Season 3 - Episode 11 - The Omazing Climb with Matt Pohlson

This transcription was completed through an automated service. Please excuse any typos or misrepresented words.

You can listen to the show here.

Cousin Bill 0:01

From the books and podcast one, this is give them the business with booth CEO John Tabis news girl Katie Rotolo and me, cousin bill.

Unknown Speaker 0:17

Doing 1965

Unknown Speaker 0:18

that's not safe windows

Katie Rotolo 0:19

roll downstream and add Don't say that. Hey,

Unknown Speaker 0:23

I'm getting money

Unknown Speaker 0:26

Monday. Why?

John Tabis 0:32

don't meet him.

Cousin Bill 0:34

Hey,

Unknown Speaker 0:36

hey.

Cousin Bill 0:39

I'm your host, the star of the straw flowers, the ayatollah of business schoola. Hello and flowers. My cousin our captain, john.

John Tabis 0:52

Bravo. I'm fine. I'm clapping for Bill. That was your best intro. I have tola of business, Scola. I'm gonna get a card made my business card. If you have nothing else on it. It's just gonna say I had total of business skola and I'm just gonna hand it to people.

Katie Rotolo 1:09

We didn't you also have a hilarious business card back in the day that use the NTP ambassador of Kwan.

John Tabis 1:13

Yep. No contact information. is on one side of that. My name john Davis.

Katie Rotolo 1:20

Do you have your name?

John Tabis 1:21

Yeah, just just just john tab is no email, no phone number. And the other side, it's an ambassador of one. So there was no way to get a hold of me after I gave you this card. It was the entire purpose of that I would hand you the card. But now they want you to say I atolla of business cola. Not john. That's it. I'm just gonna hand it out to people because it's amazing. So awesome. What's up, folks? Good to be back in the in the studio here at books HQ. Given the biz, thanks to everybody who listens and shares and speaks I think we got the Amazon store up. No, we did not. Okay. So it's not up yet. But we're gonna get it up and you guys can shop it and it'll

Katie Rotolo 2:02

get you know when it is okay.

John Tabis 2:04

I said last time around, if just the three of us do all of our amazon shopping through it. We'll be paying ourselves like a rebate. I don't know what it is like 1% or 5% or whatever it is greater than zero. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And once Firestone gets on board with the program, the free beer like that'll be awesome. Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, we're rockin and rollin. What's up

Cousin Bill 2:25

dude? Who's our real sponsor though?

John Tabis 2:28

A real sponsors the books company. Bo u q. s, calm greatest flowers in the world. Super, super handsome and very tall founder. So I suggest you know, you check it out. I made three quarters really tall.

Katie Rotolo 2:41

Don't. Don't Don't some parts of the world you're probably very

John Tabis 2:45

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. When the and the first time I ever went to China, I was actually like, it was the first time I ever felt tall.

Katie Rotolo 2:55

And did it make you feel different?

John Tabis 2:56

It felt weird. It felt like like I stuck out. Like I'm used to like

Katie Rotolo 3:00

blending looking down or looking up at people a little bit and you work well

John Tabis 3:03

and like just sort of blending into the crop. Like when you're when you're five, eight, and everyone else is five, four. And you're walking down the street. It's you're you're literally sticking out. And I've never experienced that before. So it felt weird.

Katie Rotolo 3:17

Different. Yeah,

John Tabis 3:18

it was weird. What's up guys? What's up bill?

Cousin Bill 3:21

How much man I'm here in Boston just trying to finish up my my last little run here and headed to LA and I watched

John Tabis 3:29

I watched your boss in mile 22 last night.

Cousin Bill 3:33

What did you think?

John Tabis 3:34

I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I was going to I was just going to record it sounded like shoot people, which there was a lot of shooting. But there was there was some cool like intrigue and sort of mystery and stuff to figure out I really enjoyed it. I also was like, you know, I was like six beers in by the second half hour

Cousin Bill 3:50

so drinking a beer kind of movie.

John Tabis 3:54

That helps make it even more fun. Oh, yeah, he's

Cousin Bill 3:57

gonna get dizzy from all the quick cuts in the fight scenes because that's the one thing that I didn't like and that didn't bother me too much. Too much. Yeah,

Katie Rotolo 4:03

how many beers had you had?

Unknown Speaker 4:05

Oh, yeah, there you go.

John Tabis 4:08

What's up with you? Kj

Unknown Speaker 4:10

I'm great.

Unknown Speaker 4:11

I'm yeah, I

Katie Rotolo 4:12

feeling good. I got my old blood orange here you know me and my little rock.

Unknown Speaker 4:18

So you can't complain you set in tensioning it up?

Katie Rotolo 4:22

You know I Yeah, I am. Yeah, taught yoga. I teach yoga every Sunday so every time that we come here, you're feeling good. Had a great yoga fill day that I've spent outside usually with other people and the farmers market low we

Unknown Speaker 4:39

get rained on what are you doing yoga?

Katie Rotolo 4:41

Oh, well, so we did the farmers market outdoors because unless it's really bad, they don't shut down. It's rain or shine. And then we did yoga endorsed. Ah,

Unknown Speaker 4:49

yeah, Got it. Got it. Got it.

John Tabis 4:53

Awesome. Awesome. Good to be back. We have an amazing guest

Katie Rotolo 4:56

we built sorry, did you say it's 15 degrees there. 1515 degrees.

John Tabis 5:01

Even if you flip that around, I mean 51 I'd still be like, yeah.

Cousin Bill 5:08

Yeah, great in LA,

Katie Rotolo 5:09

you know, Bill if I mean, I mean, I don't know if like rain, but there's been a lot of rain lately and it's supposed to rain again Tuesday to Sunday. I think coming up so yeah,

Cousin Bill 5:22

don't rain on my parade rainy. What do we got today, john?

John Tabis 5:26

great guests. Um, my my friend Matt Polson. Matt is one of the cofounders of omega, which is this amazing platform for, for raising money for charity, and I'm gonna let him

Unknown Speaker 5:37

amazing,

John Tabis 5:38

it is amazing. And I'll let him talk more about what they do and how they do it. It's pretty, it's pretty amazing. Matt and I met through sort of mutual friends in the startup community, we started our businesses around a similar sort of timeframe. And then and then, Matt. Well, I'll let Matt decide if he wants to talk about some other things that have happened in his life recently, which are sort of really amazing and interesting. And matches a really great dude. So his, his story's interesting, his business is super interesting, and I can't wait for him to join us. So he'll be here. He's in the greenroom sort of getting prepped to get his makeup on. And, you know, making sure that the wardrobe is all set. That's how we do things here.

Katie Rotolo 6:21

Give him the biz. very seriously. Yeah,

John Tabis 6:23

you know, books are sponsored. You know, they do it. Right. Right. And they check things out and check the boxes and make sure that we got the foundation. Is that what it's called? And

Katie Rotolo 6:35

you tell me I What are we talking about?

Cousin Bill 6:37

makeup makeup?

Katie Rotolo 6:38

Oh, Foundation, right. I thought you meant like,

Unknown Speaker 6:41

like the foundation foundation?

Cousin Bill 6:42

Sure. Yeah.

