something about me is wrong or something about me is not enough. I later found out some people will label that as imposter syndrome or it's actually a very human type thing to feel that, you know, it was a message that we may have picked up.
at some point when we were children and through a series of a variety of events as when I was younger, that was one of the messages I picked up. So regardless of the success that I would have around me, I was always striving and pushing to say, okay, well, you know, that's great that this project went well, or that's great that I had success in this area, but there's something missing. It's still not enough.
Steve / Agency Outsight (02:19.022)
Yeah. So if even the positive of life experiences presents that way, what do or did the negative label negative, you lose a client, you lose the T ball game. Like what did that do to that same, you know, imposter syndrome for you?
Matthew Fox (02:35.52)
yeah, it's like fuel. It was feeding it in the sense that I was very much under the delusion when I was younger that essentially if something was going wrong in the world, I had something to do with it. If we had lost a client, if a project wasn't going the way it was supposed to, if someone didn't understand what I was saying.
I always took too much ownership or too much responsibility for the way I was showing up, my impact on others, for just all the things going on around me. And it was very exhausting.
Steve / Agency Outsight (03:17.218)
Yeah, interesting. So how, at what point did you find ways to kind of integrate this work into the agency space or connect it with the agency world for yourself?
Matthew Fox (03:27.027)
Yeah, that's a great question. originally got my agency exposure through a company called Arc Worldwide. They were an affiliate of Leo Burnett. This is, gosh, 15 years ago or so. And no matter what I did, no matter how I showed up, things just didn't feel like they were working. And I stumbled for probably a good
seven years after that. And then I found my way to something called Men's Work with the Mankind Project. And that was my first exposure to understanding, you know, how I'm showing up, what the impact on the world is like, and if I wanted to continue to show up that way. And then as I deepened my relationship, not only with myself, but with that type of work,
I found out about things like the 15 commitments to conscious leadership and another group that I've trained with called Crafted Leadership.
Steve / Agency Outsight (04:28.142)
I don't know other of those, they're both new to me. Interesting. Okay, and so did you left that agency and now you're doing this on your own consulting for a while, working with agencies on implementation and teamwork review and what other sorts of things you're digging into?
Matthew Fox (04:43.942)
It, yeah, it's so it's a variety of things. One, I have developed a platform in the project management space and have spoken to quite a few project managers. I believe that project managers are essentially the ones that are like the small business owners of a business. And, you know, if you've got three or four project managers working in your agency or even one project manager,
They're the ones that are going to identify the cultural things before just about anyone in the organization as an owner You may not be in touch with them right away because you're busy closing new deals. You're busy running the agency Hopefully you're not working too much in it and you're focused working on it. But now with that in mind PM's are where I've spent a lot of time and then in addition to that I've gone into other agencies to talk about emotional awareness and
really the somatic side of a conscious leadership, which is definitely something that I think, regardless of the individual or the agency owner, really allows a deeper understanding not only of the self, but what others may be going through as well.
Steve / Agency Outsight (05:54.296)
So your kind of theory, I'm fully aligned with this, is the PMs have their finger on the pulse of really what's going on, because they're managing the day to day with clients, with the components of the team, the delivery, the production, copy, whatever. So they've got their finger on the pulse. And that's not just the status of the work, but that's the status of the people that are involved in it. yeah.
Matthew Fox (06:08.69)
Exactly.
