Why Leaving My Dream Job Was The Best Decision w/ Matthew Encina

when we worked for someone and then we started doing content for ourselves what we realized is when you open the gate the chickens run they don't want to go back in the cage I started my YouTube channel in early 2019 I kind of rebuilt my home office documented the whole thing and created a YouTube video around that probably 3 months later it might have reached a million views already these days I I work on content still on my own YouTube channel but I've also ventured into industrial product design do you ever get the moment where you're like is this a dream I'm living sometimes I look back it's like how did happen but this is the residual of all this planning and preparation hard work and preparation increases the surface area of luck to happen and it's like there's more opportunities for luck to hit it's just amazing what happens when you allow possibility to take over and you have confidence in the things that you're doing the first lesson that I've learned on this journey of exploring possibility for the past few years is all right everybody you've seen people on our Channel come and going in and out of the future's life and you might be wondering what happened to them where did where were the bodies buried well they're not buried they're still alive and well and I just want everybody know that they go on to live an amazing joyful illustrious life and I'm so thrilled to be talking to one of my former creative directors head of our content Matthew and Cena welcome back hey it's nice to be back finally yeah finally and I don't know why but I just imagine because we talk and we meet up that we've had this conversation but we have not no you've never been been on the podcast have you uh I think as just maybe a side guest or to add additional commentary to something but I don't think I was was ever a guest okay on the show so this episode is purely focused on you there is no side guest you are the main attraction here and if people recognize the voice it's probably for a couple different reasons but if you're an OG future fan and a blind fan then you'll know exactly who I'm talking to but for those people who don't can you introduce yourself and tell us a little of your backstory Matthew my name is Matthew in Cena born and raised in Los Angeles I've been a creative professional for over 20 years kind of exploring all kinds of stuff um in a fun way Chris was my teacher back in 2006 at Art Center where I studied graphic design and then I went to go intern for him I went to go freelance for him and eventually he locked me down as a creative director at blind where I was a creative director for about a decade working on fun amazing commercial projects for Brands like Xbox and bands like Coldplay and then I ventured off I got pulled into the future a few years later back in 2016 and then you know rode that Journey for a while and got my training wheels learning about content learning about teaching unpacking the things that I had inside realizing that there was a lot of value uh inside of me that I could share with others so thank you for that and you know did that for a couple of years and for the past 3 years I've kind of set my sale I I left the future just let the The Winds of curiosity kind of guide me to where uh I am now and these days I I work on content still on my own YouTube channel but I've also ventured into uh industrial product design so I've got into producing products in spaces that I'm very passionate about like desk accessories and keyboards and things of that nature yeah we'll get into that so before we go to the Future we're going to go to the Past Matthew and I have a long history together of working together and being inspired by one another and one of the beautiful things that you get to do as a boss is be around really great people people who have beautiful intentions and have a passion for doing the very best work and we can ride that wave together so Matthew comes to me one day I guess this is now part of the future and he goes Chris I have to talk to you and anybody ever has that meeting with me like I need to talk to you I already know what's coming and I can tell the hesitation and all the kinds of things I can only imagine whatever dialogue's been going on in your mind before and after but I try to recognize the moment and say hey whatever you're going to say it's going to be okay and there can be no such thing as bad news because I feel like as as a boss and as a friend we've both grown so much together and I'm so appreciative of the things you've already done at this point and every day forward it's just like icing on a very fickly iced cake so it didn't really matter right right and then you said hey um tell me what you said and then I'll quickly respond to to like what I said to you right afterwards do you remember roughly roughly was something along the lines of appreciate everything we've done I've I've enjoyed everything to this point I feel like I'm in my creative Prime and things are growing behind the scenes and I feel like I owe it to myself to see what happens if I invest all of that energy on my own journey and I don't know if I said literally this is how I want to remember so if it's not don't correct me and I said something to you like I'm so happy for you I've been wondering when you're going to have this conversation with me and I wish you nothing but the best my biggest question was why so long like why did it take you so long because one of the things that I feel like is if I do my job and and in some ways and I'm not trying to say this in a pejorative way part of running a company is like being a parent and I want the best for the people that come in and out of our company Sometimes the best means they need to be somewhere else and that often times means I have to ask them to leave and they wind up doing great things other times the teams that I need to explore my own thing and or explore this other opportunity I never begrudge them especially when they've given so much already so I just knew that there was a lot of emotion and energy around this and I just said hey man I'm just really happy for you and people always wondered like what happened to Matthew you ever I just had a sandwich or taco with him the other day you guys relax we just went to see a car show or something you know there's no animus as far as I know right but I can't say that's always the case because sometimes people leave or are asked to leave and I don't ever talk to them again and it makes me wonder a lot about was there more that was in the relationship than I thought or was there less cuz I thought we work together and all things come to an end but unless I betrayed you or was disloyal or did something that you thought was wrong and unethical why shouldn't we have a relationship but often times that's not the case at all so I I just want to just double dip on the whole I'm very appreciative of the relationship we've had that's going on over two decades from us just meeting each other as at our center student instructor and then continue on working together