John Tabis 6:44

We don't have a foundation. There's a foundation to the building. Go. Yeah, whatever you say john john. Yes, I agree. Yes. Yes. And training coming in.

Unknown Speaker 6:56

Hardcore

John Tabis 6:57

there. I have no idea what you're saying. But yes, I completely agree with you. That is that is I concur. So yeah, so maybe we'll just do a little bit of news. Then we'll get mad in here and hear his story. What do we got going on, Katie? Coming up

Katie Rotolo 7:11

on today, Tom Cruise has a new movie and we're going to be talking to him.

Unknown Speaker 7:15

Hey,

Katie Rotolo 7:15

funny man. Al Franken will be stopping by for a visit. And Wolfgang Puck shares his recipe for apple strudel. Hey, so stay tuned, because we've got all this and more coming up in the next hour.

Unknown Speaker 7:28

Oh, well, nevermind, you guys

Katie Rotolo 7:29

might be familiar with this technology already. I'm not sure if you've seen it on Netflix. But the Amazon has just come out with a Choose Your Own Adventure style stories. So they've Amazon's audible and Alexa, have partnered and they're basically creating these stories similar to I don't know if you guys saw the Black Mirror project that way, I

John Tabis 8:00

tend to like things that freak me out the night. So that was a hard pass.

Katie Rotolo 8:05

Not for you. No. Well, so they had basically that film was a Choose Your Own Adventure type of thing. I think we might have talked about this in a previous episode, where there were certain points where you could decide what was next in the in a story?

John Tabis 8:18

Is there an option at any point along there is like, I'm going to choose the option that does not scare me. Like,

Cousin Bill 8:25

I don't think

John Tabis 8:26

it's like, oh, nighttime is coming. I'm gonna choose to have nighttime not come. But I'm just gonna go with daytime at the park with the kids playing in the sun.

Unknown Speaker 8:36

Nobody did

John Tabis 8:38

in that movie, because that's just seems like a terrible.

Katie Rotolo 8:41

No, it did sometimes bring you back to make the decision again. So you would realize that I guess you hadn't made the right decision. And then you would have to go with the other one. So anyway, I would just be stuck

John Tabis 8:52

in a loop of going to your playground with the kids

Katie Rotolo 8:56

around Groundhog Day. So there was actually a lawsuit with this company called choose co so choose co created this Choose Your Own Adventure thing. And they actually sued Netflix because they said they didn't properly license that type of choose your own adventure, trademark and technology. But now, they've actually it seems like hopefully leveraged that publicity about you know, maybe the lawsuit and they're in the news again. And this time Yeah, they're they're working with Alexa and audible and they're going to have different stories where they're starting. They're doing children's stories, they're doing all kinds of adventure stories, and you pick along the way.

John Tabis 9:37

I used to love Choose Your Own Adventure books. They're the best I'd always get to the decision point though. And the points the ones where like, I wasn't sure if I was right, I would doggy or the page. Yep. So I come back to it. cheat.

Cousin Bill 9:49

Because eating at it.

John Tabis 9:50

Yeah, cuz you get to the end. You're kind of like, you died and you're like, Okay, well, I wasn't sure about you know whether I should have taken the rope swing or the rickety bridge and I chose the rickety bridge. So I'm going to go back and do the rope swing. This

Cousin Bill 10:01

turns out poor decision.

Katie Rotolo 10:03

Yeah. Well, you I don't think you can do that with this. That's Yeah, I don't think you can skip ahead.

John Tabis 10:07

Well, they do. They do push it back. It sounds like No.

Katie Rotolo 10:10

Well, yeah. In the in the film that I saw the Black Mirror when I'm not sure exactly with this if it'll do something similar, but this is, in the beginning there says they're releasing two narratives to start, which is the abominable snowman, which takes you through the Himalayas and journey of the sea, which takes you through Atlanta.

John Tabis 10:30

Those seem more like kids.

Katie Rotolo 10:31

So there's gonna be

Cousin Bill 10:33

product. The first ones are so better than black mirror. That's good.

Katie Rotolo 10:36

Yeah. So don't be scared. Yeah. But yeah, so it sounds like he saw Paranormal

John Tabis 10:41

Activity once on Halloween night. And I don't know if you guys ever seen this movie?

Unknown Speaker 10:47

Yeah, yeah.

John Tabis 10:48

So I don't know if it scared you or not, but I white enough. Every time nighttime would come. I white knuckled my seat and sweated through the whole thing. And I was even like, doing that thing where I was like taking myself out of experience, right? I'd look around, I'd look at everyone else and be like, john, you're in a room. It's a movie. And it didn't matter. Like I despise my time so much to come. And I'm like, why am I here? This is not enjoyable in any way, shape, or form. I'm not having any fun. So one night would come and it would say which What do you want to happen? I would be like, I'm going to go to the bar. I'm not gonna sleep in this house tonight. I'm gonna go to the bar, and I'm gonna drink and then I'm going to go to I'm gonna go to the Bahamas on vacation. I'm just not gonna go back to that house. Like I'm out.

Cousin Bill 11:30

Yeah, I had the same thought while watching that movie is like, you just gotta leave. You just got a guy.

John Tabis 11:34

Yeah, this point. It's like, you know, and I like our townhouse. And you know, the suburbs of Philly, whatever, but it's time to go somewhere else. You know, as soon as the sheet starts moving in the middle of the night, I don't I'm I'm out of here. It's time to go. Choose my own adventure of turning off the show.

Katie Rotolo 11:50

So it does I misspoke. It actually says that you can use commands like go back, start over and change story. So that's how you would navigate

Cousin Bill 11:59

through. I mean, listen to that from my real life. Just keep picking,

John Tabis 12:06

oh, that'd be great. Like you get to eat, you get to eat the terrible milkshake for you. But then you go back and you haven't yet. So then do that again, to over, do over. But I do think that this sort of entertainment. I mean, we're just we're just on the cusp of like these types of things, right? I mean, I remember talking about this when I Disneyland 10 years ago, about the different ways that you could edit film in real time because it's digitized, etc. So choose your own adventure is one of those type of experiences, I went to this thing called dreamscape, which a friend of mine his chief marketing officer, Adam rockmore, it's in it's over in this, like the, like the Century City Mall. And it's like, it's, it's, it's like real life. immersive VR, where you put on a suit, and you walk around in a world and you look at other people, and they're now different people, but they're moving, and they're interacting with it, and you can ride on things. It's It's crazy. Do you take sort of that experience? Do you think about also, you know, the goggles that are happening, you can give like, you know, augmented reality and think about things like this, and Alexa with voice, like within our lifetimes, certainly within Katie's lifetime, maybe not Mike's, I'm so old. But within our lifetimes, these things will become normal, where it's no longer a passive consumption experience. It is an active participatory thing. I think it's gonna be a while because just you have to get so much equipment and sort of everything into the home and get everyone to have access to it, or you need to have enough centers of it. And it needs to be good enough quality. But it's exciting to think about what that you know, I watched Ready Player One the other day on the plane. I'd already seen it, but I watched it again, because I really liked it. And that it's that sort of heading in that direction, which is pretty cool.