Matthew Fox (06:16.467)
Yeah, I think the success of projects are a reflection of agency operations. So if our projects aren't going well, it's most likely a symptom of a bigger cultural challenge within the agency. For example, there's a concept in conscious leadership that is based off the Carpman drama triangle. And it's this idea of a victim villain hero and
Steve / Agency Outsight (06:23.8)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox (06:42.888)
A lot of the times I speak from a lot of experience here. We as PMs can get on a drama triangle with others on the team. For example, we're trying to get projects delivered on time, on budget, within scope. And if the team is falling behind, we might villainize them or we may look at them as the problem without understanding that it may be something else. And the beautiful thing about this work is it takes it out of an individual perspective.
and looks at it more as outside the individual. So we may be doing the work itself, but we can actually identify that hypothetically, like if you're the developer, Steve, instead of pointing a finger at you, I can take a step back and say, wow, like I'm noticing something is happening inside of me and I want to make you the villain or I want to make you the victim of why things are going wrong. And I've seen agency owners do this as well, where they'll look at some type of rift
between teams and assume it's the individual members without identifying it's actually a cultural issue.
Steve / Agency Outsight (07:48.728)
So, back up a little bit. So the PM's got their finger on it. They're able to identify this triangle of who's playing what role, how do they show up, how do the team members show up. How does an owner put themselves in that situation or do you not even think they should? They should let it be resolved by the PM because it's a cultural issue now and it's affecting more than just the delivery.
Matthew Fox (08:00.425)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox (08:11.231)
I think it is a contextual piece. So for example, let's say you and I are in an agency together, you're the owner, I'm running the project. If I've got the skill set to know and identify when I've entered into that triangle with other people on the team, and I can, what my mentor, Julie Caldwell, likes to talk about is dropping the rope, where there'll be this tension or push between the other team. And if I can let go of that rope,
and identify that, okay, this is what's happening. And or from a leadership perspective, if you come in and you say, hey, what's going on between project management and the developers, and I can self identify in that situation and say, wow, you know, I can see that I'm trying to save them or, you know, I'm trying to make them the enemy right now, instead of looking at all of us as a team, that self awareness piece can help. If not, then that can be a place where
you as the agency owner could have an educational moment with the PM or with me in this example. And you could pull me aside and say, you know, it's really interesting what's happening with you when you're thinking about, you know, Tim or you're thinking about Lisa or Bob. And then you can really help me go through a sense of very light self discovery.
So that way I'm understanding like my role in creating that tension between the teams and to give me the option to drop the rope. And then if it's a much bigger cultural thing and you as the owner have the skill set and the comfort to do it, you could actually facilitate something because typically when there's a drama triangle going on, if someone is in one of the three quadrants, they may be unknowingly continuing to replicate that behavior. So it could be an opportunity to pull in.
the other teams that are involved so they can understand their part in it and they can take back ownership of what's theirs and what's not theirs.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:12.256)
Interesting and I want to play a protagonist for second and say that not every agency is as touchy-feely as that to to spend time and energy in worrying about the issues a triangle that shows up, know between team members, you know, they're very I don't even know if literal is the right word, but You know, I want the work done. I don't care about the drama knock it off work it out yourselves You're costing us money or like what you know, you're
Matthew Fox (10:15.389)
Yeah, please.
Steve / Agency Outsight (10:41.56)
jeopardizing a client. So let's assume that's half, if not more, of the agencies that exist. Are there things that owners can kind of become aware of to shift themselves and their culture towards being, and I don't mean the word touchy-feely in a negative or derogatory way, in any way. just, you know what I mean? Like there are different vibes and some of that is just not gonna flow with a lot of cultures.
Matthew Fox (10:58.656)
yeah, not at all. Yeah.
Matthew Fox (11:06.931)
And what you're describing is the environment that I grew up in and very much the perspective that I came from. my, a little bit of background and then I'll get to where your question is, is my dad was a drill sergeant for a period of time in the army, the reserves. So I grew up under that command and control like that. There's work that needs to be done. And if you don't do the work, there will be a lot of like a big price to pay for it.
Steve / Agency Outsight (11:10.488)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox (11:34.452)
What I found is the more that I tried to operate from that command and conquer model, the less effective I was as a manager and or a leader. And that as I softened and I learned more of these skills, one of the things that I've had reflected back to me is people love working with me because they feel seen, heard and understood. And when people feel like that, they want to continue to be loyal, not only to the people that they're working with, but to the organization.