and growing together and doing content and just evolving and again I'm just super happy for you now when you left you started your own YouTube channel you you basically took all the things that you learned about what it is that you wanted to say in the world and you did it without compromise in your own way and you started making content and you had phenomenal success out of the gate let's before we get into the all the new stuff you're doing take me through like what you're doing what the expectation was and what how the internet responded to that type of content yeah so I started my YouTube channel in early 2019 and at that point i' already been working at the future for 3 years so I got my training wheels there I got to kind of experiment and learn all about YouTube because I didn't really have much experience in it prior to that obviously before that it's spent all that time in commercial directing 30 second uh TV commercial so there's a lot of stuff that um helped me when I started when I started my YouTube channel I was just doing it purely out of Joy I was like okay I do this for work in my 99 to5 what would I want to do on my 5 to9 on the weekends and at the time I was uh remodeling one of our bedrooms at the at home to be a home office for me and I did a lot of research and and found some interesting content around that idea of kind of sharing your remodel your your desk setup but there wasn't any that kind of fit in the style or voice that I like so I was like you know what maybe I should do this cuz I'm I'm already going to do all this stuff I'm kind of passionate and very oddly interested in this so I'm going to document this whole process so I kind of rebuilt my home office documented the whole thing and created a YouTube video around that and when it came out it did pretty good out of the gate and then a week later I think it was like a 100,000 views and I was perplexed I did not expect that at all cuz I felt it was so much of a personal thing where it's like okay this is my space this is my little fun DIY project um and it kind of feels like you know when people make vacation videos or fun videos for their family it kind of felt like that a little bit so I had zero expectation other than I just want to show off this fun project that I'm doing on the weekends and then probably 3 months later it might have reached a million views already and I was I was so surprised especially because all of the stuff we were doing at the future I felt was so high value high level is like oh my gosh I would pay for this information and the viewership there was nowhere near what I was getting on this one single video so I was just so perplexed and so surprised and so I was like okay people like this stuff this is interesting I I have a voice here that people are interested in I want to see is this a fluke or can I do it again so I produced a few more videos kind of around the same topic they all hit few million views each video and I was like okay this is this is wild there's there's something here it's not just a fluke like there's a formula here I kind of struck a nerve and I kind of figured something out so I kept doing that in the background and doing more and more videos kind of just taking a half step out each video to explore how big my voice and perspective how many kind of topics it can cover under the realm of what it is that I do and over the years what I've discovered is it kind of felt random when I was doing it but when I look back it kind of makes sense because all of it was me just sharing aspects of my life things that I like to design and build and make uh through the lens of a designer and because of all the things that I've done at the future learning how to unpack things and teach that to people in ways that are digestible and entertaining I felt like that came through with the content that I was making as well okay the the video that you dropped that Skyrocket it I think surpassed your expectations but it it completely blew me away I was in awe because for us a good video would get like 30,000 views and I always believe what we make is kind of boring it's educational content unless you're running a business and you're trying to sort out one problem that we're talking about no one else would be watching it so it's always to my surprised that many many years later we have a couple million subs and it's like I don't even know who's here why are you guys here but when I watch your video it takes all these like little boxes DIY Home Improvement ASMR meticulous planning and design so there's an aesthetic part so you could have tuned in for one and got a Bonus four and it was all wrapped in this really and I know a lot about how you work it's there's meticulous planning and researching and designing and working out the problem nothing is by chance and every frame every color grade every shot and the lighting is very meticulous from I think many years of you directing commercials and music videos for other people we have to put that insane amount of planning into it because it's very expensive to make a mistake but probably more so it's professionally very embarrassing to say like yeah I kind of effed up on that and that's the best I could do right right you took that same kind of discipline attention to detail into making videos for YouTube and this Banger comes out and of course we're all sitting there thinking did he crack The Da Vinci Code is he going to be able to do this again next video drops Banger and Banger after Banger it's like this ain't luck this is deliberate meticulous planning we just finished an episode with Adrien he goes through crazy amounts of planning too must be a Filipino thing because Matthew's Filipino too that's why we can't do it you're screwed and I'm screwed I don't have enough of that Jean right so when we see a video that's 10 minutes long based on some general rules of thumb based on how you do things how much work in man hours is going into it before you even get to see this 10-minute video uh yeah usually it depends but I would say it's at least a month probably three months oh my God but then some of the latest videos probably the last three or four videos have been all about uh product design yeah and that's in I'm documenting while I'm making and Manufacturing Goods it takes you know six months to a year so I documenting for a whole year and then and then it comes out so that's how long it takes okay so when you see really high high level production you don't understand that when you're watching it and you're just in awe you feel it but you don't understand it cuz quite literally when when I watch the your building the keyboard series and some of your industrial design stuff I kind of know what it takes you're going through rounds and okay now we're on a conference call I'm like oh my God we're not even manufacturing yet and they're just giving notes and I'm doing some more research I'm building more prototypes I'm solving a new problem and the process takes so long I'm just curious at some point when you get into these projects that are 3 six months plus do you ever get the feeling like