The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius

'Founder Story' Matt Zeigler, the Ultimate Polymath! Super Connector, Producer, Community Builder & Fellow Podcast Host of "Just Press Record", on Decoding Epsilon Theory & Panoptica for perfect Collaboration!

• Chris Grimes - Facilitator. Coach. Motivational Comedian

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What if the shortest path to better work is learning to be where your feet are? That’s the spark behind our conversation with Matt Zeigler—producer turned financial adviser, community builder, and host of the very excellent "Just Press Record" Podcast —who shows how presence, listening, and thoughtful connections can turn chance into momentum.

We trace Matt’s arc from teenage gigs and studio life to a mid‑career pivot into finance, where he discovered the same skill set applies: translate feelings into form, complexity into clarity, and fear into decisions. When a singer once asked for “more yellow,” he knew what to do. Years later, executives arrive with different words for the same fog—and Matt helps them find the signal by naming the gap between story and reality.

That gap is the heart of Epsilon Theory and Panoptica, where Matt collaborates to decode how narratives shape markets, media, and culture. Think of epsilon as the error term between the map and the terrain—the place where headlines distort, incentives mislead, and human judgment goes sideways. Matt shares how better questions, cleaner language, and subtraction over addition can align plans with reality. It’s strategy as craft: roll off the noise, let the truth breathe.

We also dive into the “three‑body problem” of networks: you, one other person, and both of your audiences. The math stops behaving, and that’s the point. Serendipity compounds when you curate introductions and record the moment, which is exactly what Just Press Record does so well. Along the way we meet his “squirrels” (Premier League football and new music), hear why introverts make strong hosts, and unpack a line that changes lives: “How am I complicit in creating the things I say I don’t want?”

If you value practical wisdom, human‑centred strategy, and stories that actually help, press play. Then subscribe, share this with a friend who loves smart conversations, and leave a review to tell us what you’ll subtract this week to move forward.

Tune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website.

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW wherever you get your Podcasts :)

Thanks for listening!

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to another episode of the Good Listening to Show. Your life and times with me, Chris Grimes. The storytelling show that features the clearing, where all good questions come to get asked, and all good stories come to be told. And where all my guests have two things in common. They're all creative individuals and all with an interesting story to tell. There are some lovely storytelling metaphors, a clearing, a tree, a juicy storytelling exercise called 54321, some alchemy, some gold, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, and a cake. So it's all to play for. So yes, welcome to the Good Listening to Show, your life and times with me, Chris Grimes. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we shall begin. Boom! Welcome, welcome, welcome, thrice welcome. We're in the Good Listening to Show. Stories of Distinction and Genius broadcasting live from the Future Leap Studios in Clifton. I'm Chris Grimes, but most importantly, this is Matt Ziggler, who we've been flirting for many, many months, but here we are. Matt Ziegler, who is written Zygler, could be Ziegler, could be Zygler, Zig Zag Ziggler, the rest of the world zigs, he zags, but actually he's zigging. We're going to find out the derivation of your wonderful name, Matt Ziggler. So welcome to the show, first of all.

SPEAKER_01:

Chris, this is an absolute pleasure. This is very romantic. I'm glad we moved past the flirting phase. Today deeply connected to you in all sorts of internet y ways now.

SPEAKER_00:

Lovely. And talking of all sorts of internety ways, we're in an existential podcasting vibe and space together. You've got your own beautiful podcast that I'm delighted to be. I don't know what it's like yet, but it's called Just Press Record. You were introduced to me by Julia Duffy and her wonderful podcast called People Are Everything. She was passed on by someone called Mark McCartney, who I've not met yet, but he's like you in the ether of existential podcasting space, and it's only a matter of time. We're all coming for each other in a good way, which is great. And I was really thrilled to be connected to you because I think this is going to be a very exciting episode of the Good Listening to show, Stories of Distinction and Genius. The show in which I invite movers, makers, shakers, mavericks, influencers, and also personal heroes into a clearing or serious, happy place of my guests choosing. And I'm very happy to have you here. So how's morale, uh, Matt, first of all, and also tell the world what time of day it is for you, what's your geography, and all that shablang.

SPEAKER_01:

Morale's running high this morning. We're early. We're currently doing battle with a mystery mouse who's appeared in the house. So that's been that's been some excitement. The dogs, the wife, and I have all been like, Did you see it? Oh yeah, yeah. That'll be solved later. But here in northeastern Pennsylvania, so northeastern side of the state, that's east coast of the U.S. It's it's a lovely 10 o'clock in the morning. This is like the best weather of the year right now, so it's 60 degrees outside. We're feeling good. It's a little humid. You want to go out for a walk or record a podcast with a cup of coffee.

SPEAKER_00:

We're not talking a plague of mice, we're talking one very enigmatic mouse.

SPEAKER_01:

Right now, one enigmatic, confused mouse, and yet to be proven that there are brothers, sisters, or offspring involved. But the level of war that will be waged will be determined by how comfortably we repeat.

SPEAKER_00:

You've made me think of a film called Mouse Hunt with Lee Evans, who's a wonderful, now retired, but very early retired, English comedian called Lee Evans. I don't know if you know who I mean. I don't know if I know that one.

SPEAKER_01:

But I I was been thinking all morning of uh both Ratatouille, because why not? But also uh The Mouse and the Motorcycle, which was a beloved book as a childhood, and then the stop motion mouse, like the movie they made of that was endlessly cool to me.

SPEAKER_00:

Lovely. And who knew we were going to start talking about mice? How fantastic. So let's j just blow a bit of happy smoke at you. Uh Mount, uh, sorry, Matt, Mount Ziggler is obviously where you're headed towards, but Matt Ziegler is uh the managing director. And what I love about you is how polymathic you are. You're the managing director of Sundpoint Investments. You're a senior editor at Panoptica, which is a multimedia collaboration with Epsilon Theory. Ew! I don't know anything about the words. So I'm going to look forward to explaining that, monkey. Not mouse, monkey. And you're also the co-owner and host of Excess Returns, a podcast production company and YouTube channel. And you also have a cultish creative brand that also you're going to get on the open road and tell us all about. But what I really like about you is you're a super connector and a shapeshifter. Nearly finished blowing happy smoke at you. And you're all about being a samurai listener, in how I described you. Your superpower is extracting your counterpart's story and marshalling all you can bring to get that stuff and that future done. Boom. We can end there really, because I've blown as much happy smoke at you as possible, but my ego is full. I can't take any more. And if someone doesn't have a reference to what Matt Sigler is all about and they go, Hello, what do you do? What's your favorite way of answering or avoiding that question?

SPEAKER_01:

I like to avoid that question because there's a big distinction between what do you actually do? And I my partner uh Ben Hunt with the Epsilon theory and Panoptica stuff, he's fond of this expression, always asking, Why am I reading this now? And I think about that in every aspect of life. So when somebody asks, what do you do? my brain immediately goes, Why am why are they asking me this right now? And are they actually interested in something that I do?