And when I brought some of these tools into a project team, for example, I had one of the people come back to me afterwards and they said, one of the exercises I briefly brought the team through was one of the best team building exercises they had ever experienced at the agency. because other people weren't doing these things. So the intriguing part for me, and I'll bring individual age for a second. A lot of the time, as the owners.
you may be in this space where something feels a little bit off or something doesn't quite feel right. It may be with your team, it may be with a client, it may be with a vendor. And if we're approaching everything from a closed mindset, we're going to have less than ideal results. Now the tools and the value of why I think conscious leadership is great is because it takes us from this closed mindset into an expanded mindset.
And when we get into this expanded mindset, the world looks like a much different place. And even if you were to reflect back as an owner on 2024, I believe this has been one of the most challenging times for agencies in recent history. And if you go into 2025 with that same mindset, you may likely get the same results that you got in 2024. Whereas if you can shift into this space of
you know, what's going on in my body when I start to think about things, that's an easy step to begin with. And it can be a very scary and uncomfortable place to go in, especially if you don't have a good relationship with your body, which again, this gets kind of touchy feely and it kind of gets to that point that you talked about, but the results speak for themselves. When I've gone in from a place of not looking at people or things as a problem and I look at them as an opportunity.
Steve / Agency Outsight (13:45.166)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox (14:00.074)
like things immediately shift for me. Then I'm looking at, well, how can I say solution focus instead of problem focus?
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:08.482)
Yeah. And these are all key components of what a true leader is defined as. even backing up a couple of sentences of what you said is there are leaders that they just want to execute that command and control leadership. But in my experience, the best leaders I've ever operated with or operated under or even had the opportunity to groom myself, they are seeing other people as they are. They're nurturing them. They're mentoring them. They're grooming them. saying, I'm not threatened by you. I want you to learn and grow and become more.
Matthew Fox (14:20.447)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (14:38.094)
know, in a role in what we do. And, you know, so owners kind of need to shift into that space as well and see the opportunities that they have with their team.
Matthew Fox (14:48.692)
Exactly. it's, I don't always like to go back to demographics or, you know, this new generation. But if you look at the values and the things that Gen Z want coming into the workplace, it's a stark contrast to a lot of the generations before it. Whereas, you know, baby boomers would put their heads down. Gen X revolted a little bit against the authority type of baby boomers, but still like
really focused on getting their work done. Millennials were starting to stretch a little bit. And then with Gen Z coming in, I mean, it's changing the landscape dramatically where I've worked on projects and people would have an off day, like their coffee wasn't made right or something that would seem kind of silly to you and I, but would wreck their whole day. And by using these tools, I remember one situation where we had a rough client meeting.
And I pulled one of our creative directors aside afterwards and created a space to just let them be human. And not only did their human side show up, but then they flourished after the conversation. And it was very much just me creating the space using the tools I had to say, hey, what was going on? Let's explore a little bit about what that was like for you. And we got to a really beautiful place where they were seeing that.
feelings they were having inside, one of which was fear, was really preventing them from performing on a project. And that's something that I believe at the end of the day is where we're all corporate athletes. Even though I know corporate is typically used with big organizations, the way we take care of ourselves improves the way that we can show up in the workplace. And to kind of go back to something we talked about before, as an agency owner, you're like the
the coach or you're the main person for your team. And you're the one, even if you don't see it, if you hear about it, you have the opportunity to help your individual performers perform at their best.
Steve / Agency Outsight (16:56.524)
Yeah. It's interesting you kind of, analogize that as the coach and you, you look at a lot of football coaches, they're just super out of shape. Most not, you know what I mean? But so many are, and, know, I'm, unfortunately I'm a Giants fan and our head coach over the past year, you know, he went through a massive transformation and now looks far more physically fit than he has the past few years and whatever. And so, you know, it sets the tone of what to expect from the rest of your people.