I'm losing Steam and interest in this or I'm just a gung-ho about doing doing it surprisingly I don't lose Steam and interest because with the nature of a lot of product design it's a lot of hurry and weight where you do these Sprints of work where you're hyperfocused on something like all right I got to finish this iteration of this prototype and then it's off to manufacturing to make the Prototype and you might have to wait a couple of weeks before you get it back so what I do in those lull times is I have another project to work on I see so I have a good handful of projects that I'm just juggling very slowly to be able to pause on one and then resume another and then pause on that so they're kind of in a little bit of a relay race and they're just going around the track and luckily that just keeps me stimulated and it's always fun with those types of projects where I did a lot of work and I kind of forget about it for a couple of weeks and then all of a sudden I receive a package and I have a physical prototype of something and then I get re exting yeah it's exciting it's like oh I get to see it and I get to touch it and now it's like how can I make this better before we launch this how can I make this better and then we do another Sprint and then maybe more prototyping or so it it keeps things very engaging for me MH um especially because there's something about having a tangible physical product versus you know all the digital stuff we do on screen there's something very rewarding and I don't know you start to build a lot of energy and excitement towards this thing that you're going going to launch I won't talk to you so much more about the process and the direction in which you're going as a content creator and also the things that make you super excited but I want to take you back a little bit I want to talk about a little bit about this idea that you had shared with us before which was I wanted to make sure if I could sustain the living I was making before as a salaried employee and that's a pretty reasonable thing you make money and you think I just want to maintain a certain lifestyle I don't want to go backwards I can if necessary but it starts with the question like I wonder if I can and then you you leave and you take off tell us what happens then yeah I think that first year I was making four times my salary in in Revenue so that was very exciting the following year is not as much but I think it's because I had the overlap of the job everything at the future and then all of this kind of momentum coming out of it over the past two years I would say things have slowed down but in a good way because I have been exploring so much in industrial design things that I have never done before where I'm not producing a video that often maybe every 3 months I'm producing a video and I think when I first had uh left the future I was doing at least one every month and each one had a sponsor and a lot of that just generated a lot of Revenue and income for me now because my time is spent behind the scenes working and documenting stuff not releasing content um it's a it's a lot slower but I kind of like it I I really appreciate it because I'm I don't feel stressed to constantly feed this content machine it's like it comes out when it comes out and luckily I'm still able to maintain my lifestyle healthy good uh lifestyle and feel very engaged and focused in the work that I do where I could give it my attention and not feel like I'm spread thin let me clarify for the audience in case they just missed it because Matthew almost glided right over it which was he was hoping to make the same amount of money and then shortly thereafter leaving and doing his own thing taking on all the risk and Peter Ducker said this in business uh all profit comes from risk the more risk you take the more profit you have to make that's a potential not a guarantee so you go out instead of making 1X of what he used to make and I know what he was paid so now I know how much money he made I won't say he made not two times not three times but four times as much money in the first year so in theory he could have taken off the next three years and been all right yeah cuz you were used to making that kind of money right yeah that means you can Coast so you bought yourself a lot of freedom and I think that's the real meaning of wealth not that you have a lot of money but the freedom to do what you want and now you can say I can earn as much as I want but I can do it on my own timetable but here's the big question I have for you being almost kind of engineered from the jump to be a commercial artist you and I we went to our Center a place that is really well known for creating practical skilled designers who can enter into the field and make a decent living so we're hardwired to work for other people to fulfill the creative brief so what happens to you what happens to your psychology when there is no creative brief there is no master everything has to come from inside how does that feel for you because that's a very very radical change from somebody's going to tell me like there's a project to do and I'm going to work on it versus no more projects what am I going to do how how was that transition like for you that was very refreshing I was getting tastes of it along the way right because I was doing this stuff nights and weekends anyway while I was working at the future but even at the future I was experiencing some of that a little taste of Entrepreneurship a little taste of okay you gave me a lot of room at the future to just do whatever I want pretty much you're like okay make whatever you want under this umbrella and just try stuff so that was very helpful for me to realize okay I have a voice even though I'm trying all kinds of different things and I was able to learn I'm a very risk averse person I think I told you that when I had quit and so it felt very calculated to the point where I have confidence that if I leave you know things will be good for a while you know and ever since I left I feel that same confidence where I'm just existing in the world day to day and I kind of look around and all I see are possibilities I don't luckily I don't have to worry about the money I don't have to worry about necessarily when the next video is coming out like I do have timetables and stuff like that but I'm not stressed about it's not occupying my mind where with a client you know there's weekly deadlines you know bi-weekly deadlines things that come up all the time so that change of pace was actually very refreshing for me because I just create my own deadlines to a degree and luckily things are still happening so I'm I don't know I'm very grateful I'm very blessed that the universe is I feel is like whispering in one ear and I'm able to kind of flow with with all of that currently so what you're saying is had I kept a tigh of rope on you all gave you strict deadlines and kept being the Taskmaster you might not have tasted the freedom that's right and then you're like I'm not leaving I don't know what that's like but it's a smooth transition honey I screwed up I told the mess up