Unknown Speaker 13:46

Yeah, yeah.

Katie Rotolo 13:47

You guys remember the matrix? I mean, that was the beginning of a lot. What's

Unknown Speaker 13:51

this movie?

Unknown Speaker 13:53

Shut up?

John Tabis 13:55

Didn't know a few good men last week? So? Yeah, you know, I mean, I might have forgotten you're

Katie Rotolo 14:00

the ambassador of one.

John Tabis 14:01

That's true. That's true. Well, awesome. Well, thanks. Thanks for that story. That's cool one. So welcome. Matt's coming in from the green room. He's putting on his headphones and everybody we have a guest. We have a guest.

Cousin Bill 14:15

We have a guest. We have a guest we have ladies welcome our guest. The overall of omega is the nourisher of nonprofits. He puts the O and CEO Mr. Mack

John Tabis 14:33

What's up, man?

Unknown Speaker 14:35

How you doing?

John Tabis 14:36

those bills a hype man for hire, you can just follow you around and make you feel awesome all the time.

Matt Pohlson 14:42

I mean, that'd be a dream come true. I will offer that on amaze.

John Tabis 14:46

I love that. We have Miley Cyrus the climb

Matt Pohlson 14:49

on there. I didn't realize what I fell in love with that song. But that was from the Hannah Montana album. It was Yeah, yep.

Cousin Bill 14:56

I mean, I don't know.

Katie Rotolo 15:00

Big john Bill. Bill is a big fan. Right? Am I right in saying that big masters? Absolutely. Yeah

John Tabis 15:07

the impression that it was from like some Country Album that she did

Matt Pohlson 15:11

that Hannah Montana movie soundtrack Do you own that movie album

John Tabis 15:15

The Mighty.

Matt Pohlson 15:18

I do not own that album. But I've I love the song certainly on the song. I own the song. I mean, the song is

John Tabis 15:24

a song. I love. I love this about you. Yeah. So Matt and I have been buddies sort of in this startup ecosystem for a while we started around the same time, right? You started your awais in 2012. Yeah. So same year, sort of entered this crazy world at the same time and amazes is amazing in what you've accomplished. Curious, you know, just to hear a little bit about how like, how did that come to be? Like, what was the origin story for amazing, sort of really quickly what you did prior to that, just to sort of set up that that journey?

Matt Pohlson 15:57

Sure. So what we do at amaze is we raise money and awareness for charity by offering the chance to win once in a lifetime experiences. So we've done everything from be mentored by Michelle Obama to ride in a tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger and crush things to win a Lamborghini. That Pope Francis hands you the keys.

Katie Rotolo 16:22

Did you take Chris Pratt one today? No,

Matt Pohlson 16:24

we did a Chris Pratt one. He's awesome. Yes, we've done we've done a bunch of po

John Tabis 16:27

pan like the actual Pope.

Unknown Speaker 16:29

Yeah, the actual Pope handed you

John Tabis 16:31

the keys to the Lambo?

Unknown Speaker 16:32

Yeah, no big deal. Yeah.

Cousin Bill 16:36

Yeah, wow, that's pretty

John Tabis 16:38

wild. Miley Cyrus saying the climb and

Matt Pohlson 16:44

we should add that in. It hasn't happened yet.

John Tabis 16:47

Yeah, mats, mats. You know, math, social feeds are kind of amazing. Because in all of these amazing experiences, there generally is a celebrity involved. And you get to meet all these folks, and in some cases, become friends with them. And and so Matt is like, probably, at least for me, the most connected to famous people person that I know. It's like you think about like, if you're friends with a Hollywood agent, that person is connected a lot of famous people, for me, is Matt.

Matt Pohlson 17:13

Take that honor.

Unknown Speaker 17:16

I'm not sure.

Matt Pohlson 17:18

Yeah, so that's what we do. And then what we do that's different than other companies that do it is rather than one high net worth individual paying 25 or $50,000. To have one of these experiences, we make it so that anybody in the world can donate 10 bucks for the chance to win. So it's like a global charity raffle. And as a result of raises, two to 40x for the charity and the word for profit company, we take a percentage of the proceeds. So that's the business and then how it started. It was started by me and Ryan Cummins, we were best friends to Stanford together. And then we came down to LA to get into entertainment specifically focused on cause content. We both had a passion for using storytelling to inspire action. Because the beauty of a story, really, in its essence, if you think about it, it's it enables you to connect with someone whose experiences are different than your own. And when you do that, you want to help that person. And when you do that you feel more connected. So it's a virtuous cycle. So we did a bunch of different projects. Along those lines. We're the first directors on Live Earth if you guys remember that it was the biggest concert ever thrown to raise awareness for climate change. 100 Music superstars and seven continents. We did a documentary called Girl Rising about girls education in the developing world that was funded by Oprah and Queen reign of Jordan and Meryl Streep as the narrator. We spent a couple years traveling around the world interviewing the world's greatest thinkers, couple 100 Nobel Prize winners and MacArthur Genius Grant recipients. And then we did the clinton Foundation's 10th anniversary global television concert event and everybody from, you know, Bill Gates and Tony Blair to bado and Jay Z. And so we were doing this work. And we were working with these Obviously, these people are very influential and authentically wanted to do good in the world. But we just felt like we weren't doing that much good. You know, we were raising a lot of awareness around these causes, but we weren't creating a lot of impact. And that was kind of endemic to the cost content space as a whole. So we decided we needed to figure out a better model to do we're passionate about decided to go to business school and surround ourselves with people smarter than us. I went to Wharton and never had opened Excel before I got to school. Oh wow.

Katie Rotolo 19:30

Yeah. Like john is

John Tabis 19:33

talking about I like the math Yeah, it's you guys don't like

Unknown Speaker 19:36

Oh, right. Sorry. You

Unknown Speaker 19:37

don't use Excel though.

Unknown Speaker 19:44

Um, do you drive is next level

John Tabis 19:47

stuff like moving files into like a folder and even be logged in? That's like, you gotta work

Cousin Bill 19:53

remembering your password.

Unknown Speaker 19:57

Anyway,

Matt Pohlson 19:58

yes, we are in schooling with this event. That Magic Johnson was hosting for the Boys and Girls Club where he was auctioning off the chance to play basketball with him and go to a Lakers game. But it was one of those things is only available to the high net worth individuals sitting in the room. And we are in the room but not high net worth individuals. Right. We were the guys you get invited last minute to fill the table. And so we sat there for though. Yeah, that was great score of an event. You know, the Beverly Hills Hill, Beverly Hilton, you know, that kind of setup. And so we sat and we watched the auction went up to $15,000. And we couldn't afford to participate. Magic was in is our childhood hero. And so, you know, there's nothing we'd rather do than play basketball with magic. So when we were driving home that night, we said, you know, they made that available to everybody online for the chance to win, you could raise so much more money. So much more awareness, open up a whole new donor base. Awesome. Amazing.

John Tabis 20:52

And if you if you have like some high level stats, like how much have you raised in total ish,

Matt Pohlson 20:57

we raised $140 million for charity. That's crazy. Yeah, it's amazing,

John Tabis 21:01

dude. That's so amazing.