SPEAKER_00:

In which case And hopefully why am I talking to him now?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I know I am here now. But this is what makes it fun. So if you ask me what I would do, I would say, Oh my god, I do I do something like this. I just love connecting with people one-on-one and then sharing that with other people because most people can't punch out of their own little you know, filter bubble for a minute. And if we just show people what happens when you get out of that filter bubble, hey, the world's not quite as scary as the rest of the media will tell you.

SPEAKER_00:

Punching out of your bubble. Fantastic. Uh so just press record, your own podcast, has an extraordinarily clever conceit to it. So do you want to just explain? And I know I'm I'm I can't wait actually, because it's all about the surprise, isn't it? It's all about the surprise.

SPEAKER_01:

I love, and for years as a connector of people, behind the scenes, I would say, Oh my Chris, you have to meet this friend of mine. And I would introduce people, and sometimes I would join them, sometimes I wouldn't. You know, you take them out for dinner or a drink or something, or you just connect them virtually. And I realized sort of post-pandemic, number one, how much fun that was, but also just not everybody does that. So somebody gave me the idea a little over a year and a half ago. Shout out to Tom Morgan and Jess Boss, the first two people who came on and said, this should be a show. You should call this just press record, getting two people together to talk about something, because then they don't need to have a podcast together. They don't need to be in the same city to meet for a drink or something like that. So the whole idea is two people who have never met that I see a reason I think they should meet. I host and curate the conversation, and I can just say the serendipity on the back end of some of these introductions. There's been almost business deals, there's been speaking engagements, there's been it's just so cool to be able to capture it live and let other people be a fly on the wall with me.

SPEAKER_00:

How wonderful. And of course, the difficulty you face is a bit like herding cats, going back to your pestilence of mice again, getting people's schedules to align is probably worth the pain because once people are there, they're in your space and it's it's a wonderful conceit.

SPEAKER_01:

There's a piece about this, and I know you appreciate this too. The effort that goes into making something happen actually says something to the people you're hosting, guesting, whatever else. When they see that you care enough to make something happen, they take it just a little bit more seriously. And not that that's a trick or a hack or whatever else, but it is the truth that your effort put in is a received and transmitted magic that you should not ignore.

SPEAKER_00:

And I do something similar but different in that the second part of what I call this, it's the good listening to show Stories of Distinction and Genius. Since I've given that second part, I've been more successful because if I ring somebody up and go, I think you're a bit of a genius, can I talk to you? People are sort of going, When can we record? So I'm doing something a little bit similar to that. In in just it's not a conceit, it's just an influencing strategy, but also it does allow me to approach anyone I want, you know, with raising the bar high, to say, hey, how about having a damn good listening to in this context? Talking of which, it's delightful to have you here. If you're watching this show for the first time, where have you been? I've done about 275 of these monkeys, but in a nutshell, this is the who, the what, the, how, the, why you, Matt Ziegler, do what you do. And then crucially, towards the end, there's a delicious point called Show As Your QR code, please, where we're going to find out exactly where we can come and find you to work with you, book your services on the old internet. May we get you on the open road, but just before we do, can you just explain the wonderful derivation of the comedy I had spelling Ziegler Zygler Zygler Ziegler Zigzag Zig Zag Zog? So just talk us through the pain and the joy of being called Matt Ziggler.

SPEAKER_01:

So coming, and it's a very good chance that these people will come up again somewhere in this conversation. My grandma Ziggler, my dad's mom, English teacher, always taught these things. My mom, actually, newspaper editor, teacher other things before you know what she's doing now. And this whole Ziggler thing to English teachers is just torturous because it's like misspellings and mispronunciations, endless frustration.

SPEAKER_00:

So my grandma's I before E except after Z or something.

SPEAKER_01:

That is literally the thing we were taught to say from a young age. My grandmother taught it to my dad, my dad taught it to his wife when she had to go through it, my mom, and then us as children. I have been saying I before e except after Z with a smile, a wink, and nod to people my entire 43 years on earth to help people spell it right. And then on the pronunciation, none have done it better than uh my good friends Amanda and Aaron in kindergarten, who told everybody that Ziggler was like jello jiggler. And I've always used that since the ripe age of Ziggler.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is why and I'm thinking of Zag and Zig and Muppets and things like that now. And may I commend you for your this is a compliment, but you've you've got a real sort of Muppet-like mane of hair now, which has evolved since I got to know you.

SPEAKER_01:

I we were hosting multiple holidays when we not accidentally, but sort of unplannedly purchased a house. We found a house to buy. We were thinking about moving. Yeah. So we're hosting all these holidays in one house, then moving, then all this stuff happened. I missed several haircuts. My lovely wife was like, I like your hair a little bit longer. And I was like, But how long do you like it? And now we are putting that to the test. Spoiler, almost 10 months in. She hasn't gone, please stop yet.

SPEAKER_00:

So no, please keep going. We want to see where it makes to the end of 2026, and just then we'll come back.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll return for a hairstyle update, which you can add your tips to.

SPEAKER_00:

At the end, when there's show is your QR code, please. Your LinkedIn profile is actually much it's lacking in hair, shall we say? It's lacking in hair.

SPEAKER_01:

And I will update the headshot, I promise. I've had several people call me out on this. I'm also very much enjoying my friend Roger Mitchell, if you're watching this, referring me to me as the Jackson Brown of finance every time I'm on a finance show.

SPEAKER_00:

Lovely. And your income hustle is in wealth management, but that's what's extraordinary, because you then break the mold of that in everything else that you're up to polymathically. Anyway, let's find out about you by curating you through the structure and the journey of this show. There's a clearing, a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called 54321. There's some alchemy, some gold, a couple of random squirrels, a golden baton, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, and a cake. So it's all to play for. So let's get you on the open road of that. Any questions before we start that?

SPEAKER_01:

No. Who has questions about something as simple as that giant list of things you just rattled about?

SPEAKER_00:

It's not a memory test. I'll curate you through it. So, first of all, your clearing is your serious happy place. What I love about my construct is that everybody answers this differently. So, where does Matt Ziggler go, which is your clearing, to get clutter-free, inspirational, and able to think? Where is your serious happy place, first of all?

SPEAKER_01:

My serious happy place is less a clearing and more of a closing. And that is to say, like this office, these these walls you see, this is my home office, this is my happy place. My entire life, whether it was the basement in the house I grew up in where all the instruments and all the fun stuff was, or whether that was a practice room when I was uh trying to do music in college or the recording studio where I spent lots of years. I love being reclusive. I love being quiet in my own space where I can be creative with the things. I've got guitars and books and all sorts of stuff around me, the computer and stuff here. I love that focused, quiet, shut the door. It's me working on my curiosity put me somewhere. Now what can my creativity do with that? I live for that feeling.

SPEAKER_00:

We've gone deep into the man cave here. This is fantastic. I love that. Wonderful. So uh do you want to sort of pin a flag, you know, the lovely app, what three words? I'm not trying to find out exactly where you live geographically, but we're in Pennsylvania, aren't we? And this is your current man cave hive.