the company by giv everybody so much Freedom that's the thing that we talk about though I remember this and you've you've been pretty instrumental and shaping a couple like big seismic changes within my own thinking the first time I can't recall all of them but I remember one right now because you're like Chris what if we just focus on doing just the Future No More blind service work and it took me a beat I'm like okay let's try cuz we were doing the math and the logic when we let's say book a $600,000 job you're not keeping 600,000 you might keep 10050 but then the rest of the year you're just burning that 150 down to nothing because we're not doing another project right you're just keep keeping the machine going at at a point you do kind of get caught up in in just the cycle of sustaining yourself so your framing of the question meant if we launched an educational product because isn't super expensive for us to produce we could make 100,000 or 200,000 but almost all of it would be profit and the the good news is it's IP it can it hopefully is a perennial seller and it can generate long-term Revenue but it's building a library of stuff and that kind of surprisingly just messed my brain up in the very best ways and so I do appreciate you saying things like that and so you kind of made me sense this other idea but I want to get back to the thing that we were just talking about which was when we worked for someone agencies there's always a master there's always a client and then we started doing content for ourselves which was radically different I remember slowly inviting each and every one of you into the the the circle whatever that is to taste the freedom yeah what we realize is when you open the gate the chickens run they don't want to go back in the cage and I'd ask you guys despite investing almost all of your Creative Energy up until this point in developing a professional re to do work for clients mhm to the man to the human you're like we don't want to go back MH even if it means this is weird undefined and it's not as sexy there aren't big Brands attached to it we just don't want to go back take me through a little bit of your thinking then when when that door was open and how it felt because not only you but Greg and others were like yes we don't want to go back yeah I think for me again I I just had full full confidence a lot of that um is owed to you and and how you've helped me see possibility and kind of focus on the abundance mindset rather than scarcity right so the whole time I always felt like we could always go back to that so I felt like we had a safety net so I didn't fear trying new things it was more exciting because you know that fear and excitement feels the same in your body right how you look at it determines which when you're actually feeling and for me it was mostly excitement it's like this is New Territory what will this reveal for us so I think about it almost like you're going into a a dark room no lights are on and you have a flashlight and you're flashing the light around and slowly but surely you know you're starting to reveal parts of the room you're starting to see and you're starting to understand what it is that's there you might walk in and you might bump your knee on something and that might hurt but you know that it's there right and the more you spend in this dark room the more you kind of feel where's the edges how big this room is what's actually in here and it felt like so much possibility at the time when we were starting the future when we were building the future because there was so many possibilities where we could take it what does the content look like what are we going to focus on what format does it take right that's one Avenue what products does that lead to what products can we develop what are things that we do every day that we might take for granted but could be valuable to somebody else that could be a source of content or product and then what about events we have all this physical space how do we use it how do we engage the community so all of these things were brand new versus all of the advertising work that we had been doing to that point it was I knew it like the back of my hand I knew what was going to happen in every single project it it was just a well oiled machine right and even though the work was fun and beautiful it just felt like doing the same thing over and over and it was nice to try something new okay let's take us now kind of more into present day when you're when you've got your own channel out you're exploring brain deals is how you make money and the videos get so many views that it's exposing it to so many folks that's great then what was the thing that led you to the first moment when you're like I I think I want to develop some products how did that come about and why did you decide to go down that path I owe a lot of My Success to people seeing things in me that I couldn't see for myself I think you saw that in me a lot of my instructors from the past as I was going through education always kind of pushed me beyond my capacity or what I felt um comfortable in and as soon as I had quit my job at the future which I made a public announcement about that you know all kinds of conversations started happening a lot of them were job offers and I'm like thank you I appreciate that um but not right now like I I owe it to myself to just have downtime do a little bit of a sabatical and some soul searching and see what happens but one of those conversations that came along was my friends over at grovemade they make desk accessories and they're based out of Portland they had been sponsoring and helping out my channel in various ways over the years so i' had been developing a relationship with them for about three years at that point and they asked me hey would you like to develop a product with us I highly respected them at that point I love the goods that they make and because they were inviting me into this process I was very excited to join just like I was explaining right before new things excite me new problems even though it can be a little scary I don't see it that way I see it as as pure possibilities I don't know what it's going to lead me to but I'm open to take the ride and see where it takes me so that was a two-year Journey with them of doing a little kind of Investigation doing a little bit of just exploring what products it could be they visited me a couple times I visited them and over a two-year process we developed a product that we called the not taking kit which is just a way to help you capture store and recall your ideas and that was an amazing process to me because I got to watch Masters at work something that I felt like I knew nothing about was always curious about uh cuz I love learning about how things are made and I was just a sponge in that situation I gave what I could as a designer as my perspective and I think one of the reasons why they worked with me is obviously because of my content and they like the perspective that I had and they felt there was alignment there and even though I didn't have any experience in industrial design