Katie Rotolo 21:03

In sorry, in how many years?

Matt Pohlson 21:05

So six years, but vast majority of that has been in the last three, the first three years. We? We didn't do very well. We barely held on

Katie Rotolo 21:12

that's okay. That's what happens when you start out. Right. That's amazing. Yeah,

John Tabis 21:17

I mean, the impact is, is obviously huge. And, and tell us about like, you know, the thesis hold true. Meaning that, you know, is it the random Joe paying 10 bucks at winning these things?

Matt Pohlson 21:31

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We've expanded now. So our business is not just doing celebrity stuff. We're doing stuff like when McLaren or a ratio student debt, or do I need that? But yeah, we're gonna start doing we're doing go to space. robotics. We're about to launch a $5 million dream house. You can win that. She's Yeah, yeah. So we're really getting into the big the big leagues now. But yeah, I mean, the guy who wanted McLaren that we just did, he donated $10. He is amazing guys, a young guy from he lives in Seattle. He has a young daughters like two years old and the day that he found out like four hours before he found out he wanted McLaren. He got a call to say he'd been laid off. No way. Four hours later, he won a $250,000 car. Amazing. Which I hope you sold. Yes.

John Tabis 22:26

Quick random side story. Someone parked a McLaren on the street behind my house for like, two weeks here in LA like a blind green. latest model. $200,000 McLaren just on the street under a tree that I won't even park my my 2008 CRV under because of all the like, seeds that come off of it and what it like does to like paint and it just sat there for two weeks. And then it was gone. Like who?

Matt Pohlson 22:56

Who does like anyone who has a lime green? It was McLaren. It was lovely. Have some

John Tabis 23:00

neon lime green. It was like the brightest green in the history of time. street for like two weeks. Maybe.

Cousin Bill 23:10

It was definitely a bait car for that show where they try to get people to steal cars.

Matt Pohlson 23:15

Or show or they try to get people's cars,

Cousin Bill 23:18

car, something like that. Yeah. Wow.

Katie Rotolo 23:20

Wow, that is a show for everything now.

Matt Pohlson 23:24

Is that actually against the law to try to get someone to break the law?

John Tabis 23:28

Well, I think well, maybe, but only I think if you arrest them, then I mean the show wouldn't arrest them. They just be like, you're just embarrassing. Like, you're a bad person.

Matt Pohlson 23:36

That's kind of what Jared Kushner's dad did to get arrested you know, story where he basically tried to entrap his brother in law with a prostitute. Are you serious? Yeah, that's legit. Yeah, he served serious time for doing that. Wow. And tried to blackmail

John Tabis 23:50

so these guys have to have I mean, it's like it's like the catch a predator though. Right? Like, they they sort of attract people,

Matt Pohlson 23:56

right? We ever they were already committing the crime. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I guess we need to have a car thieves everywhere.

John Tabis 24:06

How dare they? How dare they steal my lime green glaring on the street? I saw one one of your posts once where you got to they got to go in the Millennium Falcon on the set of Star Wars is pretty amazing.

Matt Pohlson 24:19

Yeah, guys become like a celebrity and Star Wars conventions. Yeah. Because he was the first guy to go the Millennium Falcon. Oh, got to be in the movie too. He was in the cantina scene.

John Tabis 24:32

Funny so cool. what's what's your favorite? Like what's your favorite one that you've ever you've ever done? out of all of them.

Matt Pohlson 24:40

You know, I love Jon Stewart. And we got you got to snuggle with John's hard on the very last episode of The Daily Show. You got

Katie Rotolo 24:50

to snuggle with.

Unknown Speaker 24:52

Why?

Matt Pohlson 24:53

And it raised you know, raised two and a half million dollars for next for autism, and you know, he was he was such an inspiration to us because we tried to emulate his voice. You know, we one of our fundamental beliefs or actually core value of the company is that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. So we try to infuse that into every meeting, we try to infuse it into our messaging, we tried to infuse an indoor mission in a lot of that we got from john, and we did that. So it was really cool to have that come full circle, like I used to try to channel his voice during our initial emails, you know, and so then to have that happen, it was really cool. That's awesome. That's amazing.

Katie Rotolo 25:32

What it sounds amazing. Sounds like you really, obviously are raising great awareness and money for these causes. But you're also hugely impacting these people that virtually you know, it's like buying a scratcher, you know, and then your whole life could change, like, that guy sells his car, you know, and this other guy's now a celebrity. And you know, so it's like, so interesting how not only the experience or the gift they get, but how you're literally changing people's lives forever.

Matt Pohlson 26:02

Yeah. Wow. Thank you. Yeah, it's been amazing. To watch that. We have actually one story to tell like it's like a two minute story. So yeah, please have a winner. This girl Her name is sorry,

John Tabis 26:13

everybody, we're at a time.

Matt Pohlson 26:17

But there's this girl named Chloe Howard. And she was 15 year old girl living in Northern California. And she went to high school. And she had a clubfoot. And these girls were like these Mean Girls decided to pick on her. And it got progressively worse until one day they pinned her down on the lunch table in the middle of lunch in front of every one of the school and pulled off her shoe to show everyone what what her deformed foot look like. Kids are so me. Yeah, it was obviously devastating. Her dad's is amazing guy named Dane. And he didn't know because she was like, you know, he didn't know if she was gonna hurt herself. Like she would come out of her room. And he's a huge YouTube fan. So he shared this song invisible, which says like, you can't see me, but I'm here. It's this anthemic song. And she really latched on to that and listened to it every single day on loop on the way to school, and it kind of helped her come out of it. And so cut to like, a month later, he enters into a fundraiser to meet bhana backstage and he wins No way. And so he brings his daughter and I'm there. This is a couple months later after that, and we get there and she did she there she is she's this young girl, she's on crutches at the time, you can just tell she has his weight on her. And we're sitting in the room and Bonnie comes in. And you know, he says hello. And he introduces himself and he signed this red guitar that was sitting there. And that was part of the prize. And then he says the day and tell me your story. And Dane says Well, it's not about my story. It's about my daughter, Chloe's story. And he turns to Khloe and he said, well, what's your story, Chloe? She said I was assaulted. And your song and visible helped me get through it. He said you were insulted. Like they called you names. And she said no, I was assaulted. And there was this moment in the room and Bond was obviously a very emotionally intelligent guy. He could just pick up on the energy of it. And he said, Well, how did the song invisible help you? She said, it gave me the strength to stand up to these girls who did this to me, gave me the strength to not hurt myself. It gave me the strength to stand up to my school. And he looked at it and he said, Well, you know how you're able to do that? Because you had right on your side, and the arc of the universe bends towards justice, and love. And when you have right on your side, it's just like big fist not to hurt people with but to fight for what's right. And then he said, What's your passion? And she said, Well, I don't know. She was kind of embarrassed. I haven't figured it out yet. So that's okay. We have a prayer, my family and we're not a righteous family. We say this prayer in church, but we also say this prayer in a pub. And the prayer is, I'm available for work. So just make yourself available for work. And it'll be revealed to you. And you can see like in this moment, I mean, obviously bondo says as much more poetically than I ever do, but this girl was just like, transformed, like, you could see the weight lifting off of her. So she goes home and she decides she's going to take that inspiration to help other goals at her schools that were bullied. And so she, she, you know, she does that then it starts to pick up steam and another school asks her to do as she goes and does it there and another school as they're doing. She keeps telling the story of what barnwood told her. And all these girls are starting to respond. So she starts this movement called Stan beautiful to embrace your differences. And she gets asked to do a TEDx talk about this. Yeah,