Matthew Fox (17:09.261)
yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (17:26.126)
You know, and whether that's mind, body, spirit, like what, whatever the different areas are. And you talk about like what those foundations of health that need to be integrated into different areas of people's lives. Go ahead. No, go ahead.
Matthew Fox (17:29.235)
Any?
Matthew Fox (17:38.612)
Yeah, it's, I'm sorry, go ahead. no, sorry. It's, it's, this is such an interesting topic and something that it, like, I, kind of had an idea about before because I grew up as an athlete. Like I was a, I swam in high school. I was a D1 swimmer for a little while. I've done adventure racing. I've done, orienteering, volleyball, all sorts of things. And the, the amazing thing is
If I can come to the table, like, like if I lift a really heavy weight in the gym in the morning, that may be the hardest thing that I will do all day. Like if I pick up a hundred pounds off the ground or 200 pounds off the ground and I can really focus on that and do that, then I know the rest of my day is going to be much easier. Or if I can get through like a hard rowing workout in the morning, like a
Steve / Agency Outsight (18:26.702)
Wow.
Matthew Fox (18:32.936)
interview on a podcast or talking to a client or everything else, like the volume goes down. Now, physical fitness is just one part of it because I realize people listening to this, like maybe physical fitness isn't an option for them. It gets back to nutrition. It gets back to mental health. And I think post COVID, we've very much fallen into a space of some form of grieving. Now, some of us may have like very real things that have happened like
loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of something else, or transitioning where what you did before is not working now. That's another form of grief. But we don't have the collective conscience to be aware of the fact that we're grieving. And if we aren't addressing these things, they come out sideways. So the point that you mentioned about the Giants coach, what could have potentially been happening with them is their stress level. I football tends to be very stressful, especially as a head coach.
They could have been eating their emotions. They could have been doing a variety of things. And as an agency owner, this is critical. If you are not taking care of yourself, you cannot successfully run the agency in the way it deserves to be run. And I say that with all the love and compassion and understanding. this is a stressful space. Now, some of us get excited. We love solving client problems. We love solving challenges.
But if you, there's one agency owner where they'll jump on a line and they'll be like, well, back to back meetings. And I've had like two pieces of lettuce and like you are, you are not understanding how your lack of self care shows up and is a disservice to all the people around.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:09.71)
Mm-hmm.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:20.802)
Yeah, I have the same thing with many clients that I coach where it's like, I'm back to back all day long. I don't know if I'll have time to eat. Well, you can control. I had a boss. was the last boss I had before when I'm on it was the most toxic workplace I've ever been. But the one thing that this guy did was time block properly. He blocked his calendar for working out in the morning, for lunch every day, for dinner with his family every day. Like, like drill sergeant style, like do not impede on these and agency owners can do that as well.
Matthew Fox (20:47.22)
Yeah.
Steve / Agency Outsight (20:50.754)
Like why are we allowing clients or even our PMs or whoever to overrun our entire calendar and our entire day and that's not healthy.
Matthew Fox (20:51.711)
100%.
Matthew Fox (20:59.806)
And that, excuse me, that time blocking piece that you mentioned, I think that's really important. And it's not just for agency owners. If you're a creative director listening to this, if you're anyone in the organization, finding blocks of time, for example, there's a PM with an agency that I'm doing some consulting with where the PM was getting overworked. The agency owner was trying to figure out if they should bring in another resource. I sat down with the PM.
And we broke things down and we were able to figure out, know, it's a busy time of the project. Like you, you just have a lot of busy projects happening at once and things are going to drop off. And the message they took away from that is, well, it's just really hard right now, instead of actually looking at their overall schedule and realize even when this calms down, they were still going to be over allocated or over resource. And if we're not taking responsibility for ourselves and actually speaking up, like
It's very common in the agency space. And I remember billing for 80 hours in a week, back to when I worked in the big agency space and it was just the work had to get done. But my self care was awful, even to the point of where I tried to prioritize it. And I went in for a massage and I remember walking out of the massage, more stress than when I had gone in and
Steve / Agency Outsight (22:21.678)
Yeah, because you spent time on the bed thinking about what calls am I missing, what emails am I missing, what am I going to have to catch up on. It's the same when we say, I'm going to take a week off. Well, it takes two weeks to get ready for the week off, and then two weeks to play catch up. And most owners don't unplug for that time off anyway.