or designing products they valued my opinion and perspective so they invited me into that process and that's really what set me off um down this path there was a lot of obvious synergies between the kinds of DIY Home Improvement aesthetic things that you're doing that would make a lot of sense for Grove May to kind of sponsor you and is being fans to the channel this is the power of I guess inbound content content marketing where you attract the kinds of people who have shared ideas or philosophies as you you're not actively chasing them down ultimately instead of chasing you're choosing who you want to work with and I know you're very particular as to who you align with and kinds of things that you'll talk about and never do I get this feeling from you like I'm going to take this because it's a cash grab in fact you're quite the opposite like I'm not sure that's a good fit for me and I think making smart decisions like that have allowed you to grow in the way that you want to line yourself with a partners that actually contribute to your own growth and for them seeing that within you to say hey and I can see it from their point of view man we got this guy who can make Banger videos so whatever he touches it's going to get a lot of eyeballs on the next Evolution to that relationship is why don't you develop a product and then we already know you're going to be able to tell a great story behind it and get lots of views so there's a natural built-in marketing device that's feels very organic to who you are I think if I'm not mistaken you guys want to visit me at the studio we're still in pandemic I think we're all masked up and we're talking about things and you're doing some user research right is same same people yeah same okay so even then you were still working despite certain limitations and figuring it out MH okay so one one Journey one door opens you go through that another door opens another door opens and yeah I don't know if you ever get this feeling cuz I do do you ever get the moment where you're like is this a dream I'm living because how is this happening for me right now and if you do can you tell me a little bit about that experience or if you don't that's okay too yeah no I I feel that way every day every time I pause and think about what it is I'm doing you know I I I just reflect on how grateful I am to be in this position to be doing the things that I'm doing to have the creativity the body and everything that I'm doing like my health wealth and luckily just being able to express my creativity in these forms and fashion I'm grateful for that every day and I I reflect on that often so I do feel like it's a dream it doesn't make sense sometimes I I I look back it's like how did this happen how did this even happen but then I tried to rationalize I was like actually it makes perfect sense and it's this weird kind of dichotomy of going back and forth of I'm so grateful do I even deserve this and it's like of course it makes perfect sense you you did all this hard work and all of these dots connect there you are let's take a quick break for something really exciting this video is brought to you by us the future future accelerator is all the best parts of coursework community and coaching all brought together for a single purpose to help you make a living doing what you love the accelerator membership includes a curriculum road map with over 100 video lessons and resources a supportive community and weekly coaching calls to give you support when you need most you'll also get access to personalized feedback on your assignments accelerator is specifically designed for creatives by creatives so if you're ready to build a magnetic portfolio learn how to bring in leads consistently and reliably run a profitable healthy happy creative business we can help click the link in the description below or head to the future.com accelerator see you there okay back to you Chris Matthew I agree with you we can simultaneously live in this dual state where we're like what the fud is happening but this is the residual of all this planning and preparation and so people tell me like hard work and preparation increases the surface area of luck to happen and it's like there's more opportunities for luck to hit you've done all that work now I want to get to the super exciting part you are developing a line of keyboards and other accessories so the the accessories getting more complicated now it used to be things with almost no moving parts and now there's lots of moving parts and I remember I was chatting with with one of our friends and colleagues Ben Burns who I think introduced you to Mechanical keyboards yeah that's right yeah like I have 100 of like you're insane you guys have a sickness both of you and then I'm looking at him like I appreciate the video I appreciate all the clicky Clocky sounds and my son is super addicted to these things well you guys are crazy I just need a keyboard that works and then I find that there's a launch happening then I'm asleep not literally but and I check in I'm like hey I'm ready to buy it it's sold out like seconds it felt like right it was gone in a minute it was like what so I messaged you and you're like hey Chris I'll build one for you cuz what I don't even realize is you don't just order you got to build it yeah but that's when I tapped out I'm like dude I cannot solder it's too much I like this I can appreciate it but I can't and you did me one one further where like let's talk it through I'll build it for you and then I get this really beautiful and it weighs a ton and you know there's a thing about weight and quality the sense that the heavy things are built better mhm and I'm using it at the first I'm like I miss my full size keyboard and everything I'm using it I'm using it it's like it it is highly addictive and soothing to use a mechanical keyboard that's been tuned to exactly what you need and want MH and now I feel like I'm going to go down a dark Rabbit Hole or something which you I think was introduced to and fell down yourself right yeah yeah so for people who don't understand this why the heck would anyone want a keyboard that's hard to get that takes hours to build it may not even go right because you're like hey you got to test everything right why would people want that it describe that feeling to them that Joy yeah I I think a lot of folks like to Tinker and sometimes that's building and restoring an old car sometimes that's doing a DIY project sometimes that's working on a puzzle while you're drinking wine at night to Wine down and to me keyboards are very similar to that I got introduced to keyboards about three years ago maybe four years now and I had built out everything in my home that I could possibly bu be building and I ran out of stuff to Tinker with and so this had just come at the right time I was like okay mechanical keyboards give me the parts I'll kind of figure this out so it's intimidating at first because it can be overwhelming like anything new but once you build one keyboard you get to experience it and you get to break it down and modify it and build it again and then