SPEAKER_01:

I am gonna shout out for the good UK people, the office which you exported from your lovely nation to our lovely nation and onto our shores and into Scranton, Pennsylvania, which is only a few short miles up the road from where I am currently sitting. So shout out to the greater Scranton, Pennsylvania area. My happy place is here in northeastern Pennsylvania.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. And in a parallel universe, were we reciprocating the other way, that would be the equivalent for those listening from America of me living in Reading and close to Slough or Sluff, as we like to call it. And it's as manky as it sounds, Slough. No offense to anyone from Slough, obviously. It's beautiful. Now I'm gonna arrive with a tree in your clearing, and this is a bit waiting for Godot-esque, a bit deliberately existential, and I'm gonna shake your tree to see which storytelling apples fall out. How'd you like these apples? And then uh here all week. And then this is where you're gonna talk about four things that have shaped you. Three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention. Oh, squirrels, that's where they all come in. And then the one is a quirky or unusual fact about you, Matt Ziegler. We couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us. So again, not a memory test, but over to you to interpret the shaking of the canopy of your tree as you see fit.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna shake the tree because I've got this thing about jobs and identities and who we tell ourselves who we are. There's this expression that I come back to over and over and over again. The great JD Jay Dilla used to say, Don't sell yourself to fall in love with the things you do. And that's been in my brain since the 90s because you you want to do something and then follow and fall in love with it.

SPEAKER_00:

And just say that again because that was so worth replanting. Don't sell yourself to fall in love with the things you do. And just unpack that. I get it, but let's just unpack that slightly.

SPEAKER_01:

The unpacking of this idea is that there's the whole follow your bliss thing and follow your passion and whatever that. And I always I always said there's something wrong with that. And the piece that's wrong with that it's purely selfish, you're not figuring out what it is of value that you offer to the world and then figuring out how you have to give something back to the rest of humanity. So you can't sell yourself to fall in love with it. You can't prove yourself people are like, oh, I I really like Matt when you're and we'll touch on this in a second. I really like Matt when he's a bank teller and takes minimum wage. That's really good. That's not good for me. I'm not making anybody's life else's life happier when I can't balance my drawer at the end of the day, or maybe I made your life happier if I gave you an extra buck, but I might have ruined your day if I gave you five less because there's a lot of things going on. So you have to find the thing where you fit into the world and there's something additive that you're putting back into it. And falling in love with that is something that I care tremendously about. And uh I think I can unpack this through some of this career arc that I've been on and realizing, yeah, one one career per my little bio you're gonna out there.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not gonna be in a one-job person. And it's the fundamentals of the difference between do what you love and love what you do. I'm just playing around with semantics there, but there's something about make sure you try and if you do what you love, you're gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_01:

You're gonna be fine. And it might not be in the container of a singular job. That's something I had to learn. There wasn't like you do this and then that's everything. It might be you do all these things, you see the through lines, and they help fulfill what helps you flourish.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's where the polymathic in endeavor comes in. And I I relate to that wholeheartedly. I know you do.

SPEAKER_01:

I know you do. See, do you can I tell you about a couple of different random jobs that I've had over the years? Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

Please do.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so when I was in high school, I worked construction once, like one summer, terrible, you know, did the thing where the contractor comes over and he's like, maybe don't do that. And your friend turns to you, he's like, he doesn't want us to do that because that's asbestos and we'll get cancer. So I don't want that job. I watched my friends go to flip burgers and whatever else. I got very, very lucky that about 15 years old, I get invited to play. I was already playing guitar, I was already pretty decent. I get invited to play in a band with a bunch of older professional musicians. And something happened where the guitar player couldn't make it to a gig. My parents were friends with some of the guys in the band. One of the guys was like, Is there any way you would trust us to take Matt with us to do this corporate event, whatever the heck it was? Yeah. And we played bars and weddings and other things. But so for my entire high school experience, on weekends I would go play in bands. And I had my bands with my friends that made no money, but then I had this other gig that I actually got paid, and it was really great. It was really great to get paid. It was really weird to play a show with your friends and like you can barely go to the diner afterwards, which we usually made enough to break even on Perkins or Denny's or whatever else.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But with the other band, it was like you got real money. I didn't have to flip burgers, I didn't have to do all this stuff. So I learned this lesson that I could do something valuable and get not just paid, but paid way better than most of my friends doing something that I was like, I really don't want to have to do that. That's a dangerous seed to plant in a 16-year-old's line. Now, I I gotta tell you this too because there's a funny crossover. So I'm playing this gig one night, and uh, I have a paper due the next day. So I'm playing on a Thursday. Don't ask me why I'm at in a bar till two in the morning on a Thursday night, but I'm playing a gig, I'm getting paid. Somehow this was okay in the 90s, and I don't begrudge anybody this decision. So I have this history paper due the next day, and I'm sweating this before I go to the gig because like I gotta research a paper, I gotta read this stuff. So I'm playing this gig, and my history teacher is in the bar. So yeah, and doing the thing where he's like, You're not supposed to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, what there's a glitch in the universe, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

There's a glitch in the matrix. The matrix was a movie by that point, I believe. And so he's looking at me, and I'm thinking, like, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. I'm supposed to be writing this paper. Now when I show up tomorrow, I'm not gonna have the paper. He's gonna know I was here instead. This isn't work. When you're in a band, you're playing in a band. Nobody looks at that and is like working, they're playing, they deliberately use that word against you. So he's in the audience. I have this paper, he's dancing and whatever else and drinking, definitely having a good time. And at one point, he's like, he comes up and he's at the front of the stage and he's kind of like, I know a guy in the band, that kind of thing's going on, you know? Yeah. And he's like, I really want you guys to play. And this was a cover band, we did all sorts of stuff. He's like, Will you play? Play that funky music, white boy. And I was like, That depends. Because we had it on our set list and we did the song. I was like, that depends. Will you give me an extension on my history paper? Yes, come on. And what did he say? He said, You play the song, you got that extension. So the next day, everybody's turning in their papers. One of the kids is like, hey, Matt didn't pass his in when he did it. And he was like, We had a private conversation, he's okay, leave him alone.

SPEAKER_00:

Love that.

SPEAKER_01:

Great leverage. This was an important lesson, though. Yes. Because I was doing something I loved, I was getting paid well to do it, and there was this networking value of that wasn't a monetary thing to get that paper extension.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

A lot of dangerous lessons to teach teenager. But I got those.

SPEAKER_00:

And I like the fact you're you're yes, you're you're surfing dangerous lessons. That's great. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01:

That's job number one. I'm I'm doing four of these. I'll go more lightning round through the other ones. Yeah. I end up then in college. We're supposed to do like an internship, we're supposed to do this thing. I ignore doing the internship in a timely manner, like everybody else does. I procrastinate because now I'm also I'm still playing in now other bands and stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

And is that because you're always getting extensions on when you work study? Not in college. That's a new habit.