Matthew Fox (22:26.269)
Exactly.
Matthew Fox (22:33.715)
Ciao
Well, that time off is so important because we live in a world where it's always on and it's very easy to point fingers and to look at technology. But I'm going to date myself a little bit here. But I mean, I remember like I didn't have a cell phone in high school. And the beauty of that is there was like freedom and space to just like show up. And like there was a sense of adventure. Like I would I would meet friends at the mall and like
We're going meet at this store at this time and like maybe you hit traffic or maybe you have car trouble or something else happens. And then the adventure is to find them. And now we've entered into a world of immediate response where I can pick up just about any device and either someone can get ahold of me or I can get ahold of someone. And we haven't evolved. Like our brains just don't understand that by staying connected, by staying
in the machine or in the space all the time, it takes such a toll on us.
Steve / Agency Outsight (23:37.614)
Yeah. That sense of adventure of like, when's the last time a kid just knocked on another kid's door and was like, Hey, do you want to come out and play? Or like they know where they are, you know, just through finding, you know, tracking each other on their phones. I love, you know, I binge watched Mad Men a few times the seasons through, and I got envious of the guy would just middle of the day, go to the movies and unplug. Nobody knew where he was. Like you can't have that anymore. You know, so.
Matthew Fox (23:44.372)
yeah.
Matthew Fox (24:03.155)
No, no, mean, especially with clients and, if this is a, a challenge I see between PMs and agency owners where an agency owner will be like, clients having a problem. It's the end of the world. We're in a panic. We're going to lose them and a PM, if they're level headed, we'll say, okay, well, let me take a look at what's going on. Like, maybe it's not as big of an emergency, but from an agency, an agency owner's perspective, what ends up happening is.
you can get into this mindset and again, you get into this contracted space and if you're looking at everything from a contracted space where a client's complaining about something or something has happened, it's taking us from this space of creativity and magic into, no, the world is ending. I'm gonna lose the client, other clients are gonna leave, my business is gonna close. And again, it's when we operate from that space that we're not making good decisions.
Steve / Agency Outsight (24:59.438)
Yeah, yeah, you get in the panic mode, you get into worst case scenario mode and the creative juices aren't able to really look at things from a open-minded standpoint of, right, what are the problems that we need to find solutions for and what's the best case scenarios? now you're working more in a fear-driven as opposed to like success motivated or you're in that scarcity mindset again. And yeah, it all crumbles down around that.
Matthew Fox (25:24.339)
Yeah, yeah. And I believe you have a creative background and keeping that in mind, creativity, although it can thrive under pressure and you can create great things, when you're creating like that magic, when you're creating that piece that clients are paying for, the more space and openness and time that you have for that to matriculate through, to really think about it, that's the magic. And we're doing so much to like...
Steve / Agency Outsight (25:28.696)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Fox (25:53.568)
to off that stream of magic or to close off that energy pipeline. That again comes back to why think these commitments and tools are so necessary today.
Steve / Agency Outsight (26:04.076)
Yeah, so I think the bottom line here is leaders, whether they're owners or leaders within the ecosystem of a creative space, need to find ways to consciously open their minds and their hearts and bring more of that good energy into the workspace and the culture and the self-care. And it's a process, but if they can implement one thing, know, block out lunch for the entire team or start your day with a walk around the block or like one of these things that's going to open the mind a little bit, everybody benefits.