build it again and then maybe you buy a second keyboard and build it a different way and you'll realize that depending on the design of it the engineering of it what switches you use what key caps um you can change the aesthetic sound and feel so it just there's a lot of possibilities that you can explore within a custom mechanical keyboard that makes it very fun if you like to Tinker and then the nice thing is you get to use it as a device for your computer and I do a lot of writing I do a lot of stuff on the computer so it's it's a joy to type on for me so it's it's fun to to build these and then get to use them after I think industrial designers the really on obsess over every little nuance and detail from the reaction time to the noise it makes how squishy it is just the amount of resistance and you describe certain things to me that I just couldn't get until you start to use it often times when you type on a a Mac keyboard because of the scissor spring or whatever they've got in there I'm never sure like did I hit it and I have to stop and check no I hit it and you keep going but with the mechanical keyboard the one that you set up for me it has a resistance point so it can be it's harder to accidentally hit it so you can hover over it but then you really have to push it and you feel the resistance and there's a little bit of change and when you told me about it when I went to use it I'm like oh I now know what you're talking about so there's something very gratifying knowing very well I did what I did and I don't have to worry that I didn't do what I did and I know that sounds stupid until go get yourself mechanical keyboard it's like crap guys it really is it's it's a fun tactile experience and then there's just a nice kind of kinetic energy that you connect with when you're you're typing and I don't know it does get very addicting so tell me a little bit if you can about the business structure of this because people are listening cool cool I got a channel doing brand collabs I'm having products designed so correct me if I'm wrong it's your concept you designed it you spec everything they build it and then do you get a piece of it how does that work how do you make money from doing something like this yeah so I've worked with a lot of different partners um over the past three years and they all kind of break down down a little differently but usually what happens is I enter in as a designer and my role as a designer sometimes is very minimal where aspects of the product are already figured it out are figured out and I'm there selecting very particular you know materials or colorways and then other times like the keyboard The Encore keyboard they just give me cart blanch we we kind of do a kickoff call and they say here's what we would like it to be and I say yep I'm align there and then they're they just say go and then so I design it from scratch I kind of pass it back and forth with them cuz I'm not an expert in building any of that stuff I had to learn CAD modeling had to learn a lot of these things along the way and luckily my partners at mode were just very gracious in teaching me things that um I didn't know before so where there's moments of a lot more authorship or I'm taking a lot more risk that's where I would get more of the pie so with a lot of these products that I've worked on I usually get a royalty percentage as as the designer of the product so as long as we're selling the product I'll get a cut of that thing and um yeah it it's nice because some of these products I'll build once and then we'll do multiple runs of those things so then I just keep getting the uh royalty payments for those so that's that's nice and I've learned a lot in the past three years and again I've just been side by side with a lot of these experts now I'm kind of moving into the space where I'm wondering could I just do it on all on my own do I need the partner and can I just take the whole pie and so I'm doing a lot of research these days looking for manufacturers talking to different folks and I'm starting to see the dots that I can connect and I'm starting to get that excitement again even though it was very intimidating at first the reason why I partnered with a lot of these um Brands to manufacture these things for me is because I knew nothing and I just wanted to be the sponge in that situation I just want to learn now I have a lot more confidence where I feel like I know what it takes I've done this a couple times with the help of experts can I do this myself and I I do have that confidence and I'm feeling that trajectory is kind of pulling me in that direction now so you're increasing the amount of risk that you're willing to take on and kind of learning as you're going to kind of figure out what the pitfalls are yeah I think I I encourage you to do it there is one potential Pitfall which is this beautiful lifestyle business you've been able to build for yourself will most likely be going away yes cuz the minute you start taking on an inventory you're like now putting money into it there's fulfillment customer service so now it's a business and you're going to have to I I I because I know you as this ethical person you can't just ship it and abandon it if it doesn't feel like right anymore yes you kind of stuck with it for a while yes so I'm very aware of that and the thing that I've been so grateful for and been trying to maintain for these past three years is that lifestyle yeah where if tomorrow I don't want to work on any video content it's like I'll just pick up and go and do something else and I value that a lot um so I I've been meditating on this as I inch closer to thinking about this and I'm still looking for ways where I might be able to leverage somebody else's resources to be able to handle the things that I might not excel at or want to do so I could use something like a 3pl to do my fulfillment for me um what is the 3pl a third party Logistics oh look everybody knows that about me yeah that's like warehous like Amon has like they will do all the Fulfillment for you so I'm looking at options like that I'm just trying to understand the playing field I'm trying to understand where it's going to hurt and I'm warming up to the idea of taking on a little bit more of that pain the things that I I don't necessarily love doing but I could see me getting involved and actually liking it so I'm I'm warming up to it I'm not fully there yet but like I said earlier I'm risk averse and I'm just taking baby steps towards uh this direction well if the past is any indicator of the future I think you're going to do well and you'll do all the research the design and you'll figure it out I have a couple more questions for you one thing I wanted to ask you was what's the one thing that really surprised you about this whole journey and going on your own the biggest thing that surprised me when I left the future and went on my own was what I was able to do after and all the things I did after after were things I hadn't done before so those were that was the most exciting thing none of these things were planned like I barely know what I'm doing