SPEAKER_01:

None of those teachers are giving me extensions anymore. I think the gig was up because I was in music school and I couldn't pull that stuff off. I'm playing bands, I'm doing stuff, and I'm finally like, crap, I have to get this internship done. It's part of my requirement. So I go to a local recording studio and I wanted to work in recording studios, and I get my internship because I'm the only intern who this person has ever had. Now I've been in recording studios. This is part of why I want to work in them. And we finish the session. The guy who runs the place, like takes the band out and is cleaning up the business, whatever with them. I get the vacuum cleaner out of the closet, and now I'm vacuuming in the place. And he comes back and he's like, nobody has ever unprompted vacuumed and cleaned the studio. And I was like, but there's a band coming in tomorrow morning. Like, if I walk into your studio and there's potato chips and stuff all over the floor and a pizza box out, like that's not I'm not happy if I'm paying you that money to come in and do this. He was like, Yeah, but nobody gets that.

SPEAKER_00:

Nobody just most people don't clean up after themselves, whereas I'm now getting you do.

SPEAKER_01:

So I end up with an internship that turns into my first job, which I started before I graduated. I help run this studio because he goes back out on the road for stuff. I'm running this studio. The pivotal moment in my experience, and I was there for a number of years, but the pivotal moment came. I wanted to be a producer, like a record producer, Martin style. Like I wanted that whole tell me what you're trying to express, let me put it together, book, write the arrangements, book the oh, you need an oboe player. Let's get I know three. Let me get those for you. I'm doing all that stuff. And so the moment that happens is I'm recording this absolutely phenomenal, like indie folk artists, Abby Ahmad. Shout out to Abby, she's still out there doing her thing. And Abby says to me, like, I want this to sound more yellow. And I thought, I know exactly what she means. Wow. No one else would know what more yellow means. But right now, in this moment, I've done this job enough to know what yellow means. And that was a really, really another one, really important thing that just like locked up here as I've spent enough time with this person creatively to know what some otherwise nonsensical throwaway word means.

SPEAKER_00:

I think about music in colors. I love that. That's great. So the yellow, beautiful.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Do you know the name for that? There's a scientific name for that. I am not one of these people. I think she was people actually do experience music in color. It's a known psychological phenomenon. So I do all this, and then somewhere in my mid-20s, I realize like I've never had a real job. I've never had insurance. I basically burn out in the recording studio. That's a story into and of itself, but it did involve like by the early 2000s, we were hollowing out the recording industry because of the advent of the home computer. And I found myself in the situation of I was recording in uh Hartford, Connecticut, which is in between New York and Boston, but it's very much not New York or Boston.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, in the hinterland.

SPEAKER_01:

So I am recording the like eighth horrible local rapper demo of like the month to pay the studio bills for the rent and the equipment and all the other stuff. And I was just like, I can't, I would rather do something that I know I hate than try to make myself do something that I love, but hate doing it.

SPEAKER_00:

But there's something rich about nothing lasts forever and it was just coming to an end. And then it's the notion of a second curve, you know, when your curve begins to wane, what do you do to attach it to your second curve to pull you towards your future?

SPEAKER_01:

So I had an existential crisis right there from like 25 to 35. I'm like, I need to just go do something I hate. That's the logical thing. And I never figured out how to get a get a job. I got into that band when I was in my teenage years. I had the one summer in construction and I did odds and ends jobs, but I was like, all right, uh, what's the most boring thing I can do? People kept telling me I could do business. I didn't know what that meant because I never took any business classes, but like I ran bands, I set up LLCs. I was the guy who was like, oh, clearly you want to own this asset inside of the business because that's how you shield yourself from liabilities. And here's what you do when the Department of Labor calls you and you have to explain that person's not on payroll, and that's what makes them go away. I didn't know that was business. So I'm like, all right, give me something business related. So I get a job as a teller at a local bank because I'm looking for an entry-level job and I'm like 25, 26 years old. So I get this job, I'm terrible at this job. I look around this room and I see nobody, and I work with some lovely people, but I was like, I don't want any of these people's lives. This is not for me. So instead of trying to pick their life, I was like, who's the only person in here who I can tell doesn't hate their life and looks like they're having some fun with what they do? And there's this guy in this corner, like, what's that guy do? He's a financial advisor. Great. How do I get that job? I do this with great hindsight, right before the global financial crisis. But for some race, some reason they say yes. I somehow survive through that crisis period. There's a whole bunch of drama inside of that too. But for the next 10-ish years, I'm on this track of trying to learn an industry that I know nothing about, and I'm still operating at odds with thinking the bands, the recording studios, all those lessons have anything what I'm doing. I start to realize in that job that the act of talking to people and listening to people is all about extracting what they're trying to say.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. There's a delicious through line in everything you've described so far about something I've struck on recently as being really profound is be where your feet are. And that notion of presence to just show up and think because all your opportunities and windows of opportunities were about being present where you were. You know, your first gig in the band, then the job, then the teller, then the man to go and bring you towards your other future. There's a lovely through line.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. And quite literally, the through line is that. So me being present then, I start to realize oh, I'm actually doing the same thing I wanted to be doing in the recording studios with production and learning standing what yellow mean. Because I'd have people talking to me and they'd be like, you know, you close the door and they go, Every I'm the CEO of this company, everybody thinks I'm a genius. I have no idea what I'm doing here, and I think I've totally screwed up the how I'm gonna pay for my kids' college or my retirement, or I want to sell this business. Everybody thinks I understand what you know, this you bit down multiple means, and I I have no clue what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_00:

Nor do I have to say, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So I started to realize I was the person who could act as the translator and then make them feel comfortable not only asking the question, but I had put together the technical know-how by doing this job to explain this stuff. I was like, oh, this is what I do. I listen to people, I help get to the point of the thing that matters to them, and then I help them operationalize actually how to do it.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, lovely. And that's the super imperative to this day that keeps you going. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

So that is what that's what puts me in the seat that I'm in as a managing director for Sunpoint. That helps lead all the initiatives we do there. And that also gives me the agency once I leave the very corporatized side of finance and I go to a smaller firm where I have control and direction, and I can go, great, I want to do this because I can help operationalize I've stuff for the business with Sunpoint, but I can also take my cultish creative brand that I'd started building anonymously years before that. I can start these podcasts and get involved with other things, and I can do all this creative stuff that I've been suppressing for all this time too. So that's the tree. I I shook at least four things out of that for you.

SPEAKER_00:

And will you be talking explicitly about what Epsilon theory is? Is that coming or is that something else you should say?