Matthew Fox (26:33.086)
Yeah, I'd say start and then stay committed to the path because what ends up happening is I'll get a little new agey and spiritual for a second. It's being spiritual or doing this type of work is hard. It's uncomfortable. It's not for everyone and you should probably avoid it at all costs. But once you start, keep doing it. And what I find is
I have self doubts all the time about this work. it's, you know, I tried this tool with an agency owner and all I got was defensiveness back. I tried having a hard conversation with someone and it didn't go the way I expected it to. But one sample size is not reflective of all the work. And the piece that I really want to end with is the more I've found that I've embraced this, the more feedback that I've gotten from the world around.
One of the things that my late mom had mentioned was I was a totally different person since starting doing this work and that she didn't recognize me in the best way possible. And I've received that reflection from friends. I've received that reflection from other people that I've worked with. The deeper I go with this, the more results I'm getting in the world around me. And the weird part is, is because I'm working so hard on myself, on my inner game,
that the outer game is changing.
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:02.84)
That's beautiful. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Before we wrap up, I'm going hit you with a couple of random non non woo woo related questions. So first is what is something that you are binging these days that you can't get enough of, whether it's a book, an audio book, a podcast, a hobby, a show or whatever.
Matthew Fox (28:07.187)
Yeah. Yeah, please.
Matthew Fox (28:21.245)
Yeah, so I'll start with something a little bit more, less juicy with, there's a book called conscious, accountability where I think like accountability is just one of those things that was driven into me when I was younger and I realized it wasn't driven into everyone. And so I'm always trying to find out ways to like learn more about it on the flip side or the more self-indulgent side. I've been really digging a Reacher on Amazon prime and
Steve / Agency Outsight (28:50.094)
They just announced a new season coming out. Yeah.
Matthew Fox (28:51.2)
Yeah, yeah, it was a little bit more graphic than I expected, but I yeah, there's there's something really cool about watching someone who is embodying a lot of traits of masculinity that I think are really cool to see on the screen.
Steve / Agency Outsight (29:06.86)
Yeah, I like the show. He's a good actor. It's a fun show. What's a tool that you recently integrated into your life? Physical, digital, personal, professional, that you look back and you're like, how the heck did I live without this thing?
Matthew Fox (29:18.985)
Yeah, that's a good question.
Matthew Fox (29:24.837)
I don't know if there's one single tool. It's much more of a philosophy of the more I learn, the less I know. coming back to the space of I do some moonlighting with a place called the Denver Zen Den, and we use light, sound, and vibration to create state changes for people. And the intriguing thing is the more I've like
opened up to the space of letting things unfold without forcing them to unfold, the better off that ends up being at the end of the day, like just relying on, know, I've got the skills, I've got the ability, I've got the mindset, I can just set the frame or the container and then just let things play out and pivot as they move forward. So again, it's less of a tool and more of a philosophical thing.
Steve / Agency Outsight (30:18.222)
No, listen, that's a tool as well. And then finally, looking back on a younger version of Matthew Fox, what's something that you would advise yourself of?
Matthew Fox (30:31.967)
But it's all going to be okay. I think it's very much a sense of always thinking doom was around the corner as a kid and that there's very, very few things. And I've actually spent time in the medical space of finding people who were in a life and death situation and having had to make decisions based off of that. Unless you're in that situation.
99.9 % of what we deal with during the day really isn't as big of a deal as our like lizard brain or as like the things in our head make it out to be. And you know, if I could just remind that younger version of myself that it's going to be okay, this too shall pass. And I have a really good support system around me to make sure that I'll be okay.
Steve / Agency Outsight (31:23.054)
I love that. Thank you, Matthew. Thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate you and everything you shared with us today.
Matthew Fox (31:30.365)
Likewise, it was such a pleasure and if anyone has any questions about anything they've heard, please reach out. I'm always happy to answer questions.
Steve / Agency Outsight (31:37.474)
Matthew's contact info will be in the show notes. Thanks, man.