John Tabis 29:35

yeah. Yeah, amazing. She

Matt Pohlson 29:38

does the DAX talk. And there is a book publisher there from Penguin Random House, said she's a TEDx talk, and she gets a book deal. She now has Stan beautiful she flies around the world interviewing helping people with this thing and now there's like a TV show that's gonna be made about her like she's a total total world change Rockstar, like

Cousin Bill 29:58

crying over So literally,

John Tabis 30:01

this is one story, right? You have, you've impacted so many people through this, like, how happy I mean, it must make you feel really awesome everyday to do what you do? Well, I mean, that doesn't happen if you don't start omegas. I mean, maybe maybe something similar does happen. But your platform is the catalyst for that, for him winning that prize. And then that leads to all of this. Now, I'm sure she would have had an amazing life without it. But so many of these moments, some of these stories are there as a result of the work that you and Ryan and the team have done. Like, that's got to feel. I mean, I mean, it's, I'm super proud of books, because we're, we're doing something good in the world, but like, you're changing lives on a daily basis, like, what does that feel like? That's got to be the most fulfilling thing in the world? Well, thank

Matt Pohlson 30:48

you for saying that. I mean, you said that very beautifully, I appreciate that. I'm incredibly grateful for what we get to do. You know, like, I believe that we are all connected as human beings, I believe that every action we take impacts one of one some people directly, but all of us indirectly. And so to participate in that and put it out there as much as you can is, is very fulfilling feeling. And I just feel lucky every day that we get to do it.

John Tabis 31:17

So cool. Tell me a little bit about you said like, Look, the first three years didn't go so great, right. And we talked in this, start this podcast a lot about what how to be better how to make things work, where the challenges and struggles are, and start a business and in life. And so talk a little bit about those times when you weren't sure if it was going to work, because you believe so much in this mission, but it's not going according to plan or you're not sure if it's going to make it and talk a little bit how you got through those periods. And what you what you did differently sort of illuminate a little bit on how you got it to where it is now where you know, your your raise $140 million, it's sort of working, talk a little bit about those struggles, and maybe any lessons you learned at that juncture?

Matt Pohlson 32:00

Sure. I mean, God have made so many mistakes, so many lessons. I mean, we you know, remember, New Year's Eve of our first year, we were it was not going well, we had, we had only like four people on the team. I wasn't a very good manager. We had one guy who was our only developer and also our finance and also our analytics guys, by far the smartest allow for and, and he won a game, you know, we all got in a room. And usually we're like, this isn't really working, like what are we gonna do? We're not like these law offices, which gave us free office space at the time. And, and, and we went through all these different scenarios. And he's, and I was going through all the numbers with them, he's like, it's impossible that this will ever work, we'll never be able to raise more than $100,000 on a campaign. That's just not possible. There's just no way that this flows through. And we went through everything. And we went through all the alternatives, what we're going to do, and then finally at the end, and it was like two in the morning. I was like, Look, guys, I know we can't explain rationally how it's gonna work. I know that nothing has worked out but but this has to exist in the world. It just has to. So like, just stick with us man for like, just, you know, just stick for like three more months. And if we, if nothing happens in the next three months, then you can move on. And and then like, two months and 20 days later, we had like our breakthrough here. So

John Tabis 33:31

what led to that breakthrough, like what was the what was the turning point? We had this

Matt Pohlson 33:37

with so we had a competitor come and they started raising like way more most we'd ever raised. The point was 20,000. And they came out they did a campaign with Jamie Oliver and he raised 100,000. And that might have well for us but a billion dollars like we just felt unfathomable. Yeah, how could we ever do? Yeah. And then and then. And so we're like, well, it was great. In some ways. It's like, Well, look, it's possible, see, like, Look, they did and he's like, well, they may have been a fluke and they may be lying or whatever it is. And so then they did a campaign. So we had to figure out what was our what was gonna be our breakout, like we had to show us, like some evidence that we could get close to that. And we had a campaign teed up with Bryan Cranston for breaking bad. Yeah, he's the best. And, and we thought that could be it because it was on the site, guys. It was super exciting. And then this other company did a campaign with Samuel Jackson. And it raised 180,000 got all this press. And during the campaign, Samuel Jackson was allowing people to donate to do different speeches from our different monologues from different movies or shows nice and when someone donated for him to do the I Am the dangerous speech from breaking bad if you didn't know the shoulder. Yes. And, and that went viral. And so then they they contacted Brian and I look, we just raised 180,000. If you react to this, it's going to go barrel game like, do you know you're supposed to do this with a maze, but do this with us instead? Whoa. And so his person called me and said, Brian's not gonna do this with you guys anymore. He's gonna do it with this other company. And I was like, No, no, no, he can't, he can't like, she's please, please. And she's like, I'm sorry. He just like he's made up his arms, like, Where is he right now? And she said, What do you mean? I'm like, Where is he literally at this moment? Like, where is he in the world? Is he in Los Angeles? And she said, Yes. And I said, Well, I was friends with this one. I said, just tell me where he is. Like, I'll go to his house. I'll go wherever. And she's like, he said, this charity event this like celebrity charity event multiple years. And she told me, so Ryan, I went to the charity event, and we snuck in.

John Tabis 35:46

Like, shimming.

Matt Pohlson 35:49

Yeah, I've learned in life if you just walk right by no one ever really stopped you even if you just like, if you don't hesitate, zoom. Yeah. Yeah, especially

Katie Rotolo 35:56

bring a clipboard and a walkie talkie. And you're really right. Yeah,

Matt Pohlson 35:59

do that. For sure. Yeah, that's like, if you're really going into like, you know, trying to speak. Anyway, so we just walked right by and went in, and we found Brian, and we walked up to him, and I was like, Hey, man, we've never actually met, but, but we're doing this and the guy you were saying, and, you know, we really you need to do with us? And he said, Look, I appreciate you coming here. It's nothing personal. But, you know, this is all about how much money we can raise in the other company from my understanding has raised, you know, 180,000. And I said, we said, you know, what's the most you've ever raise? And I said, 20? And he said, how much the true? Yeah. And I said, how much in how much do you think, you know, you can raise on this game that I can pay. And I said, 200,000 is the most you've ever raised 20,000. I said, I understand. He's like how you can do that. I said, because like, our whole company depends on it. And like, we will literally give everything we have in the world like we we will do, we will make the most creative, we'll do content with you, we'll do all these things we've never done before. And I'm telling you, it's going to get there. And so he said, Alright, fine. And he did it with us and then losing 300,000. And then he introduced us to Aaron Paul. And we did one around the finale. And that had done 40,000 an auction and raised 1.7 million with us. And we were

John Tabis 37:24

you were off to the races. It's amazing, right? I mean, you're

Unknown Speaker 37:27

literally making bad,

John Tabis 37:28

you're broke, you're on the cusp of it not working like you're running out of money. This is your this is your last Hail Mary, you lose the Hail Mary, and then you had to go and win it back. And if you don't get that at that moment, it's over. Right. And like, this is where I think people when they see the success, the other side, and the failures, right? They sort of assume that it's like that's how it was supposed to be. But so much of it is luck. And so much of it is timing. And so much of it is make like if you had just said, Oh, give me his phone number, I'll call him you might not have picked up the phone you might have had the conversation might not have gone anywhere. Right. But you you just felt like you had to go and see him and he didn't it worked. But you could have gone he could have said like nah,

Matt Pohlson 38:09

yeah, no.