SPEAKER_01:

I'd love to, I'd love to tell you about Epsilon theory and the shinoptica, because we're we're about to do a pop-up lunch that people will see in just a few days. Oh you'll love this. So a quick sidebar, because this is the kind of stuff that happens to me over and over again with the presents. A buddy from college, a music buddy that I love dearly, like we connected right away, freshman year of college, because he kind of like half under his breath makes a comment in the hall. And I complete it. This has happened to me multiple times in life. And I complete it, and it's an obscure reference to like a skit on the second De la Sole album from like the early 90s that like neither of us should be listening to or culturally aware of this in any reasonable way. And we both look at each other and we're like, How did you know that? And that starts a friendship. And we drift apart, we would call each other, check in occasionally. Usually like through our 20s and whatever else. But uh the pandemic happens, we start catching up with people. He's got an amazing career. He's an incredibly successful professional musician now. I've got whatever you want to call what I'm doing. And he's there for me. I'm there for them. He's one of the most important people in my life. Shout out my buddy Scott. So we're talking. I introduce him to I say, Hey, the way you run your business all over the world, you really should read this guy, Ben Hunt, that I've been reading for years. Because Ben talks about a lot of the stuff and how we share information, talk about the news. A lot of our conversations were right out of conversations I was having inside of Ben's community. So we talk about that. And as friends do, he's like, you got to come visit me. He had just relocated to Nashville. You got to come visit. You got to come visit. And there's never time to be like, oh, I'm going to get on the plane and six hours later see you for a weekend. So this guy, Ben Hudd, says, I'm going to do this conference in Nashville. And as soon as I see the email, the text from Scotty lights up. It's like, we're going. Like, this is it. You need an excuse to come see me. We can both go to this conference together. Let's go hang out. So we do that. We go to the conference and hang out. In the conference, there's a bunch of people talking about stuff they've written. These are like central bankers, hedge fund managers, brilliant people from the business community, angel investors. Like, I'm the dumbest guy in the room as far as I'm concerned. At least my friend has built like a multinational touring band. So they're talking about stuff they wrote. People are submitting stuff. My buddy is like, hey, you should submit the thing you wrote about the rapper Ice Cube. I'm like, oh, just to be obnoxious? Okay. Thing or two about that. I'll share the thing I wrote for Cultist Creative about Ice Cube and the serendipity of a class he accidentally took because he got in trouble in high school that turned into his music and film career later. So I submit this thing, Ben Hunt's in this group of people, Mr. Epsilon theory, he reads it, and it's just like we have to work together. You have the ability to see a story for what it is, and hence the why am I reading it this now, which I name checked earlier. People who understand stories understand that we put stories as a framework to tie a progression of information in the world.

SPEAKER_00:

And is that what epsilon theory is?

SPEAKER_01:

Epsilon theory, literally, and I've helped him, and he said, I want help explaining what we do because this is a hard thing, and you have a gift for turning this into something. The epsilon is the term in an equation, in a financial equation, most commonly. That's how I know this term. Is the epsilon is the error. So it's like, you know the expression, the map is not the terrain? Yes. Okay. So it's like the idea is like, yes, I can draw a map of this room, but it will never contain all the detail of the room that I'm in. Yes. When you mathematically, mathematically, not map-matically, when you mathematically write that out, the error term is the epsilon. Okay. That's the gap between the map and the terrain. Or the description of the room and the literal room itself is this thing called the epsilon. So epsilon theory and the point of Ben's work is to literally say, we don't talk about that gap. We assume the map is the reality or the reality.

SPEAKER_00:

It also explains why a lot of people in the world get pissed off with estate agents because they think they're going to see a wonderful house, and the epsilon theory means it's about 15 times smaller and 15 times more expensive than I expected. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01:

When you take this, and especially when you apply it to media, when you apply it to how stories are told to us via headlines and stuff like that, this becomes a really important topic. It's something I'm very passionate about because this is the difference between in America, like when we celebrate Thanksgiving, the common joke is like dreading Thanksgiving because you have to tolerate the people who completely disagree with you but are family and you have to figure out how to get through the event.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's the enjoyment of the discrepancy I'm hearing as well. So Epsilon is about the discrepancy. 100%.

SPEAKER_01:

And I love Ben loves my buddy Scott. We all love that discrepancy, and we don't see it as something to go to war over. We just see it as something to explore and see the nuance and the richness in people's stories and experiences. And that is a big part of what we're trying to do in this new joint venture we're calling Panoptica, which stay tuned, panoptica.ai any day now is gonna start to show its face to the world.

SPEAKER_00:

Congratulations. That sounds fantastic. We're shaking the tree. Thank you for the shapeage. Now it's three things or people or entities or whatever that shape you, three things that shape you.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. I'm giving three things. Sorry, this is influencing, sorry. That's okay. I'm giving I'm giving three, but I'm gonna use this because now I'm on this math kick. Are you familiar with either there's a wonderful science fiction series and now Netflix series called the Three Body Problem? Have you encountered this? Are you aware of this?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I believe I've seen it. And I'm just rattling through my archive of what I've seen recently. Yes. The thing with the stars winking.

SPEAKER_01:

That's like the ship. Really well done. Really enjoyed the Netflix series. Very different from the books. The books, and there was a group of us friends, that all like those books as they came out, we were obsessed with. If you're a sci-fi nerd and you haven't read three body problem, go through the trilogy. They're remarkable and they're just profoundly good. The three body problem is a reference to a famous physics problem. And the physics problem is, and I promise this is the connection to your three things. The idea is we can track the motion of one thing, we can track the motion of two things. It's really easy. Billiards or snooker. Let me adjust it for the audience on a snooker table. If there's two balls on the table, I hit one into another, we can predict exactly where both are going to go after they collide. But as soon as you have three bodies or more, but as soon as you have three bodies, all the math stops mathing. There's a weird thing, and I've noticed this, and this is part of life, and this is my three things for you. Julia Duffy is a stranger. She ends up on my radar. Julia Duffy and I, we connect and we do our thing. She connects with you separately. You guys do your thing. She's over here, you guys do the episode. I listen to that as my research. But now all three of us are going to turn back around and go to our separate audiences and do something completely unpredictable. The fact that you can't solve that problem is not a defect. It's not a bug. That is the feature. These little tiny one-to-one connections have butterfly level effects of causing hurricanes, other places around the world. You can't predict it, you can't control it. The question is, how aware are you that you're playing this three-body problem and just having enough interactions to see what takes off? I love that. That's my three things is that we have relationships with ourselves, we have one-to-one relationships with the other people, and then we have one-to-many relationships with all of our networks around it. I think that is woefully misunderstood and woefully valuable.

SPEAKER_00:

Beautiful. Wonderful. And it reminds me of one of my very, very favourite adages: it's all about the relationship, stupid. And it is, but and the three-body problem is all about the relationships and the complexities therein. Fantastic. Exactly. Boom. That was a great economical interpretation and a very profound one of the three things that influence you. So now we're going to go on to the two squirrels. This is borrowed from the film Up, where the dog goes, Oh, squirrels. We've all got two monsters of distraction, at least. Two things that never fail to grab your attention, irrespective of anything else. Oh, squirrels, that might be going on in your hectic, eclectic, polymathic life. So what would you say your squirrels are?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, the first squirrel is my I'm gonna call it an addiction because I believe that is the technical term for it. And this is not just to placate you or your potential audience with this stuff across the pond. But I am the problem when it comes to the expansion of things like Premier League soccer around the world. Because I've been fascinated my whole life with European football and the whole thing. But then it was the advent of once the cable breakdowns. So shout out to Fox Soccer and now NBC and the Peacock who have now taken over this thing. But once it became easy to consume, man, I just I was completely sucked in. Once my friends and I discovered the few friends that had the same interest, that there was like a free fantasy app that we could get. First the website, now the app, and we could set up these little leagues and play them with each other. I care more about English Premier League than many other things in my life. And the group chat that I have, the only reason you and I could communicate on WhatsApp is because we have some international members of our little WhatsApp club that talks to each other, and it's just trash talking. But every Saturday, Sunday morning of my life, pretty much, aside for those 38 glorious weeks, and then we all sob to each other on the off weeks.

