Learning Forward (Not Bouncing Back)

Thirty-eight days until summer, and welcome to Backstage’s new Friday cadence. Matt’s breaking in a new format like new shoes, seeing what works best. This week started with a networking event with trades owners in southeastern Pennsylvania—flooring, painting, roofing companies. The vibe: more competition, people getting more bids and hanging on longer, not pulling the trigger as quickly. General unease about the economy. If you’re feeling like things aren’t moving, it’s likely not just you. Economic forces bigger than you individually are at play. When you’re hyper-focused on deals you’re getting or not getting, it can feel desperate. Just know there are forces out there impacting your business.

He met Paul, a former chef who switched to real estate decades ago. That chef identity is still inside him, yet he’s all in on real estate—finding ways to bring his culinary background into the work. Differentiation in places like Manhattan is critical, and Paul’s creative edge lets him use kitchen metaphors people relate to. Reminder: if you’ve made a big pivot, you don’t lose that career. It continues inside you. Matt thinks about his law background—he struggles deeply with having a law license and not practicing, even years later. There’s a little bit of regret. If you’re feeling like that, it’s normal. Paul showed him what it looks like to go all in on a new career without losing the old one entirely. It’s an identity issue, a matter of reframing and being in full acceptance that you’re already enough.

Yesterday: slew of meetings with unique, interesting people. Reminder—networking questions like “how long have you been doing that?” are fine, better than staring into oblivion. But when you ask “What are you excited about? What are you working on? What’s floating your boat right now?”—conversations get more interesting much more quickly. Our past is important, but it’s far more interesting if we bring it up selectively and intentionally. Same with the future—asking what someone’s excited about unlocks more than asking where they’ve been.

Now something deeply personal: his 95-year-old grandfather passed away early this week. Matt’s one of the luckiest grandsons on the planet—firstborn grandchild, had an active grandfather in his life for 51 years. Gramps supported him when he wanted to travel Vietnam for a month, gave him his first car (a Volkswagen Diesel Dasher Wagon), valued education so much he’d do almost anything to help with it. More than anything, Gramps loved people. After Matt’s grandmother died years ago, every year he’d go on and on about how much he missed her. There were never strangers, only people you had to get to know. Random people would roll into the family sphere. They did home exchanges in Europe, have French family not blood-related but closely tied because of them. What a gift. Gramps will forever live inside him, and Matt will never stop trying to impress him—that’s a good thing.

No matter what hardships you’re going through—business, life, economy—it’s always about the people. That’s how we get through this period. Three things for getting through difficult times and building something new: (1) Create healthy feedback loops, especially with great clients who give clear information back. (2) Have something you can control—gardening, baking, gym, parasailing, whatever. (3) Remember to stop, rest, celebrate. Last week he had his birthday party with a dozen people in a Manhattan lounge—one of the most joyful nights. It’s important to gather people and celebrate what you’ve done. There are so many difficult things—loss, market changes, loss of relevance from external factors. We don’t bounce back, we learn forward. The pain stays with you, but through it, if you connect and learn and grow, you become stronger.

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