Katie Rotolo 38:10

He might have been he could have like if he wasn't a nice guy he could have been.

Cousin Bill 38:15

Yeah. Hey, I really am the danger. You guys.

John Tabis 38:19

These two jokers are not supposed to be here. Right? Can someone please move them along? Yeah. But no, I think it's one of those lessons of like, you try everything right. And then and then I think it's, you know, being gracious in the success knowing and how much of it was out of anyone's control. And then also understanding, you know, I used to look at all these companies, the ones that would go, you know, Airbnb to, you know, down to the one that failed. And it always felt like, it was always one way or the other for that company that was clearly going to fail the whole way. And this was clearly going to make it the whole way, which is just such a wrong. Yeah, wrong way of looking at it. And and the all the nuances, all the luck, all the timing, all the things just sort of have to happen to make these things work is It's kind of crazy. I mean, you guys have raised how much you said $140 million now. And you were sort of like 120 1000 versus 200,000 result. Yeah, away from it not

Matt Pohlson 39:12

exactly where we would have been done like, a week. That's amazing.

John Tabis 39:17

talked a little bit about you mentioned how you felt like you weren't a good manager at the time. Do you feel like you're a good manager now? And if so, what did you do? Like, how did you become a good manager? And it's okay, if you're not a good manager, you know, I think I'm good, man. I'm not. I'm self aware enough now to put other things in place so that people can be managed well, but I'm not I've never been an operational guys. And I've learned that like, that is not my strength. Gotcha. I have other strengths and helps the company in other ways. So anyway, yeah, I'd say space.

Matt Pohlson 39:56

Yeah, I think I would say I'm a much Better manager now I care a lot about being a good manager. You know, I think my biggest problem beginning was I had never worked in a company before. So I had no pattern recognition. And I just assumed that everybody was wired the same way that I was, which obviously is like incredibly narcissistic and ridiculous assumption. That took me a long time to realize it's not the case.

John Tabis 40:24

It's very human, and normal. Yeah, I mean, is one of the biggest problems I had similar thing I came from Bain and company and, and the Walt Disney company's Corporate Strategy Group where it was all one type of person. Everyone's came out of the top 10 business school had an MBA was super type A, and I came into this world thinking everyone must be that way, because everyone I've worked with over 15 years was that way, right? And turns out like,

Unknown Speaker 40:47

nope.

Matt Pohlson 40:50

Yeah, I took me a while. Yeah. And so, you know, now, like, I've developed what are my four principles for management, I called like the four C's, which are, which are, one is curiosity, like, you know, solve problems with questions, not answers, and like, really go in with an open mind and to every situation. The second is coaching, you know, your job is not to, to your job more than anything is to create an environment for people to thrive, like make them players, not pawns. The third is clarity. We often leave meetings thinking we're all know exactly what the next step is. And the reality is like, that's rarely the case. And so just over communicating, and having that the other person that you're managing, summarize, so that you know that. And the fourth is consistency, you know, your plans can change. But if the Why is always the same. If you constantly articulate the reason and how it maps to your vision, then people can start to feel like safe in terms of understanding that even if the volatility or whatever you're working through can adapt. And it's awesome. Did you glean those from books you read or various coaches, various books, various I like writing down my mind just works in frameworks. And so I like writing, I like writing down that kind of stuff. And I was reading, you know, I think the best entrepreneurship book I've ever read, is the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. And I go back to that book a lot. And he talks about literally, the most important thing you can do is train your managers, you know, and we'd had people come from outside the company and do it. And I always had, like, I always thought, like, parts of it were good, and parts of it weren't. And then I was like, we should be the one training managers for our type of workings because those four C's aren't right for everybody. But the right for us. Yeah. And so I, but I'm sure if you talk to people I manage, they would have lots of notes for me, I'm sure. You know, there's some times when I'm good at those things, or sometimes when I'm not.

John Tabis 43:00

But I work on it every day, how many people donate 96. And how many of those report directly to you.

Matt Pohlson 43:09

Right now, it's kind of ridiculous, because we just brought in a new VP of partnerships. And so he's just onboarding. And so I had the entire kind of BD partnerships team underneath me. So we're now have like, 17 direct reports. Wow. But in a steady state, it'll be down to six. Got it? Yeah. Got it. Got it. Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah, that's, that's just a temporary. Yeah, that's, I think the max you can really do effectively is like seven.

John Tabis 43:31

Right? Right. So when I switch gears a little bit, you had it, but I don't mean this in a, in a controversial way, an interesting life event. Not too long ago. And Bill and Katie know a little bit, but they'll they'll be sort of hearing the story for the first time. And I only really got sort of what I got through social media, through your family and stuff. But I think it's, you know, I think it's, it's obviously a very unique story. And, and just knowing you before this event, really, I mean, I haven't seen you since since it happened. I would love to hear you tell the story as as comfortable as you are China, whatever details you want to share. And I think like you've you've always been, you know, this human being with this amazing heart and this desire to make the world a better place. And so I don't think this event change that in any kind of a negative way. But I think I'm curious about how it's impacted you and the way you view the world where you live your life on a day to day basis. So I know that there's a lot of preamble but maybe just sort of take us through a little bit of what happened.