SPEAKER_00:

And who is your team of choice then talking European soccer?

SPEAKER_01:

I arbitrarily, and I have to emphasize this because this is the funny part of not being from there. I arbitrarily picked Chelsea in the late 90s because I didn't want to pick one of the Manchester teams. And it's worked out well for me, but I was between Chelsea and Everton. And Everton as a Philly sports, and like I have a soft spot for the Mets and some other teams here in my my uh my corner of the country and our our American sports, you know, go Sixers. Yeah. Like I have a soft spot for teams who break your heart. Like in my core, I picked Everton in some way and just never got over it. But somehow I picked Chelsea, and it's a little bit like picking the Yankees, I feel like almost.

SPEAKER_00:

But uh and you know what's so extraordinary? Just yesterday I was in somewhere that's very important to me where I've got sort of an uh a real good, strong relationship going with an entity in the UK called Entrepreneurs Circle. I came across a fire door that had a graphic of the first ever football team I fell in love with, which was Leeds United. And very specifically, it was a black and white picture of Billy Bremner. This is excellent. And then the really important thing is this chap called Alan Clark. And when I was I I I grew up in Uganda until I was 10 years old. When I came back to Uganda, I got the all-white Alan Clark strip, and it was sort of washing machine mum's nightmare sort of thing. But of all the times in all the world, just yesterday I reconnected with a really strong memory about football by just seeing this because what's very clever about this entity, Entrepreneur Circle, they put graphics around in a very there's no way of knowing that someone like me comes in and has a real connection to their fire door, but they have certain graphics around that really hook people in in a very collectic way, which is very clever. Uh but anyway, it wasn't about me, but it was just yesterday. Now you'll mention that. I love I love that connection.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that there's a hat approximately there. Oh that hat, that's the Scranton Wolksbury Red Barons. That's the it was the farm team for the Phillies. I'm still sore. That farm team got moved to the farm team of the Yankees, but it was the Phillies farm team. I grew up on the bleachers and the cheapse because that was an easy way for us to go. I had to go on eBay or whatever to find one of the hats from you know 30 years ago from when I was going to games that was the original logo in size. I was very disappointed because I was like, oh yeah, this is how boxy hats were in the 90s. I feel really ridiculous wearing this thing. Although maybe I have the hair for it now. But it's our ties and loyalty to those things we celebrate as a people, especially that aren't church. It's like going to a concert or something else. And I love the lead's identity too, because the identity crisis that that club has been through. Yes. Like watching them back in the top flight this year is it's special. It's really special.

SPEAKER_00:

Very cool. And of all the things for us to connect on, that's another really interesting story. And the yes, the this sort of epsilon, the discrepancy of the discrepancy. Love that.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm losing in my league right now. I'm gonna make a comeback. I'm coming for you. Let it be known. I've I don't think I've ever lost the Friends League. And I am struggling mightily out the gate this year. So I'm spending an inordinate amount of time in my mornings, nights, evenings, and mid-afternoons where I am just like checking player stats and prices and other things.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a lovely super geekery to there, which I find an obsession, if I may say, which is a very healthy thing.

SPEAKER_01:

The other thing I am a sucker for, and I forget how much of a sucker I am for, is new music, like new artistry. And my wife and I have talked about this a lot. I think about this a ton because as you get older, you usually just want to go back to the music that you grew up on. And something about that always like bored me, frustrated me. I like knowing what the kids are into, even if I'm not into it. And there's this rule. So this is another piece that this is a squirrel that's been in my head for a long, long time. And I have to remind myself of this now that I'm of the age to have this mindset. And I don't remember exactly who quoted this, but it's basically you have to look for the music that the parents are upset about. If you want to know what's good, find out what the parents are annoyed, frustrated, ticked off that their kids are listening to. And you have to actually go and listen to that to figure out why the kids are into it. When that squirrel is alive in my brain and rattling around, the things that I have discovered and absolutely loved, and like shout out to like a few years ago, like hundred gecks who have become one of my favorite like hyper pop modern. Like, I don't think I could have tolerated that 15 years ago, or it would have like bounced off my brain in some weird way. But when I found them like five, seven, whatever years ago, I was just like, this is so outlandish. And I heard about this party and NYU, and they play this show, and then like too many people show up and like this room explodes. And I'm just like, I gotta find out. I gotta listen to this until it clicks.

SPEAKER_00:

And in our parents' generation, that was of course Elvis Presley was suddenly upsetting everyone because everybody, everybody, the the world transformed, I remember, and the Beatles, and and and and and and and and and and that's also the thing when people said, like, rap is just a fad or whatever.

SPEAKER_01:

You can play this forward beyond the Elvis comparison. And it's the the more mad the parents are about this travesty. Punk. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, punk rock. Like, who how many parents want you listening to Joe Strummer or the Sex Pistols or whatever else, or all the great, you know, American bands that do this? And then the same way, the more the parents can kind of like shrug it off or be like, hey, Nirvana unplugs not so bad, doesn't mean it's not going to be durable and lasting.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

It just tempers the impact of those groups over time. I am a squirrel for when I see something that people are a little bit ticked off by, or like, oh, that's crap, or that's not music. My brain goes like, wait.

SPEAKER_00:

And again, you're going for the discrepancy, the epsilon in the error in the way that that terrain is being mapped. The glitch in the matrix is where you're interested. I love it. And now uh it's the one in the 54321. A quirky or unusual fact about you, Matt Ziggler, we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think I've already hinted at this, but like I'm I'm an introvert at the end of the day. Like I I get that energy from shutting it all down. Yes. Closing the door, and coming in here and figuring out what to do with it. Now I can do stuff like this. This is part of why I love hosting more than I love being a guest on these things. I love being the host because then somebody else is the main center of attention and I get to extract stuff from them and pepper in my little I get to be the one making the little jokes or holding up the props and other things, which you know, like shout out my Rick Nielsen guitar pick or uh my classic matchbox car, my little ADHD things on my desk. But the oh, my red stapler too. Don't forget that one. I'll burn this place down off the space. This idea though, that like I I am very curious. I'm very comfortable on a stage, I'm very comfortable talking to other people about what I want to talk about. I am tortured when it's like, let's talk about something that's horribly boring or uninteresting or whatever else. My ADHD, I go full squirrel brain, full mouse in the kitchen brain. I'm just panic mode, I'm exhausted, whatever else. I don't think we talk enough, and credit to Susan Kane, because she really opened up the definition of this in my mind with her excellent book, Quiet, but then also understanding for other people in the world, people's disposition on where they get their energy from and how their interests are engaged. Like we're all a little bit different, and the more you know that about yourself, the better off you'll be. So yes, I consider myself introverted. I don't think people would guess that.