next week uh I don't have long-term Vision like I don't have a five-year plan or anything like that I kind of just listen to my intuition and my gut and I really let my curiosity and passion just pull me as hard as possible so these Curiosities when when I left the future my goal at the time was to become a better Storyteller in whatever form that would be and the universe kind of answered and our friends over at web flow had called me up and they said hey do you want to direct a documentary for us and I said you know I'm not a documentary director but they saw that possibility in me and I was like okay this is new it aligns with my goal which is just to become a better Storyteller let me try it in this format and we worked on a multi-part series um called uh generation no code and that was fun that was incredible it was at the time we were just inching out of the pandemic got to travel I got to meet a lot of designers John Saunders who you know great guy great people and so that was a great um project for me the thing with grade getting into product design things I had never anticipated for myself I never saw myself doing these things yet there I was and now something that I'm doing now with the keyboards is something that turned that started as a pandemic hobby uh that I got really passionate about turned into products and things that I'm making Expressions that I wanted to see in the world um that I didn't see before so it's just amazing what happens when you allow possibility to take over and you have confidence in the things that you're doing there's one thing I wanted to highlight real quickly you can respond to it or not and then I'll get to another question but I think your approach to making content is a little bit more akin to how Steven Barlett the diary CEO person does it there's a lot of planning there a lot of research there's a lot of AB testing for titles and thumbnails before anything is made and I admire the amount of energy and focus and intentionality you put behind your things because I can see it every time you drop a video there's Instagram posts there's reels and cutd downs trailers and all this stuff to drive that first a drop number and really pushing hard we're a volume kind of operation I have an idea we just make it there's not a lot of planning or thinking things go out we adjust on the Fly that's kind of our style but I can also really really appreciate them amount of focus energy put on it cuz if a video doesn't drop for like once a month or every other month yeah it's got to work otherwise you're like shoot yeah you're you're going to wait another three months before you see the next thing for me right yeah and so I just wanted to appreciate and acknowledge that so some of you are like yeah I'll just start out tomorrow I'll have a multi-million viewed video you might but you got to put in work I think you could get lucky yeah you know each video I treat like a lunch yeah so with working in the commercial uh advertising space we spend many months working on the launch usually of a product to announce something working at the future working with Ben and the folks there when we would launch a new digital product it was the same thing right we have a hard date we have to have all these assets and all these points that are all pushing down this final different messaging point so that there's a lot of excitement when it actually drops and I think about creating videos in the same way it is a launch for me it's a it's a big thing it's not just like a casual like I'm uploading today it's like no this is a launch so I I treat it as such okay this one's going to be a little harder so take as much time you need to reflect on this I'd love for you to reflect on this stored career that you have working with some of the biggest brands in the world and I think it was a beautiful way to kind of end one chapter to finish a video for Coldplay to do this amazing video for for Xbox and then now content Now product brand deals what are the three biggest lessons that you've learned that you wish you could tell Matt at 21 they could be on any it could be about relationships health wealth it could be about taking the shot earlier or believing yourself or grabbing the lion or whatever it is you want to say I'd love for you to look at the camera and say here are three of the lessons that I wish I knew when I was 21 and just this is your Ted x moment I wouldn't change who I was at 21 I wouldn't change my trajectory at all um but I will share the three lessons that I've learned I think the first lesson that I've ve learned on this journey of exploring possibility for the past few years is lean into your curiosity I think most people are surface level curious or they might do a Google search worth of something or try something on a surface level but never go deep enough where they're finding interesting novel perspectives or viewpoints or information that most of the world doesn't have so when you lean into your curiosity you discover all of these beautiful things that feels like you're treasure hunting a lot of the projects that I've been on um that Curiosity has unpacked so many bits of Novel information for me that get me excited that get me creating interesting features or aspects to the products or projects that I'm working on so if you lean into your curiosity it's you'll be finding treasure all day and when you find that treasure then you get to share that with the world and that is a big filter that I use when I create my content which is if it was novel and new to me that means it's going to be interesting for somebody else so that's those are the things that I tend to include in my video things that don't have that I tend to edit out two other things I don't know let me give me a second for that one if you want to respond maybe that'll give me a time to sure I I think the recap on the Leaning into your curiosity is it's like what we do is we we talk about the t- scale where you can know a little bit about a lot of things or a lot about one thing and it's the Bruce Lee quote I don't feel the person is practice 10,000 kicks one time but I do fear the man who's practiced one kick 10,000 times that repetition breeds skill skill breeds confidence and then eventually you start know those patterns and you can innovate from that so follow that and take it to the nth degree I always say reach the Terminus of what it is that you want to get into and that's what I do and then I'm bored then move on to the next thing move on to the next thing to that point moving on to the next thing the second thing that I would give advice or something that I've learned over these past few years is that everything adds up so the thing that you're doing right now the thing that you're exploring right now sometimes people project too much in the future and think am I wasting my time am I doing this and then it's not going to result in any money or it's not going to result in a career I never look at stuff like that I just keep going and some sometimes things don't click right away but it might take a few years where all of a sudden the dots connect and