Matt Pohlson 44:34

Sure. Yeah, me. So basically what happened, I was declared dead, like seven months ago, and then they brought me back to life. And what happened was, I know that's a lot. It basically what happened when I was born, my stomach was twisted and not. So I was supposed to die when I was born, and they removed two thirds of my small intestine and the scar tissue from that surgery broke. Golf all these years later. And so my stomach was hurting for a couple days. So I called my buddy who's a doctor and said, You know, my stomach's hurting more than normal. But I'm supposed to go out this girl tonight on our second date, and I really liked her. I think it could be something, you know, so just want to make sure I don't have to go to hospital, certainly want to go on this date. And he's like, Oh, I think you should go to the ER, it sounds like your appendix might be bursting is a worst case. And maybe you can still make the date. So I go to the hospital, on the way to hospital, I start to the pain starts to get dramatically worse. I was supposed to meet our CEO at the time, Helen. So she came and tell my parents arrived. And then my parents rather than honor the grossest guy with all arrived, and they went went through this whole day of testing all this stuff, and they weren't sure what's going on. It's like midnight, and they basically said, Everyone, look, we seven, figure this out. We're gonna let him sleep overnight. And if it hasn't kind of worked itself out by the morning, then we're going to go, then we'll do surgery. So everyone goes home. And Helen pulls into her driveway, and literally can't get out of the car. You know, and she's, it's like, one of the morning this time, and she's British and COO. She's not like a typical like Venice, like cosmic science type of person, you know, but she literally like something is telling her not to get out of the car that she go back to the hospital. And the nurse wasn't great. And all that. So she decided to drive back. And if she had not driven back, I would have died like 45 minutes later, because she came back and saw that the monitors that were supposed to alert when blood pressures plummeting, were not working. And my blood pressure had probably like had dropped precipitously. And so she went to the nurse and said, look at this, this, this, this is bad. And he's like, That can't be right, he wouldn't be getting oxygen to his brain. So the nurse went in, got another machine, set it up. And he got the same results. And so then he goes to you to another machine. And she's like, no more fucking machines, like get a doctor. Yeah, so she goes and gets the doctor, the doctor comes in the room, and the doctor takes one look. And she calls the SWAT team and they're rushed me down into surgery. Are you conscious during all I'm conscious for Yeah, I'm in incredible pain, you know, and I'm saying like, I'm saying to them, like, Guys, you got to give me something for this pain. Like, I literally think it's gonna kill me like, and, and so, you know, but like, I'm conscious. But I'm still I'm so it's so intense. At that point. I'm like, What is going, you know, and then they rushed me down. And I remember all that. And I was trying to be funny and joke around as I'm going into this intense. Jon Stewart. Yeah. And I wasn't Yeah. And I wasn't fully aware. Like, I didn't recognize how, like stretch it was I could tell everyone was kind of freaked out. But like, you know, didn't know it. Was that serious? So then go through. So they didn't know. They didn't know. Yeah, they thought it was all gonna be resolved by the surgery. So they come out of the surgery. And they tell my mom, they're like, Look, the good news is we figured out what it was is about obstruction. And we cleared that the bad news is that his heart rate is continuing to plummet. And we don't know why. And he's in critical condition. So then a couple hours pass, and my dad and my brother arrives, my mom goes down to get them and they're coming back up. And they hear over the loudspeaker Code Blue in room 437. And my mom works in a hospital. So she knows code. Blue means flatline. And they know that that's my room. And so they rush up to the room, and the nurse is standing outside the door. And the nurses to my mom, I'm sorry, you can't come in here. This is very serious. And my mom looks at her. She says, I was there when he came in this world if he's leaving this world right now, I'm going to be in that room. And so the nurse,

Katie Rotolo 48:48

what, especially as a nurse, you know, she probably felt like she wanted to advocate for you. Yeah, there.

Matt Pohlson 48:53

Yeah. But they're very serious rules about like, when the crash team is in there. Like they don't let people never. But she's forced nature. And she let her in. And she walked in and they're doing the I'm on the table and they're doing the compressions and they're doing the electric diff for bellator. And my body's bouncing up and down. But I'm not responding.

John Tabis 49:13

What was the last thing you remembered? For? You remember coming out of the surgery? No,

Matt Pohlson 49:18

I was totally gone. I'll tell you in a second because it's, it's relevant. Yeah. So like, it comes at a moment. Okay. And, and so there, my mom takes a look at the table and she starts to crumble. You know, it's one thing to lose a child. It's another thing to be there in the room when it's happening. And the same time my dad was outside with my brother and this doctor went out in and said to another doctor in front of my brother not knowing that it was my brother like, Hey, we lost this guy's gone. And so my brother push my dad in the room said you should be with mom. And my dad came in the room and he kind of came from behind my mom and he was bawling. And so my mom could turn to him to say Gary You gotta be quiet or they're gonna kick us out of this room. And my dad was like, if I cannot cry in this moment, like when you gotta like turn just like a toddler like, against, with like his nose against the wall. It's like stupid. But when my mom turned to say that to my dad, she said she saw something she'd never seen before in a hospital. She said, Every nurse, every doctor, every staff member from the ICU had just gathered right outside the room, like right outside this window, and there was 40 of them. And they were leaned in, almost like they were this silent church choir. And they were just sending in this positive energy. And she was so moved by these people that didn't know her son, but clearly, we're sending in love, like they clearly cared. It was a spiritual experience for us. It just kind of gave her the strength. And she turned back to the table. And she started coaching me. She started saying, you know, Matthew David Polson, these people are fighting to save your life. They're fighting so hard to bring you back.

Katie Rotolo 51:08

Remember this here? I do?

Matt Pohlson 51:10

I do. Yeah, she's Yeah, she's kept saying she's like you, but you're not fighting hard enough. Like you need to fight hard to come back. Matthew even pulls in these people are fighting to save your life. And she just kept saying that. And the flatline went on for four and a half minutes, which is a really long time. And right as she thought the doctor was gonna call it he kind of turned away, shook his head kind of despairingly valves, and he turned back. He said, Wait a second. I think we have a pulse. And all of a sudden, my eyes opened up. And I looked up and my mom, I looked up at my dad, and then I kind of slowly raised my right arm, and then they give a thumbs up.

Unknown Speaker 52:00

Yeah, no.

Katie Rotolo 52:05

Wait, so what did they ever find out? What the cause? Yeah,

Matt Pohlson 52:08

so the rate plummeting? Yeah, this thing called takut tsubo. Which basically happens on the battlefield, sometimes where the you get this intense pain, like shrapnel goes into someone's leg, but it doesn't actually pack the heart. But the body is like reacting so much to this pain or stress that it sends adrenaline to the heart to slow it down and actually shuts it down.

John Tabis 52:28

So talking subo is also a really hard Japanese fast food chain. Doesn't sound

Matt Pohlson 52:35

like it. Yeah, exactly. What is it comes from a Japanese dude.

John Tabis 52:37

takotsubo is the best man. On Friday. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 52:43

Yeah, that's not the best. Yeah.

Matt Pohlson 52:45

But oh, he was crazy, man. I was like date, like, two more days where? So after that happen. But wait, hold

John Tabis 52:52

on. Hold on. I want to go back. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is this is just the most amazing story. Yeah, ever.

Katie Rotolo 52:59

Did you go out with that girl?

Unknown Speaker 53:01

Yeah. Wait, sorry.

Unknown Speaker 53:02

Wait.

John Tabis 53:04

We're still we're still in the flatline mode. Yeah.

I mean, number one. It's so like, and it's I don't mean this, then it's weird. It's so awesome to be with you. After you were dead. Yeah. Like, I'm so glad you're here. It's so awesome that you're here. Like, it makes me feel really excited to be here. But so you know, during that time, you said you remembered hearing your mom coaching? Do you remember anything else? Like people talk about the white light and Kiefer Sutherland, you know, they did the whole thing to go to the other side or whatever. Like, was there anything that you remember from that? time?

Matt Pohlson 53:42

Yeah, I do. I didn't have a, like, the white light, like walk down the tunnel towards this peaceful light type thing that you see on TV or whatever. My experience was more. It was almost like if you're looking at the surface of the ocean, you're like, you're deep underwater, and you're looking up at the surface of the ocean. If you've been scuba diving or snorkeling or you watched one of those movies, and you see a little bit of light coming through. I was like that but the light felt like a universe of time away just impossibly far away. And the water was just like cosmic energy, water where you know like they say in Buddhism when you become nothing you become everything or like you're both a drop in the ocean. The entire oceans like that I felt I was myself but I was also connected to everything else. And I could hear my mom saying like Matthew David Paulson, you got to fight like you got to fight and I remember just thinking, Wow, that is so far to go.