SPEAKER_00:

We have shaken your tree. Hurrah. Now we stay in the clearing, which is in your supreme introverted environment of your mandane. You didn't call it that, you called it something, something more powerful, actually. But it's it's your cave within. And now we're gonna talk about alchemy and gold. So when you're at purpose and in flow, Matt, what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world?

SPEAKER_01:

I just said about my introversion, my relatively I view it as like extreme ADHD. I've realized that those two things work together to allow me to find stuff that I'm interested in and then do something with it. Transform it, tell a story about it, shape it in some way, shape, or form, and then get distracted and go back out in the world again. The unifying, the gravity inside of that explanation is being present. And if I look at all those jobs, if I look at all those moments, if I look at every piece of serendipity in my life, that all comes from me being insanely and intensely present inside of a moment and not being outside of time. I am my most happiest when I'm in a conversation like this, and I feel like I'm in a flow state, it feels like a performance, and it also feels like a way to pull out these threads because now I'm already connecting stuff in my head that I'm gonna want to think through later. But being present, and that's both the thing I give to other people in the world. I will be very, very present with another individual. And it's also the thing that I can turn around and get the most fulfillment and flourishing out of myself with.

SPEAKER_00:

Lovely answer. Do you have a dog, by the way? Because I'm just intrigued by the sense of presence that dogs give us with the clock of now, you know, now, now. Do you have a dog?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I I have I have two dogs. Shout out to Jack and Otis. They are smaller dogs. We love our smaller dogs. I actually just wrote, if you want to see a picture of my dogs, cultishcreative.com. There's a post today, uh, September 17th of 2025. My dog Otis loves edamame. Do you know edamame? The like peas in a pod. It's a, I think Chinese by derivation name, but most commonly like a Japanese restaurant, you can get these things. Uh, yes, yes, yes. It's like a fried bean in a pond pod. So my dog Otis is obsessed with edamame. So, like if we go to a sushi restaurant or we get food like that, like I always will order a side explicitly to bring home or whatever else, and he loses his mind. And Jack, the dog, we've only had for about six months. Otis knows how to surgically remove each bean from the pod, each pea. Like the pot itself will be uh surgically, like it'll just be flattened and left like who came and stole the peas. Like, that's the way he rolls. And we were like, Do you think Jack will figure this out? And like Jack the dog watched Otis like getting all excited and popping one in his mouth. Jack did kind of like mangle the pod, I'm not gonna lie. But he figured out, oh, you don't eat the pod, you just get these things out, and then these are amazing, and mom and dad give us more. Sheer joy feeding the dog at a mommy.

SPEAKER_00:

That's an extra squirrel, the distraction of your beautiful dogs, which is fantastic. I'm glad I asked you that. That's great. Uh now I'm gonna award you with a cake. Hurrah! And now this is the final suffused with storytelling metaphor. Do you like cake, Matt Ziggler?

SPEAKER_01:

I do. I have a soft spot for cake. I have a weird cake that I don't know if it exists in the UK that I want to ask you about. Far away.

SPEAKER_00:

The Boston cream cake? No, I'm guessing you go to Boston to get that, but that's not what we have in the UK.

SPEAKER_01:

They're everywhere. It's kind of like a the Boston cream donut is really the famous thing, but they have a cake version of this too. It's just basically like cake, usually with a chocolatey frosting, and then like almost like a custard, either filling or middle layer. And uh I have a soft spot for it. It's also a funny thing. It's both my wife and my favorite donut, so it's like a shared thing where we can say no to a plethora of donuts. But if there's a Boston cream, both of us are like, it's kryptonite. If it's offered, you can't say no, you have to have it. And uh once in a while, like a birthday or something like that, a Boston cream cake is an extra treat.

SPEAKER_00:

And someday when I get this the global sponsorship I deserve, one of the things I want to make a point of is sending people exactly the cake they want. Uh so I will send you the kryptonite. So uh now you get to put a cherry on your bastard cream cake by now telling me a favorite inspirational quote that's always given you sucker and pulled you towards your future.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. This is gonna sound like a not quite so friendly quote, but it's a quote that I attribute to altering the course of my life somewhere post the age of 36 or 37. I read this book by this guy, Jerry Colonna, and the book contains this quote, reboots, story of his life, really interesting. But this quote is how am I complicit in creating the things I say I don't want? Ooh. So I'll say it again. How am I complicit in creating the things I say or I think or I claim I do not want? And that idea of understanding that you are tied in, you're a part of not just the things that you do want in your life, but also the things you don't want. And I'm a believer in there's a lot through reduction and subtraction that we can learn versus gain. I learned this very early on. A very important lesson I learned that I think about all the time is I think I was still a studio intern. So I'm in college, I'm studying this stuff, and uh there's a mix-up on the board. I've only really done live sound, I haven't done much in the studio before. And the guy turns to me and he's like, you should brighten up that guitar sound or whatever else. And I immediately start to raise the highs on the channel to brighten up the town on the sound of this in the mix. He's like, No, no, no, no, no. We don't add. He's like, adding is only going to cause other problems because you don't know what else you're boosting to. We cut. And he was like, leave the highs exactly where they are, we're gonna roll off the bases and out carve out some of the mids. And he was like, we always see if we can solve the problem by subtracting first before adding. He's like, adding is like a very narrow set of situations. And I think about this all the time. I think about in this context of how am I complicit in creating the things I say I don't want. Sometimes the thing you're actually after requires subtraction, not addition. You have to stop and ask that question.

SPEAKER_00:

Great answer. With the gift of hindsight, what notes, help, or advice might you proffer to a younger version of yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

Stay present. All the good things that happen to you on stage, all the good things that happen to you with your friends, all the moments where you feel most alive and most happy come because you're not living in the future or in the past. And that includes daydreaming about the future or beating yourself over the past or whatever the inverse is. All the good stuff comes when you figure out how to be present and actually enjoy that moment. So stop getting stuck so far out of time, which is, I think, a big part of what I did from call it 25 to 35. I was out of the map trying to figure out how I fit in, and I was fitting in just fine all along. Love that.

SPEAKER_00:

We're ramping up shortly to talk about Shakespeare and Legacy. But just before we get there, this is the pass the golden button moment, please, where I'm going to invite you, having experienced this from within, in the same way that the lovely Julia Duffy passed the golden baton on to you. This is to keep the golden thread of the storytelling going. Who would you most like to pass the golden baton along to, uh, Matt Ziggler, to allow them to have a damn good listening to in this way?

SPEAKER_01:

I am very much passing my American golden baton to a American by the way by way of Poland, though. My friend uh Bogomil Baranowski. I want Bogomil to go through this exercise, not just because immediately he's who my brain goes to anytime I heard tree, because he's got the most lovely story about this tree his grandfather planted or great grandfather in Poland, and like growing up by this tree, and then seeing it as an adult, like bigger. Like Bogomil's an incredibly thoughtful person, wonderful podcaster and host. Shout out to Talking Billions. We collaborate on stuff all the time. I would love to see him on this show.