I've experienced that a lot in the the past few years where there's ideas for things that I've had things that I've noticed for products but I never had the skills for it fast forward a few years later once I've learned uh more skills now these perspectives and things that I've learned features that I've seen elsewhere that I've wanted to infuse I can express that because I now have the tools and dots to connect that I previously didn't have before so I think everything adds up so don't stress out too much about what's going to happen in the future I think just focusing and doing the thing that you're doing right now very well and earnestly is is key excellent you got number three yeah number three if someone else can do it so can you that was the biggest lesson that I felt like I'd learned and what gave me full confidence to leave the future I saw Chris build the future from nothing from zero subscribers up to over 2 million now and it was there's something to say where if there's somebody in your proximity or somebody that you can relate to or see and you see them build up something all of a sudden that possibility becomes very clear in your mind and you start to ask yourself if they can do it why not me and I think seeing people like you and seeing other like different content creators mature and develop and explore different routes over years it gave me a lot of possibilities in my mind like I'm actually pretty well equipped to tackle these things if they can do it why not me right and so that was a very big lesson so um it's one of the things that I'm very appreciative of um kind of growing up and maturing so one of the reasons why I do the content that I do is so that I could show people the possibilities if I can figure it out from zero you could do it as well and that's why I share the things that I do two personal questions real quick before we get out of here is what's going on with your B boy stuff that's the first one yeah so I'm still I'm still dancing I've been dancing since 1999 so I've been dancing for a long time and it's been a really big part of my life because I discovered dancing at a time where I was you know the scrawny 90b kid didn't have a lot of confidence but that gave me a certain perspective and attitude there's there's a whole kind of culture and lifestyle that you have to be kind of aggressive engaged and and expressive that just helped me slowly over time build that confidence so that was a second life that I kind of straddled for a long time and interestingly enough over my career I've hired and worked with a lot of people that I've met through the dance scene and a lot of those folks are doing interesting things themselves so dance is really important to me and I still get to practice probably once a week with with friends are you doing the dance competitions with the crew I I am it hurts it hurts it's not the same time Catches Us catches everybody no one's immune to that yeah but I'm not trying to compete I'm just trying to be creative all I care about is it's it's a form of expression for me so I take off all the pressure of competition and I just I just want to dance hot take you ready I don't want you to overthink this one we can edit this out if it doesn't work out um the Australian be be girl who did her thing was she a troll or was she being super creative or some something in between I think there's a lot of room for what she did at the Olympics if I think most people just saw that and made a headline judgment about dancing in its current state if that's all you focus on you missed out on all the beautiful performances that happened during the Olympics and if you think that what she was doing was uh trolling then you obviously have not spent any time in b boy culture and you don't understand and up breaking culture and all the room there is for creativity so she she took a big gamble took her shot and people are misinterpreting it I think she did her thing yeah I I think she just did her thing and I don't I mean that's there there's a lot of debate whether the breaking should even be in the Olympics right but it's a sport if you just look at the definition of the sport right people competing for entertainment I think that's like the most basic version of a sport but there's so many things like that but with that breaking is part art and then part sport yeah and for me I'm most interested in the creative aspects maybe it's just because of where I'm at in my life and the competitive stuff that's cool but it it doesn't interest me as much I've also witnessed you go through some Transformations not just in creativity design and the expressions of what you can do but physically as a student you were physically a certain way and then I remember there was a summer somewhere with you and Chris O'Neal and like everybody's trying to get into shape and it was like a six-pack competition and you got ripped yeah you got ripped where are you on your journey to physical fitness and all the crazy things you could do the flag pole you could do I don't know what what do you call that thing when you're just floating in air with your hands on the on the bar yeah that's a flag is that a flag like this way not not sideways oh a front lever front lever I didn't know the name he's showing me how to do the front lever I'm like I can't do the front lever can you still do the front lever I don't know I haven't tried a long time but I work I still work out pretty regularly it just it's important to me to I think be healthy because if my body is healthy and my mind is healthy then everything just works together and if one thing is lagging in your life then it will hurt and kind of become toxic to the other things so yeah so I'm going just say this ladies he's happily married but underneath that he's a specimen those are words that Mo would use he's a specimen we won't ask him to take off his shirt right now but we're good we'll just assume it's not that kind of show that's a different show that's after hours everybody subscribe to the channel to get that deep cut I'm just kidding it's not going to happen you don't have to subscribe to anything Matthew if people want to keep in touch with you I know the the the Instagram account mod musings right is there other accounts we can follow or yeah where do direct us to where we need to go yeah so you can find me on all socials at Matthew and Cena Matthew and ca.com and then my Design Studios modus.com and mod. musings on Instagram wonderful I just feel like we've had this conversation already because I just know you so well but I kind of looked in the records like we haven't had this conversation so it's not recorded no it's never been recorded just in my mind this podcast has happened many times before I'm glad that we got to do it now so now you guys know Matthew is alive well he's not buried in the desert that's right and he's got this whole thriving other career and Arc and I can't wait to see what the next five years holds for for him and I want to say this in closing the future's bright the future is expanding and the future's in really good hands with people like him [Music]