John Tabis 54:46

Yeah, so the light in this my life My mom was

Matt Pohlson 54:50

there back, but light was back to where I came from. Got it. I was back to the world. But I was on the other side. Like I was fully aware that I was on the other side. If that were you, how

John Tabis 55:01

do you have any recollection of it? How comfortable or happy I'm

Matt Pohlson 55:06

not. I was like, I was not scared that because I felt like the energy around me was on my side it was collaborating with me it was those people that were sending in the positive energy right outside the room. My friends knew this was going on and we're holding prayer groups, like girlfriend, family was she's Argentina was holding prayer circles in Argentina and I could feel that energy. I can

Katie Rotolo 55:30

all the people that you've impacted, I'm sure I'm sure that had some I know you believe in but you're some kind of good karma or something. Yeah, good energy coming towards you.

Matt Pohlson 55:40

I'm totally like, I think that what the power of the energy and you know, you they know about the quantum entanglements? The same energy can be hundreds of miles apart, but I believe it's much more grand than that, you know, but I could I could feel it. And I remember and I remember, do you have any desire to stay? No, I knew I was supposed to go back. I felt like, I felt like I was supposed to go back. Yeah. And, and I remember just thinking, like, but there was just this, like, peace, like the singular purpose of I just forgot to fight. And I fought and I fought. And I like, it was a battle to get back. You know, it was like, it was this incredibly, like infinitely long journey. But I just felt like the the more I tried, the more the energy was collaborating with me. And then I remember just, like, bursting back into the world. And

Katie Rotolo 56:31

I wish you guys could see him telling the story.

Matt Pohlson 56:35

Visually, yeah, looking at my mom. I've been looking at my dad, and then just feeling like pure joy. You know, like connected to everything in the world in one moment. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 56:49

Sounds really peaceful. Amazing. And yeah, and you drop any drop the thumbs up,

Matt Pohlson 56:54

then I dropped the thumbs up. Yeah, that's,

John Tabis 56:57

that's the physical manifestation. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 57:00

Yes. Thumbs up, guys.

John Tabis 57:04

I mean, dude wanted unbelievable story. Yeah. And you tell it Well, I mean, I've cried. I've had chills. This is this is intense.

Cousin Bill 57:16

Now, that's one of the other guests with that's the most amazing story that's ever been told.

John Tabis 57:21

Or ever. Yes. In the world. Yeah. But now, like, so you? I mean, again, you were an awesome guy before this happened. Like, I think you know that you're a really awesome guy. On the way, but but I think that, you know, you've you've existed in this world in a very kind way for a long time. But how is life in different on the other side of this experience? Or if it has, like, what, what is the life like for you, and and from how you spend your time, think about the world, what has changed as a result of that experience?

Matt Pohlson 57:57

Yeah, I'm still processing that, you know, when it like one of the last days I was in the hospital, is the doctor who saved my life, sat the edge of my bed, and he's like, I want you to understand something. When I finished my career, 30 years from now, this guy's a world renowned surgeon, and I'm talking about the most extraordinary case I've ever seen. This is going to be like radio at 0% chance of survival for three days, even after the resuscitation. And the fact that we have you going home with your full faculties, we have no medical explanation for that. I was like, Well, do you have like a guest?

And he said, Look, we were inspired by your mom, there is this whole there's a whole second half of the story that all these like almost equally crazy things that happened, but they had done this other crazy surgery. And before the surgery, she was grabbing people by the cheek and saying, This is my son. But today, this is your son. And this is your brother, and these companies trying to do good in the world, and you need to help them. He said, so we found that very motivating. But he said

Unknown Speaker 59:10

What's her name? Terry, Terry Terry, great work. Yeah, great, great.

Unknown Speaker 59:14

Mommy made me

Unknown Speaker 59:15

cry.

Matt Pohlson 59:17

But she, you know, she said outside of that there were larger forces at work. And I was like, well as a man of science, like how do you define those larger forces? And he said, he was love. And it was optimism that brought you back. You know, so my, my sense of the power of love and optimism is totally expanded. It was almost like I was looking at a painting on the wall thinking that was the entire world and all of a sudden, like you pull back and you see everything else. You know, it was. And so just the awareness that I work really hard to have the courage to love at every opportunity because you never know what that's going to mean for somebody. I'm only on this plane. Because people sent love and optimism to me, and so I believe you have to put that out every moment. At the same time, I try to love more and care less. You know, like be less attached to outcomes, I used to spend a lot of time worrying about what other people thought worrying about what's gonna happen with the business worrying about all these other things. And, and when you when you go through an experience like that, like it frees you of your ego in some ways. You're like, I was dead, you know. And so, and everything I think is about trying to free yourself from your ego, and I had a big ego. And I've let a lot of that go now. As a result, you waste way less time in your own mind. Oh,

Katie Rotolo 1:00:50

amen. Oh my god.

John Tabis 1:00:53

So needed to hear it. Feel

Katie Rotolo 1:00:55

like it just went to therapy? Yeah.

John Tabis 1:00:58

No kidding. That is amazing. Dude. Thank you for sharing that with us. Do give yourself and and amaze a quick plug. If people want to learn about it. Where do we find it find you find omega, where do they go? What do they look for social media website, whatever

Matt Pohlson 1:01:15

it might be? Yeah, for amaze. It's amaze.com o m HZ

Unknown Speaker 1:01:22

donating.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:23

Yeah, and then

John Tabis 1:01:24

meet bondo and become a TEDx speaker. That's right. That's pretty much what they guarantee,

Unknown Speaker 1:01:29

save the world. While you're at it.

John Tabis 1:01:31

I think I'm pretty sure that if you give them $10, you will get a TV show is what you're saying. That's right.

Matt Pohlson 1:01:37

That's right for everyone.

Katie Rotolo 1:01:39

And it's for a good cause.

Matt Pohlson 1:01:40

Yes. Yeah. If anyone if you guys take one thing from this is that $10 get you a TV show. And then for me, I'm Matt Polson. pvhl. So and on Twitter and Instagram.

John Tabis 1:01:57

Yeah. Awesome, man. Thank you, guys. And thanks, everybody, for listening. Um, I'm not gonna add anything.

Cousin Bill 1:02:04

Yeah, I mean, that we can't really follow that up with anything.

Katie Rotolo 1:02:06

Yeah, we were gonna I think we're gonna play a game but that just sounds like really weak. Um, so what what just happened?

Matt Pohlson 1:02:13

There's a game. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:16

Peace out.

Cousin Bill 1:02:19

Nice meeting you, Matt. Thanks for listening to give him the business podcasts from the books and podcast one. Be sure to download new episodes every Tuesday right here on podcast one on the podcast, one app or on Apple podcasts. And don't forget to rate review and share. also find us on Twitter and Instagram under the handle at give them the biz g i v e m th, e bi z