SPEAKER_00:

He gets the baton. Baton, and what a name. Bogomol Bagow. Sorry, say it again. It's so brilliant. I've just Bogomil Baranowski. How about that? You got that pop filter on just for that. I did, and I haven't got many of his type of name in my my address book. That's awesome. Thank you very much. I love that. So if you could let him know I'm coming for him, that would be wonderful. Thank you very much indeed. So now we're going to talk about legacy in just a moment. But just before we get there, this is the show as your QR code moment, please. So uh Courtney, if you'd be so kind. First of all, um, we'll look at the comedy picture of you with, shall we say, less hair. So if you want to connect with Matt Ziegler on LinkedIn, for those of you watching, you can scan the QR code and it will take you straight to the follically challenged at this point before he becomes the bushy Muppet he is now. In a good way, that is a compliment. So that's how to connect with Matt Ziegler on LinkedIn. And that's where you are talking about the sort of the sober point of being MD of Sun Point Investments. It's the sort of grown-up, serious version of yourself.

SPEAKER_01:

But I'm sharing everything there too. I've taken, I share the podcast, I'll write something up and share it about this. It's a it is a professional network, and I am all about knocking those professional boundaries over as regularly and recklessly as I can to try to show other people don't let this job define you. Right back to that. Don't sell yourself to fall in love with the things you do, which these are all props. That's the guy who said that quote in that image behind me right there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Love that. And I you made me think of a 10-pin bowling alley, just knocking over all those skittles of things that are keeping you trapped and locked within. Exactly. Take the guard. Love a bowling efforts. There's another now, which is if you want to start here, this is where you go to your cultish creative blog and newsletter. Do you want to just tell us a tiny bit about that?

SPEAKER_01:

I started almost eight years ago. It'll be eight years ago in just a few months, where I wanted to have one complete thought a day. I was drowning in all the stuff that I was consuming and trying to think about. And I was very I just felt very alone and isolated in my life. So I was like, what if I just take a thought and complete it and then go out and find another one tomorrow? I started that eight years ago. So I've sent out at least a daily email or I've blogged it on my website. You don't you can get them once a week if you want. I'll send you the summary on Saturdays. But basically, for eight years, this is my habit of just connecting two ideas. And that's turned into connecting two people. It's can turned into jobs, opportunities, and everything else. And I just love doing stuff like today, telling the edamame stories about my dogs. I want to be able to look back and find that later. I call it a personal archive. It's my favorite thing I do, cultishcreative.com.

SPEAKER_00:

That'll give you all the fun stuff about me. Wonderful. And anywhere else you'd like to point us to on the internet that I haven't necessarily got as a QR code.

SPEAKER_01:

Cultish Creative is all the stuff. Most of the links are right there, and I think LinkedIn I'll send you there too. And obviously Twitter. I'm still fairly active on Twitter. I've got a lot of good friends over there, and uh, we still have fun.

SPEAKER_00:

Wonderful. So now to Shakespeare, all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. We're gonna borrow from the seven ages of man's speech in As You Like It, Jake's or Jacques. How when all is said and done, Matt Ziggler, would you most like to be remembered?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna quote Theseus, Act Five, Scene One, a Midsummer's Night's Dream. This is how I want to be remembered, the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen, turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. I wanna be that poet. I want to put those things together for people and show them something that they haven't thought of before, and most importantly, pull them into that present moment, into that habitation and a name. That's all I want.

SPEAKER_00:

As this has been your moment in the sunshine in the good listening to show Stories of Distinction and Genius, Matt Ziegler, is there anything else you'd like to say?

SPEAKER_01:

Stories of Distinction and Genius feels like an upside down horseshoe or a frown. It seems so off-brand. Shouldn't that go the other direction? Shouldn't it be like the horseshoe or if it's turned upside down, as my grandfather told me, all the luck pours out the bottom? That's my editorial note of I was looking at this and I was going, I love the rainbow, but I want the horseshoe. That's my closing point. Another criticism. I hope that's not harsh. No, I just kept thinking about this, looking at this video that's the feedback. It's always a gift.

SPEAKER_00:

It's meant, I suppose it's meant to be more of a the umbrella and then you're beneath it. You are the horseshoe. Yeah, but it needs to be a bucket, maybe. Can you send me an alternative version? And I'd love that. We might have to get this marked up. Let's get the fine graphic design people on this. Let's do this. So, yes, please, if you know people that know people that can do that shit, I would love to hear that from you. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Just a couple of announcements from me. If you've enjoyed the show and you'd like to tell your story and amplify your brand, and you know, a large audience awaits you in the clearing. Not only would we broadcast live as I'm doing now from Future Leap Studios in Bristol, where I'm based here in the UK, this show will also then subsequently be professionally edited into a podcast, and then it'll be broadcast also on UK Health Radio, which has an audience reach across 54 countries of 1.4 million listeners and growing. So get in touch if you'd like to tell your story, because a large audience awaits you in the clearing to hear you tell it as you tell us your story. Also, very, very excitingly, there's a brand well, it's been there all along, but there's a particularly exciting series strand to what I'm up to, which is using the same curated structure, but it's called legacylife reflections.com, and it's to record your story or the story of somebody really precious to you for posterity, lest we forget, before it's too late, without any morbid intention. And I'm delighted to say that I'm going to be an exhibition shortly, properly talking about legacy life reflections. It's um very Very profound to me because my father, Colin Grimes, Cheers to a Good Life, was my first ever willing guinea pig for this construct about four years ago. He died a year ago. There was no morbid intention, but now that I still have the recording and the film of my dad, I can't tell you how precious it is. So my dad's picture is there in Legacy Life Reflections, Cheers to a Good Life. That's legacylife reflections.com. So um I've been Chris Grimes, but most importantly, this has been uh Matt Ziggler. Is there anything else you'd like to say, Matt?

SPEAKER_01:

Chris, this is a joy. This is a service of what you're doing, but if nothing else, being present with me for this time. It's it's a true gift.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm really excited that you asked me to be on. And right back at you. I can't wait for the experience. And and yes, please do point people to just press record as well, finally.

SPEAKER_01:

Cultish Creative YouTube. That's at Cultish Creative on YouTube. That's the channel. You can find the playlist. About a year and a half worth of episodes. That's like a hundred introductions that I've made, and they are that's the joy of my work right there.

SPEAKER_00:

And I can't wait to be there in your arena too very soon. So thank you very much indeed, and also thanks to Julia Duffy, whose wonderful podcast, People Are Everything, got me to meet the lovely Matt. So I'm Chris Grimes, that's Matzigler! The Good ListeningToShow, stories of distinction of genius. Good night. You've been listening to the Good Listening to show with me, Chris Grimes. If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed gift an episode to capture the story of someone else with me as your host, then you can find out how care of the series strands the Good Listening2Show.com website. If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, please do so. And if you'd like to have some coaching with me, care of my personal impact game changer program, then you can contact me and also about the show at Chris at secondcurve.uk. On X and Instagram, it's at thatCrisgrimes. Tune in next week for more stories from the clearing. And don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts.